The Pope – Chief of White Slavers, High Priest of Intrigue

The Pope – Chief of White Slavers,  High Priest of Intrigue

The author of the book “The Pope Chief of White Slavers High Priest of Intrigue,” Jeremiah J. Crowley, was a Roman Catholic priest for 21 years. Some people call him the Martin Luther of America! I think Charles Chiniquy who preceded him was another type of Martin Luther in the USA. Chiniquy was also a Roman Catholic priest who at first tried to reform injustices of the Roman clergy but who later left the Roman Catholic church when he realized it would never change. God used these men to wake up and inform the Bible-believing followers of Christ of their day of the evil intentions of Rome toward America and the world. Both of them have been largely forgotten. Most Christians in America have never heard of either Charles Chiniquy or Jeremiah J. Crowley! Why? The books they wrote have been suppressed. The Devil doesn’t want you to learn the insights these men had, for if you do, you will learn the truth of political reality and who and what is at the top of the pile of evils of this world!

Jeremiah J. Crowley also wrote “Romanism A Menace to the Nation” which is also posted on this site.

Jeremiah J. Crowley

Jeremiah J. Crowley

Some good quotes from this book:

There never was a period in our history when the American public more needed to be instructed in regard to the machinations of Romanism than now. Many generous-minded, kind-hearted people believe that in Roman Catholicism we have simply to do with one of the Christian denominations, but history demonstrates that Romanism is first and last political. Many also believe that the Romish Church in America is totally different from what it is in Italy, Spain, or South America, and that the evils so evident there can never come to our own dear land. Rome, however, boasts that she is ever and everywhere the same.

The great whore of Babylon, by all sane interpreters of Holy Writ held to be the Papacy, is ever active in securing new fields for the exploitation of victims and the garnering of harvests of infamy-won gold, characteristic of whorishness, never to be satisfied!

The Catholic Church is a thoroughly organized and well-managed business and political institution, probably the greatest on earth. It wields its influence to promote and advance the interests of its members in business and political affairs. Its members recognize this powerful influence, and, being ever ready to safeguard their selfish interests, they are obedient and servile. This obedience and servility increase the power of the Church and, through the united efforts of all of its members, the material benefits derived are manifold.

Political machines many has this world seen from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to Nero; from Nero to Pope Borgia (Alexander VI); and from Pope Borgia to Pope Sarto (Pius X); but no political machine ever devised by the wicked ingenuity of man has equaled, in the deadliness of its execution, the extortionate exactions of its rapacity, the mercilessness of its unceasing demands, the papal machine doing business at Rome.

The head of the papal machine is the pope of Rome but its controlling, dominant power is the Curia, or College of Cardinals. Principal agents and beneficiaries of the System, in outside countries, are archbishops and bishops. They may, like Turkish tax collectors, gather in all they can from the superstitious hopes and fears of the servile or ignorant multitude, keeping for themselves a most abundant share, provided they yield to Italian grafter at the Vatican his stipulated “pound of flesh.”

(Jeremiah Crowley in his letter to Pope Pius X:) I feel free to address myself directly to you, not indeed because I acknowledge subjection in smallest measure to your authority, either in spirituals or temporals, but because I charge you — CHIEF OF WHITE SLAVERS, HIGH PRIEST OF INTRIGUE—with being the fountain-head of evils world-wide, the arch-disturber of humanity’s peace, religious and social; the relentless foe of the three basic principles of American National life and liberty—freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

To be plain, Judge, there is no morality among them, not a particle. They gamble in their convents; they send for members of their congregation to gamble with them. There is no morality. — Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, p. 177.

Preface

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits—Matt, vii, 15-16.

All history tells us that wherever the Romish priesthood has gained a predominance, there the utmost amount of intolerance is invariably the practice. In countries where they are in the minority they instantly demand, not only toleration, but equality; but in countries where they predominate they allow neither toleration nor equality.— Lord Palmerston.

Make peace if you will with popery; receive it into your senate; shrine it in your churches; plant it in your hearts; but be ye certain, as certain as that there is a heaven above you, and a God over you, that the popery thus honored and embraced is the very popery that was loathed and degraded by the holiest of your fathers; the same in haughtiness, the same in intolerance which lorded it over kings, assumed the prerogative of Deity, crushed human liberty, and slew the saints of God. —Canon Melvill.

DEDICATED
IS THIS VOLUME TO ALL MEN
Cherishing freedom of conscience; loving freedom of speech;
resolved to maintain a press free from popish repression; and
to guard Christian homes, with wives, mothers, sisters, and
daughters, against priestly lechery and destructiveness.

Pope the Antichrsti

Pope Pius X, the Pope who reigned from 4 August 1903 to 20 August 1914, the time Jeremiah J. Crowley tried to reform the Roman Catholic clergy.

POPE PIUS X.

The “Vicar of Christ,” “Our Lord God the Pope,” “King of Heaven, Earth, and Hell,” etc., claiming to represent the lowly and humble Nazarene, wears a triple crown of priceless value, and robes resplendent with jewels! Christ had not whereon to lay His head: The pope dwells in a Palace of four thousand rooms! What a mockery! What a delusion! What a snare is Popery! (See “Romanism—a Menace to the Nation,” p. 205.)

ENDORSEMENTS BY PROMINENT MEN.

Jamaica, N. Y.,
August 22, 1911.
It has been my privilege to know J. J. Crowley for a number of years. I knew him when he was a priest in the Catholic Church and was known as Father Crowley. I have heard him speak with great passion concerning his desire to help the Church of which he was for years a member. I have in a number of instances proved his statements to be true. I have therefore the strongest reasons for accepting all the statements he makes concerning the condition of the Church and those who ought to influence her for better and higher things.

Some one ought to speak; no one is better qualified than my friend; some message telling the true state of affairs should be given to the world, and J. J. Crowley is fitted by temperament and by education to send this message forth.

I commend it to the people and hope that it may have a wide circulation in order that thereby wrongs may be righted, and the sad condition of affairs so plainly stated in the book be overcome by those who would like to see the Church stand for righteousness and for God in all things. J# Wilbur Chapman, D. D.,

The Evangelistic Leader of the Presbyterian Church.

New York City,
November 25, 1910.
There never was a period in our history when the American public more needed to be instructed in regard to the machinations of Romanism than now. Many generous-minded, kind-hearted people believe that in Roman Catholicism we have simply to do with one of the Christian denominations, but history demonstrates that Romanism is first and last political. Many also believe that the Romish Church in America is totally different from what it is in Italy, Spain, or South America, and that the evils so evident there can never come to our own dear land. Rome, however, boasts that she is ever and everywhere the same.

The man with the message for the hour is the Rev. J. J. Crowley, author of the book, “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation. ” I trust that Christian people of every name will rally to his moral and material support in order that he may get his message before all the people East, West, North, and South. He has knowledge, experience, and courage, and all he wants is our loyal support. Let us all give it generously ! William Burt,
One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Philadelphia, Pa.,
November 15, 1910.
Dear Brother Crowley: Much thinking on the facts you gave me has deepened my conviction that you should get them before the American public. When the people awake their wrath against the Romish hierarchy will shake this land. You are called to be the defender of our institutions against mercenary and ungodly foes of this Republic. You have the exact inside knowledge and none can gainsay you. Strike and spare not. The time needs another Luther, a later Savonarola. Uncover the plotters. Unmask the enemies of our nation. May God speed you!
Robert McInttee> One of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Funchal, Maderia Islands,
December 8, 1906.
If ever the well-known immoralities and administrative corruptions, which now prevail among a very large proportion of the Roman Catholic clergy, from Pope in Rome to country parish priest the world over, are exposed fully and eradicated, it will be under the leadership of good and brave,,Roman Catholic priests and laymen.

Incidentally the work of such leaders will open the eyes of the Protestant world to the Jesuitical, political intrigues going on in every capital of the world, especially just now in London and Washington. It will also convince Protestant leaders that religious and civil liberty is stifled or threatened, and the sanctity of the home endangered, in proportion as the Church of Rome, as at present organized and administered, has sway.

One of the ablest and bravest, and thus far most successful, of such leaders in our day, is the Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley, of Chicago. He speaks from personal knowledge, gives names and dates and circumstances, and demands investigation, in book and pamphlet, and by word of mouth, from platform and in private conversation. He is an accredited priest and not a few fellowpriests endorse him and his crusade. His method is world-wide publicity. He has the confidence and unqualified endorsement of many leaders among Protestant clergymen and laymen.

I gladly add my word of cheer and commendation to this modern crusader against sin and corruption, in the heart of the great church to which he belongs and seeks to help purify. J. C. Hartzell,
Bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church for Africa.

FOREWORD.

Presenting to civilized men all over the world the work entitled, “The Pope—Chief of White Slavers, High Priest of Intrigue,” I do so with a deep sense of duty done to country and to humanity. The institution which, claiming to be Christian and to have for head the very “Vicar of Christ” Himself, resting on a record so darksome and forbidding as does Roman Catholicism, is certainly foeman (the foe or enemy) tireless of the personal liberty of men and women, and of free institutions everywhere.

That the papacy is making gigantic effort to throttle America, the subjoined excerpt from its organ, The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, March 27, 1913, clearly establishes:

OFFICIAL CATHOLIC DIRECTORY.

There are Twenty-three and One-third Millions of Catholics Under Stars and Stripes.

According to the 1913 edition of “The Official Catholic Directory,” published by P. J. Kennedy & Sons, of Barclay Street, New York, there are 15,154,158 Catholics in the United States. This figure includes only the Catholics of the United States proper, and does not embrace the people of our faith in the foreign possessions of this country.

Adding the 7,131,989 Catholics in the Philippines, the million or more in Porto Eico, the 11,510 in Alaska, the 42,108 in the Hawaiian Islands, and the 900 on the Canal Zone, it will be found that there are 23,329,047 Catholics under the Stars and Stripes.

The Directory is now in the hands of the binders, and Messrs. Kennedy expect to commence delivery in a few days.

The Directory is full of interesting figures, and according to the 1913 issue a new Catholic church is built every day in the year. There were 373 new churches established during 1912, some of them, of course, being only mission churches. To be exact, there are 244 new churches with resident pastors, and 129 new mission churches, that is, served by a neighboring pastor. All told, there are 14,312 churches in the United States, 9,501 having resident pastors.

There are 17,945 Catholic clergymen in the dioceses of the United States, 13,273 being secular clergy and 4,672 being members of religious orders. In addition to the 17,945 priests there are also hundreds of Fathers in distant lands, in fact there is hardly a civilized or uncivilized land where United States clergy are not to be found. Only a few days ago a United States priest sailed from New York for the Island of Timor, an island away out in the Indian ocean, inhabited by semibarbarous Malays and Papuas.

In addition to the 17,945 clergymen engaged in the United States there are 6,169 men and youths studying in 85 seminaries, located in various parts of the country.

There are 230 colleges and academies for boys and 684 academies for girls, where the higher education of our Catholic youth is given serious attention. The number of academies for girls is, of course, larger than the number of colleges for men and boys, but the number of men and boy students is much larger than girl students.

One of the features of the Directory which will give food for thought is the table giving the statistics of the parochial schools. According to the figures which have been supplied by the diocesan chancery officials there are 5,256 parishes which have parochial schools connected with the churches. In these 5,256 schools 1,360,761 boys and girls are receiving their elementary education. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that in many rural districts where parochial schools can not be organized due provision is made for the religious instruction of youth. With this in mind, the fact that 1,360,761 children are attending the parochial schools will stand out more sharply.

It must also be remembered that there are 47,415 orphans in our orphan asylums, and adding together the number of pupils in parochial schools, in orphan asylums, detention schools, institutes, academies, high schools, and colleges, it will be found that there are 1,593,316 young people under Catholic care in the United States.

The most important item in connection with the table of statistics is, of course, the population item, and Joseph H. Meier, the editor of Kennedy’s ” Official Catholic Directory’ ‘ has prepared for the Catholic press the following table showing the twenty-five States having the largest number of Catholics. During the year 1912 Michigan has forged ahead of Wisconsin, and Kansas has advanced over New Hampshire, Maine, and Nebraska. The table follows:

1. New York 2,790,629
2. Pennsylvania 1,633,353
3. Illinois 1,460,987
4. Massachusetts 1,383,435
5. Ohio 743,065
6. Louisiana 584,000
7. Michigan 568,505
8. Wisconsin 558,476
9. New Jersey 506,000
10. Missouri 470,000
11. Minnesota 454,797
12. Connecticut 423,000
13. California 403,500
14. Texas 306,400
15. Iowa 266,735
16. Maryland 260,000
17. Ehode Island 260,000
18. Indiana 232,764
19. Kentucky 163,228
20. New Mexico 140,573
21. Kansas 131,000
22. New Hampshire 126,034
23. Maine 123,600
24. Nebraska 118,270
25. Colorado 105,000

Not only in America, but in other civilized non-Catholic countries, is Romanism active and expansive, particularly so in the British Isles and the great overseas British Dominions—Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

The progress of mankind has no other bases — all thoughtful, honest men admit—than freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Of all three the Roman Catholic organization is, as is clearly shown in the following pages, the inveterate foe.

What popery calls for is not a free but a servile press. Witness the reigning ” Vicar of Christ,’ ‘ Pope Pius X, of whom The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, March 27, 1913, says:

POPE PIUS AND THE PRESS.

Why Catholic Papers are Necessary.

Speaking on the power of the Press recently to a French ecclesiastic, the pope remarked that

“Neither the clergy nor the laity make as great an effort as they ought in this matter. The old people say that it is a new work and souls were saved in the past without the aid of newspapers. Those admirers of the past do not bear in mind that the poison of an evil press was not so common then as in our days, and that, consequently, the antidote of our journals was not so necessary. Today there is question, not of the past, but of the present, and every day the people are deceived, poisoned, ruined, by evil publications.”

“Evil publications” include the Bible and all other works, periodicals, newspapers, etc., not enjoying the personal and official approval of pope or bishop!

The following pages further show Romanism to be the demoralizer of youth of both sexes, the wrecker of homes, the destroyer of pure womanhood— in a word, a gigantic system of intrigue and White Slavery, the most widespread, stupendous, and appalling mankind has ever known.

History—Ancient, Modern, and Contemporaneous— is Romanism’s Accuser; High Heaven her Judge ; Humanity shall be her Executioner.
Jeremiah J. Crowley.
Cincinnati, Ohio, August, 1913.

INTRODUCTORY.

Justice to myself and justice in manner more emphatic to American citizenship, always concerned when the rights, even of the humblest, are by any one menaced or assailed, justifies publication in full of the following correspondence. Not only Americans, but all citizens and subjects of free governments are concerned in the outrage upon me inflicted while in the exercise of individual rights and privileges everywhere recognized and protected.

I appeal, therefore, not only to Americans, but to free men everywhere, against wrong done me because of attitude taken, inspired by conscience, commanded by duty, against papal greed, intrigue, aggressiveness, despotism, and debauchery.

To the judgment of freemen, untrammeled by Romanistic superstition and repressiveness, confidently appealing, I submit this correspondence.
Jebemiah J. Cbowley.

Challenge to Rome

I retired voluntarily, gladly, from the priesthood of Rome, after a vain attempt, in combination with other priests, to secure a reform of Romanistic abuses from within (see “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation”). This failing, no other course was open but to quit the accursed System forever.

I will give Ten Thousand Dollars to any person who can prove that I was Excommunicated and that the Statements and Charges against priests, prelates, and popes, in my books, “THE POPE-CHIEF OF WHITE SLAVERS, HIGH PRIEST OF INTRIGUE;’ and “ROMANISM—A MENACE TO THE NATION,” are untrue; and, furthermore, I will agree to hand over the plates of these books and stop their publication forever.

Will Rome accept this Challenge?
If not, Why not?

JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY,
A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS,
AUTHOR, LECTURER, AND PUBLICIST.

The obstinate refusal of Rome, for several years, to accept my challenge, is proof, positive and irrefutable, that its cowardly, wine-soaked, Venus-worshipping, and grafting prelates, priests and editors have no other reply for adversary, but vituperation and assassination.

August 17, 1912.
Mr. E. R. Monfort, Postmaster,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
I respectfully request your immediate attention to the enclosed affidavit setting forth a statement of the insult which I received from Myron L. Hurney, a clerk in the mailing division, which instance occurred at window No. 9, August 15th, at 9.10 P. M., as set forth in this statement.

While I was asked to accept an apology for this atrocious conduct, and while I patiently waited to see if the apology would he really forthcoming, I had, however, decided that I could not consider accepting an apology under the circumstances, and thus condone the insult and become a party to this wanton assault upon the part of a public servant.

While there is no malice in the course which I am taking, at the same time this decision is unalterable. Should this man remain in the postal service, and should you see fit to ignore this letter, please remember that in so doing you are committing yourself to a policy that will protect postal employees in almost any insulting conduct which it may occur to them to inflict upon the public.

Thanking you for an early reply, and desiring action upon this matter at once, I am, Very sincerely yours,
Jeeemiah J. Crowley.

AFFIDAVIT.

Jeremiah J. Crowley, being first duly sworn, deposes and says that he is a resident and a citizen of the city of Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio, and that he is a patron of the Postoffice in Government Square in this city.

And further, that on the 15th day of August, 1912, at or near the hour of nine o’clock in the evening, he went to the said Postoffice for the purpose of stamping and sealing certain special letters, which he also there had weighed; that during this transaction, after purchasing the stamps, he went across the hall to window No. 9 ; that there, while sealing certain envelopes with mucilage there provided, a certain clerk, then unknown to the said Jeremiah J. Crowley, came to this window and said, “You ‘d better hurry up if you want to catch the Detroit mail.”

That then the said Jeremiah J. Crowley replied, ” Thank you, some of my mail is for the West.”

And further, that just at this time an unknown man stepped up to the window and asked this clerk when the next mail went to New York. The clerk replied, giving him the information, and that then the same man asked when this mail would reach New York, and also asked about the sailing dates of certain mail steamers for Great Britain.

And further, that this certain mail clerk answered the questions, and the man, after thanking him, went out, and that immediately this clerk began singing or humming these words : ” Great Britain and Ireland, Scotland and Wales—I’m an Irishman, my name is Hurney, and I ‘m from the parish of ______, County Galway, Ireland.”

And further, that just at this time, while receiving parcels of letters from the hands of the said Jeremiah J. Crowley, and placing them on the receiving desk behind the window, this clerk asked, “Are you an Irishman?” After a pause he repeated this question, thus: “Did you come from Ireland?”

And further, that this said deponent replied to this question, “Yes, I was born in that country.” And further, that this said mail clerk, with illy concealed anger, asked the question, “Are you a Catholic?” And further, that to this question the said deponent replied, “I am, in the broad and real sense of the word.”

That this said clerk further asked, “Do you go to church ?” to which the said Jeremiah J. Crowley said, “Which church?” And that to this question this certain mail clerk, whose name the deponent has since learned to be Myron L. Hurney, replied, “The Catholic Church.” And that to this the said deponent replied, “No, I do not.”

Said deponent further states that then the said Myron L. Hurney did viciously and angrily and insultingly say, “I do not give a ______about you, and I refuse to talk to you!”

That then and there the said Jeremiah J. Crowley in substance uttered this rebuke: “Young man, I did not ask you to talk to me. I came here to mail my letters, and while doing so you asked me questions. I answered you politely, and you have no right to use such language to me or any one else. You are a public servant and should discharge your duties without insulting any patrons of this Post office.”

And further, said deponent states that the said Myron L. Hurney repeated the above foul, filthy, obscene, and unmentionable word, adding to it others still more foul, when the said Jeremiah J. Crowley spoke of reporting this conduct to Mr. Monfort, the Postmaster, and that this said clerk, Myron L. Hurney, then said, “I don’t give a ______or a_______ for you or Monfort or anybody else who doesn’t go to the Catholic Church!”

And the deponent further states that it is his belief that this said wanton assault was made in order to provoke a personal attack from him.

And the deponent further states that he then turned away and left the said window and reported this matter in full to Mr. Raine, the Assistant Superintendent, who was then in charge of the postoffice building, in his private office.

And further, that the said Mr. Raine agreed with .the said Jeremiah J. Crowley that this assault was of so vile and filthy a nature that the Postoffice Department could not countenance such employee in the service.

And further, that the said Mr. Raine offered to bring the said Myron L. Hurney before this deponent and cause him to apologize for this language: that the said deponent did then and there patiently wait while Mr. Raine went ostensibly to bring the said Myron L. Hurney into his office for the purpose of apologizing, and that after waiting a sufficient time said deponent left the Postoffice without seeing either Mr. Raine or Myron L. Hurney again.

And now, finally, the said Jeremiah J. Crowley does here state and set forth the fact that the words which were used by this mail clerk, Hurney, and represented in the above by blanks, are so vile and unspeakably vulgar that he refrains from inserting them herein at this time, but that he is prepared to repeat the same upon oath at any time or place before any Notary Public or Judge of a Court of Record.

And further, that the said Jeremiah J. Crowley, as an American citizen and a patron of the Cincinnati Post office, does hereby demand the dismissal of the said Myron L. Hurney from the postal service of the United States, in the name of decency and for the protection of the public.

And further deponent sayeth not.

(Signed) Jeremiah J. Crowley.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 17th day of August, nineteen hundred and twelve, in witness whereof I append my seal and signature:

(Signed) Earle R. Passel,
Notary Public in and for
Hamilton County, Ohio.
[Seal.]

My commission expires 17th of March, 1913.

EXECUTIVE DIVISION
United States Post Office
CINCINNATI, OHIO

August 17, 1912.
Jeremiah J. Crowley, Esq.,
619 Johnston Building, City.
Dear Sir: Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of August 17, 1912, relative to conduct of one ” Myron L. Hurney,’ ‘a postoffice clerk, and the matter will receive my personal attention.

Very respectfully,
E. E. Monfort,
Postmaster.

United States Post Office
Cincinnati, Ohio
August 24, 1912.
Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sir: I enclose you herewith copy of the reply of Mr. Myron L. Hurney, for your information and for any further action you desire to take. Viery respectfully,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

Mr. Myron L. Hurney,
Stamper, Mailing Section, Postoffice, City.
Sir: Charges have been filed against you for improper and discourteous treatment and profanity in your intercourse with Jeremiah J. Crowley, who had business at window No. 9 of the Postoffice on the evening of August 15, 1912.

You are hereby directed to reply to these charges in writing within ten days from this date, a copy of such charges submitted herewith.

Respectfully,
(Signed) Elias R. Monfokt,
Postmaster.
Enclosures.
AED.—

Cincinnati, 0., Aug. 23, 1912.
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

Replying to charges filed against me by Jeremiah J. Crowley ; beg to state that they are absolutely and entirely false.

I was working at window No. 9, on the evening of the 15th insl, and was humming to myself; but not the rot which the man1 says he heard. That sounds to me like the ravings of an unsound mind.

This Mr. Crowley came to the window and, without a word from me other than to ask if he had any mail for Detroit—as it was then closing time for that mail—this Mr. Crowley said, “You seem to be very happy.” I answered, “I am always happy.” “How is that?” he asked. I answered, “They say an Irishman and a Negro are always happy.” “Then you are Irish,” he said. I answered, “My father was born in Ireland.” “What part?” he asked. I answered, “The County Gralway.” “That is where all the Catholics come from,” he said. I answered, “Yes, I am a Catholic.”

Then I noticed the name “Jeremiah J. Crowley” on the package he had mailed, and I said, “Crowley is an Irish Catholic name, isn’t it?” He then became angry and said, “I am here on business, and not to be questioned by such as you.” I then said, “I have answered your personal questions without—” he did not give me a chance to finish the sentence. He said, “You are a public servant and are here to answer questions.” “Not such questions as you asked,” I answered. He then said, “I shall report you to Postmaster Monfort.” I said, “You can do as you like.”

That is all the conversation I had with Jeremiah J. Crowley.

He afterwards called on Mr. Raine. I do not know what was said ; but Mr. Raine came over to me—I was then canceling mail at the “Cummins Pick-up Table.’ Mr. Raine said, “This man said you insulted him, and demands an apology.” I told Mr. Raine that I had not insulted this man, but that if he thought an apology was necessary, I would offer one.

I then went into the office with Mr. Raine, but Mr. Crowley had left. Barely two minutes had elapsed during the time Mr. Raine spoke to me and the time I went into his office.

I wish to state that never in my life have I used foul or vulgar language; I have had very strict home training in that respect, not only from my parents, but also from my older brothers and sisters.

I have been in the service three years: two years and one month as a substitute, and about eleven months as a regular, and there is not a man in this office who can truthfully say he ever heard me use such language as this Jeremiah J. Crowley says I used. There is not a man in this office who can say I have ever had an argument with him about religion or any other subject.

Then, does it seem possible that I would risk my position, especially after subbing so long, by arguing with a total stranger, whose position or influence I knew nothing about?

I can not afford to take such a chance, not only because I respect the position I hold, but also because I have a family to support and am also paying on my own home.

I have always tried to do the best I know how in my work while in the service, which I believe all my superiors and brother clerks will corroborate.

I am willing and ready to swear that what I have written is the absolute truth.

Respectfully,
(Signed) Mykon L. Hubney,
Cleric, Mailing Division,

United States Post Office
CINCINNATI, OHIO
September 18, 1912.
Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dear Sir:

On August 24th I mailed you copy of the reply of clerk M. L. Hurney to the charges you made against him, for your information and for any further statement you desired to make. The matter is not yet closed, and I would be glad to hear from you on the subject before making a report in the matter.

Very respectfully,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

D.—
EXECUTIVE DIVISION
United States Post Office
CINCINNATI. OHIO
October 24, 1912. ,
Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sir: Again referring to the charges against clerk Myron L. Hurney, I must dispose of this case. I would be glad to have you come to my office at 3 o’clock to-morrow to meet the postoffice inspector and Clerk Hurney for an examination of the questions at issue between you and Clerk Hurney.

Kindly advise me by telephone whether you can come at that time, or, if not, what time would suit you, and I will arrange to have all the parties together. This case must be disposed of. Very respectfully,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

October 24, 1912.
Mr. Elias R. Monfort, Postmaster
Cincinnati, 0.
Dear Sir:
I have received your various reminders regarding the Hurney case.

Mr. Hurney ‘s letter, which you forwarded to me through the United States mails, added to his previous profanity and vulgarity the further insulting statement that my specific charges against him were not only absolutely and entirely false, but likened them to “the ravings of an unsound mind.”

Compare this denial with his offer to apologize! In the absence of any apology from him, and with further insults added to the original, as above quoted, the matter is in your hands. When you are through with the case you can advise me of the results if you choose.

I do not feel that at present I have anything further to do with the case. Any further action on my part must depend on your own attitude. I am, Very sincerely yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

EXECUTIVE DIVISION
United States Post Office
CINCINNATI, OHIO
October 25, 1912.
Jekemiah J. Crowley, Esq.,
619 Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sir:
Qn August 17th you filed a sworn statement of charges against clerk Myron L. Hurney, an employee of the postoffice. This statement was referred to the clerk for a reply. He replied, and a copy of his reply was, on August 24th, mailed to you for your information and any further action you desired to take. No reply was received. On September 18th I again wrote you and said that I would be glad to hear from you before making a report.

On October 24th I wrote you, fixing the time at my office for the examination at 3 P. M., October 25th. You, on October 24th, acknowledged receipt of this letter, and said you had received various reminders of the Hurney case and stated as follows:

Mr. Hurney’s letter, which you forwarded to me through the United States mails, added to his previous profanity and vulgarity the further insulting statement that my specific charges against him were not only absolutely and entirely false, but likened them to “the ravings of an unsound mind.” Compare this denial with his offer to apologize. In the absence of any apology from him, and with further insults added to the original as above quoted, the matter is in your hands. When you are through with the case you can advise me with the results if you choose. I do not feel that at present I have anything further to do with the case. Any further action on my part must depend on your attitude.

The rules of the Department require a careful and impartial examination of such cases before any condemnation or penalties shall be fixed. In this case the complaint and the reply are in direct conflict. To make an impartial ruling, further evidence is necessary at least to settle the question of the credibility of the witnesses. A man charged with so serious an offense has the right to face his accusers in the presence of the officers who are to pass judgment upon the case, and such officers after examining the parties in most cases are able to settle the question of the credibility of the testimony. Where there is no such opportunity, a determination of the facts can not be safely made without the danger of doing injustice either to the complainant or the person charged with the offense.

I hope you will see the equity of this statement and be willing to come and submit to an examination, as Mr. Hurney will be required to do. He has been ordered to appear at 3 o’clock. I hope you will reconsider your refusal to take any further action, and deal justly with this office in enabling the officers to make a proper statement of the case to the Department.

Hoping to see you at the office at 3 o’clock, I am, Very respectfully,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

October 25, 1912.
Mr. Elias R. Monfort, Postmaster,
Cincinnati, 0.
Dear Sir:
You have my sworn statement, dated August 17, 1912, of the occurrence in the Postoffice. I have nothing to add to, or take from this statement. With such a statement made under oath, Mr. Hurney should have been forthwith suspended, pending an investigation. As you have done nothing of the kind, your invitation to come to your office at 3 o’clock evidently means a wrangle with a man beneath my notice. I am,
Very sincerely yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

Three months after the foregoing letter, dated October 25, 1912, The Menace published January 25, 1913, the following article:

CROWLEY AND THE POSTOFFICE!

Author of “Romanism, a Menace to the Nation/’ is Grossly Insulted by Postoffice Employee at Cincinnati—His Action Evidently Upheld by the Postmaster.

Jeremiah J. Crowley, for Twenty Years a Roman Catholic Priest, Allowed No Redress for Unspeakable Abuse by Myron L. Hurney, an Employee of the Cincinnati Postoffice, by Postmaster E. R. Monfort, Who Poses as a Protestant.

By H. George Buss, Staff Correspondent.

When confronted with the damning proofs of their intrigues and unspeakable depravity, Romish priests find refuge in the “howly” mother Church’s “conspiracy of silence,” but renegade Protestants and non-Romanists who are sufficiently Rome-soared when confronted with an official duty that might incur the anger of the dupes, resort to a conspiracy of concealment! No more efficient or cowardly conspiracy is possible to Rome’s nominal Protestant allies than that of concealment and clever evasion. As a striking example of this latter traitorous policy, The Menace calls the attention of every free-born American to the following startling proof of Catholicism’s stupendous power as evidenced by the following authentic proofs, which are copied from the original documents in a very recent case, showing the defiant and triumphant prostitution of the freedom of American public institutions in thie interests of Rome’s implacable spirit of vengefulness toward one who for twenty years was gathering from the very inside the material for the most terrible arraignment of the Romish political hierarchy that has appeared in the twentieth centnry!

Briefly told, the story is this: On the 15th day of August, 1912, at about nine o’clock in the evening, Mr. Crowley, well known to our readers as the author of “Romanism, a Menace to the Nation,” was insulted by an employee of the Cincinnati postoffice, by name Myron L. Hurney, at window No. 9, while preparing a number of letters for mailing in the postoffice building in Cincinnati.

So vile, so unspeakably vulgar and obscene was the language in which these insults were couched by this particular Catholic dupe, that Mr. Crowley for decency’s sake refrains from quoting it in his complaint, and The Menace can not reproduce it in print.

The letter is omitted. The following, however, is a verbatim copy of the sworn affidavit of Mr. Crowley, which accompanied his letter of complaint to Mr. E. R. Monfort, Cincinnati’s postmaster. We would especially call every Menace reader’s attention to this sworn affidavit, remembering that if there is a single false statement in it, Mr. Crowley is subject to prosecution.

After you have read carefully this simple statement of the treatment accorded an American citizen at the hands of an employee of the Governmental service, in pursuance of a deeplaid plot to inveigle Mr. Crowley into a personal brawl wherein, if goaded to the pitch of resentment the Romish masters calculated, he might strike this cowardly tool and thus give him apparent opportunity to safely assassinate this uns daunted foe of Romanism, we would particularly invite your closest scrutiny to the dilatory and protective tactics which Mr. Monfort, the recreant Cincinnati postmaster, saw fit to resort to in the unblushing protection which he has accorded to this Catholic cur!

[Here follows my affidavit. See pp. 18-22.]

Postmaster Monfort acknowledged the receipt of Mr. Crowley’s affidavit and charges, and promised that the matter would receive his “personal attention.’ ‘ Seven days later Mr. Crowley received a letter from the postmaster, together with a letter from Clerk Hurney denying the charges, but making admissions which showed that he was evading the truth, and that Crowley’s charges were true and correct. He even states that he had previously agreed to apologize to Mr. Crowley, notwithstanding the fact that he protested his innocence.

In his own statement (which bears evident earmarks of dictation from either a priest or a Jesuit) this Catholic Hurney makes a fatal blunder when he says,

“I told Mr. Raine that I had not insulted this man, BUT THAT IF HE THOUGHT AN APOLOGY WAS NECESSARY I WOULD OFFER ONE!”

Why be so ready and willing to volunteer an apology, if you had not insulted Mr. Crowley?

And what valid reason does this Catholic Hurney produce to avoid the dismissal from the postal service that his guilty conscience^ tells him is so richly merited? Does he prove innocence of the charge? Far from it—his denial is not even in the form of an affidavit, but he whines in closing,

“I am willing to swear that what I have written is the absolute truth!”

But at the same time he was extremely and curiously careful not to do so! No, his real plea is confined to the fact that he “can not afford” to be dismissed, because, forsooth, he has a “family to support’ ‘ and is also paying on his own home!

Why not have taken time by the forelock and have thought twice about these things before you followed your master’s voice in inflicting this wanton assault upon Mr. Crowley to afford you an opportunity for a murderous assault wherein you might claim Government protection?

Postmaster Monfort managed to keep the case alive to near the first of November last by correspondence with Mr. Crowley, even writing him seeking to make appointments for meetings in the postoffice when himself, Crowley, Hurney, and a postoffice inspector might all be present. Mr. Crowley refused to be trapped by what he considered a scheme to bring himself and this Romish tool of the postoffice into personal encounter, and on October 25th, last, wrote the postmaster the following letter:

[For my letter of October 25, 1912, see p. 31.]

The next move made by Postmaster Monfort was to send P. 0. Inspector Fletcher to visit Mr. Crowley personally, which he did within a few days after this last letter was mailed. After some little conversation, Mr. Crowley astounded the inspector on the point of his “credibility’ by furnishing him a copy of a fervent and glowing recommendation of the book, “Romanism, a Menace to the Nation,” and of its author (Mr. Crowley), written by Postmaster Monfort ‘s own brother and published in his paper, The Herald and Presbytery of Cincinnati, O., of which the following are the closing words:

“This book is in the interest of civil and religious liberty, of sound doctrine and purity of life, all of which are too often sadly lacking in the personal leaders of the organization against which the flaming indictment and warning is issued BY ONE OF THE CLEANEST, MOST CHRISTIAN-HEARTED, MOST NOBLE- SPIRITED, AND MOST COURAGEOUS OF MEN.”

The inspector vanished, carrying to Postmaster Monfort his own brother’s estimate of Mr. Crowley’s ” credibility.” And Postmaster Monfort is a nominal member of the Presbyterian Church—and Mr. Crowley is a member of the Presbyterian Church!

Since this visit by Inspector Fletcher, Postmaster Monfort has become absolutely mum — “mum’s the word”—and any real redress or further investigation of this unspeakably cowardly insulting of a peaceable American citizen by a Government employee in a Federal building seems very remote, indeed, if not impossible.

If this wanton and despicable assault is to go unpunished, if Government employees are to vent their venomed Romish ire in unprintable verbal filth and find protection behind the soiled skirts of Catholic-scared, un-American public service officials, then where is the vaunted liberty of this greatest democracy of the world’s history? And what shall the end be?

DID MONFORT, CINCINNATI’S POSTMASTER, HEAR “HIS MASTER’S VOICE?”

United States Post Office
EXECUTIVE DIVISION
CINCINNATI. OHIO
January 24, 1913.
Me. Jekemiah J. Crowley,
Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dear Sir:
I have just read the bitter and unjust attack made upon me from your pen in The Menace of January 25, 1913, and I assume that when you learn that your article was written under a wrong misunderstanding of the facts, you will be glad to correct the error. You filed in this office with the postmaster, charges against Myron L. Hurney, clerk in the mailing section of the postoffice, for misconduct at window No. 9. Under the rules of the Department, I sent a copy of your charges to the clerk with a request for a written reply. Mr. Hurney made his reply, and a copy of it was sent to you for any further action you desired to take. It was in direct conflict with your statement. No reply was received from you. On September 18th, I wrote you again calling attention to former letter, and no reply was received. On October 24th I wrote you, fixing the time for a hearing at my office October 25th, at 3 P. M. You replied the same day, saying that the answer of Clerk Hurney was a new insult, and refused to take any further action, and added, “Any further action on my part would depend upon your attitude.’ ‘ On October 25th I wrote you at some length, giving reasons for an examination and emphasizing the importance of determining the credibility of the evidence in so far as it was in conflict and saying to you “That the rules of the Department require a careful and impartial examination of such cases before any condemnation or penalty shall be fixed. In this case the complaint and the reply were in direct conflict. To make an impartial ruling, further evidence is necessary at least to settle the question of the credibility of the witnesses. A man charged with so serious an offense has a right to face his accusers in the presence of the officers who are passing judgment upon the case, and such officers, after examining the parties, in most cases, are able to settle the question of the credibility of the testimony. Where there is no such opportunity, ‘a determination of the facts can not be safely made without danger of doing injustice either to the complainant or to the person charged with the offense. I hope you will see the equity of this statement and be willing to come and submit to an examination, as Mr. Hurney will be required to do. He has been ordered to appear at 3 o’clock. I hope you will reconsider your refusal to take any further action, and deal justly with this office in order to enable the officers to make a proper statement of the case to the Department.”

You replied on October 25th, asserting that I ought to have suspended Clerk Hurney and saying, “As you have done nothing of the kind, your invitation to come to your office at 3 o’clock evidently means a wrangle with a man beneath my notice.”

The rules of the Civil Service are very rigid as to the manner of examining a charge against a delinquent, and this office has no power to suspend an employee without the approval of the Department, which is not granted in cases of this character. I requested the Chief of the Postoffice Inspection Department to permit an inspector to be present during this examination for the purpose of preventing any unnecessary wrangle and also to reach the correct conclusion as to the merits of the case. I never express an opinion until after this is done, no matter whether I have formed an opinion or not. You made the charges and failed to prosecute. I, therefore, on October 29th, sent the case with all the papers on both sides and an abstract to the Department at Washington, and from that time it has been entirely out of my hands, and the Department ordered the postoffice inspectors, over whom I have no control, and who are a distinct departmental branch of the service, to take up and determine this case. They have had it in their hands since that time, and so there is no ground for the charge that I was dilatory. I understand an inspector did call upon you, and also examine Mr. Hurney, but as to the course of action or what was done I have no knowledge, so that your statement that the Cincinnati postmaster heard his master’s voice is groundless. I have no master except my Chief in Washington, and in all cases involving religion and politics I have strictly and impartially followed the rules of the Department, and did not treat this case as a religious case, but as a case in which a patron of the office complained of improper treatment by an employee of this office, and if you had appeared at the examination in October the matter would have been settled and the controversy ended. Your statement that Inspector Fletcher reported to me an estimate of my brother as to your credibility is without foundation as the inspector does not report to me, but reports through the Inspection Department at Washington, and I have not seen his report or anything connected with it. If you have any doubt about any of these statements, I will be glad to have you call at my office and I will show you the evidence, as I have carbon copies of the entire transaction. I have a right to presume that, when acquainted with the facts, as an honorable man you will make restitution.
Respectfully,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

Making no reply to Postmaster Monfort’s letter of January 24, 1913, inspired evidently by fear of The Menace’s criticism, I was, on January 29, 1913, made recipient of the following:

United States Post Office
EXECUTIVE DIVISION
CINCINNATI, OHIO
January 29, 1913.
Mk. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Johnston Building, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dear Sir:

I have not received reply to my letter of January 24th, nor have you called at my office for an interview. Unless I hear favorably from you, I shall write to The Menace and demand that my letter to you should be published as my defense, as I can not reach a half-million people in any other way. If they refuse, then you are forcing me to publish a pamphlet containing the correspondence and send it to 20,000 Protestant preachers and societies in order to set myself right before the public. This is the first time in forty years of public life that I have been publicly charged with unfair treatment of any one. You can set the matter right, and as a fair-minded man you can correct the mistake that you have made. Sincerely,
Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster.

EXECUTIVE DIVISION
United States Post Office
CINCINNATI. OHIO
January 24, 1913.
PUBLISHERS,
The Menace, Aurora, Mo,
Gentlemen :
In your paper of January 25th you have an article in which you hold me up to contempt and which is in itself libelous, and I believe when your ‘attention is called to it, you will make such corrections as will set the matter right. I have written to Mr. Crowley, and enclose ai copy of the letter sent to him. By this letter you will see that this office made a very strong effort to have Mr. Crowley appear at the examination of Mr. Hurney and which he refused to do, which of course delayed the case. After he had refused, the matter was reported to the Department at Washington and put into the hands of the postoffice inspectors for examination, which took the matter entirely out of my hands on October 29th, since which time I have had nothing whatever to do with the case, nor have I heard from the Department what had been done. Trusting that you will siee that, by want of information, I have been placed in a false position, and that you will correct the same, I am,
Sincerely,
(Signed) Elias E. Monfort,
Inclosure.
Postmaster.

January 29, 1912.
Mr. Elias R. Monfort,
Postmaster, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
Your letter of the 24th instant, with enclosures, was received in due course and the same have been forwarded to our Washington, D. C, office, in charge of Mr. H. George Buss, who handles all staff matters east of the Mississippi River. We are sure that he will give it the attention it deserves.
Yours very truly,
The Menace Pub. Co., (Inc.)
Aurora, Mo., U. S. A.

EXECUTIVE DIVISION
United States Post Office
CINCINNATI. OHIO
January 31, 1913.
Mr. H. George Buss,
Staff Correspondent, The Menace,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
I received this morning a letter from The Menace, Aurora, Mo., saying that the matter of the unjust and injurious attack upon me in The Menace of January 25th had been sent to you as the one who handles all staff matter east of the Mississippi River and saying, “We are sure that he will give it the attention it deserves.’

I want this matter corrected in The Menace as fully as the attack was made, and I will be satisfied if you will print my letter to Mr. Crowley exactly as it is written. You will understand that my reputation is wider than this city. If it had been local, I would have given the matter no attention, as I am known here. I have been a Ruling Elder of the Presbyterian Church for thirty years. I have been a Trustee of Lane Theological Seminary for twenty-five years. I have been a Trustee of a Protestant College for thirty years. I was appointed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church as a Member of the Committee on Christian Unity, and said Committee had a representative from all Protestant Churches, among them Bishop Cox, of New York. I was also appointed by the General Assembly a Member of the Committee on Union with the Southern Presbyterian Church. I have had many other appointments of this kind, unsought by me. I was a Delegate to the Evangelical Alliance that met in London ten years ago. I have recently received an appointment by the Presbyterian General Assembly as a Delegate to the Evangelical Alliance of all Churches in the World holding the Reform Faith, to meet in Aberdeen, Scotland, June, 1913.

The Menace has a half-million subscribers among Protestants, so that such a charge is very serious. While your name appears as writer of the article, I have written to Mr. Crowley as the author because the scientific tests of authorship as applied to the article give at least evidence that he wrote all or the most of it. I have no documents of the same kind from your pen to make such tests, but I have from him on the same subject. You will understand that these tests involve rhetoric style, the applications of the rules of logic, and the counting of five hundred or more words or letters and space, etc., etc. I have never found two men with the same literary style, closely inspected, where the tests would show close similarity in authorship, so that these tests are prima facia proof of authorship. As your name appears as the author, you are, of course, responsible, but I assume that your sense of fairness, when you understand the situation, will lead you to make such correction as will set me right before the world.
Very respectfully,
(Signed) Elias R. Monfort.

Cincinnati, Ohio, February 13, 1913.
Mr. Elias R. Monfort,
U.S. Postoffice, Cincinnati, 0.
Dear Sir:
I am very sorry that I have been too busy to acknowledge before this the receipt of your letter and enclosure of January 31st.

I desire to say that you are mistaken as to Mr. Crowley’s having been the author of the article in question, as I wrote every word of it myself. With all due respect to you, I do not believe there is anything that I care to add to that article at this time.
Very respectfully,
(Signed) H. George Buss.

CABLE ADDRESS

CROWLEY.CINCINNATI, JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY
Author, Lecturer, and Publicist
619 JOHNSTON BUILDING
CINCINNATI, OHIO, U. S. A.

February 22, 1913.
The Honorable William H. Taft,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.

Your Excellency:

I have the honor to call attention to two letters, under dates January 24th and January 29th respectively, of this current year, addressed to me by Postmaster Monfort, of Cincinnati.

These letters, copies of which I enclose, have reference to my complaint against one Myron L. Hurney, a clerk, till recently, in the mailing section of the Cincinnati Postoffice, whom I charge, under oath, with gross and scandalous misconduct towards me, on August 15, 1912; conduct which, if unwhipt of justice, were an intolerable menace and a most flagrant outrage upon the American public, especially American women and children, obliged to receive at the hands of such a foul-mouthed postoffice official the attention called for by the Constitution and Laws of the United States.

Mr. Monfort informs me, in his letter of January 24, 1913, that the matter of my complaint against Hurney had passed entirely out of his hands and was now under charge exclusively of the Postoffice Department at Washington.

Here, sir, are Postmaster Monfort’s own words from his letter aforesaid of January 24, 1913:

I, therefore, on October 29th sent the case with all the papers on both sides and an abstract to the Department at Washington, and from that time it has been entirely out of my hands.

Yet, Mr. Postmaster Monfort, in his letter of January 24, 1913—this case being then, for nearly three months, “entirely out of my [Monfort’s] hands’ ‘—adds: “I will be glad to have you call at my office and I will show you the evidence.” Why, sir, should I call at the local postoffice to look over evidence in a case now “entirely” out of Postmaster Monfort’s jurisdiction?

Let me state, right here, that I rejoice that this matter has been transferred for final determination to Washington. There is involved in it a National issue of greatest concern to all our people and to their most cherished rights.

In Chapter VIII of my work, “Romanism — A Menace to the Nation,” I say, under the heading “Papal Despotism:”

Nothing more startling has ever been put before the public than Rome’s recent resolutions of boycott of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Watson’s Magazine, The Protestant Magazine, The Menace, etc., and her attitude as Censor of the United States Mails. At the annual convention of the American Federation of Catholic Societies, held at New Orleans, November 13-16, 1910, resolutions were passed calling for the passage of Federal laws to prevent the transmission, by the United States mails, of matter offensive to the Roman Catholic Church. In these resolutions postoffice employees were boldly called upon to destroy, without any warrant of law, any such mail in transit. The leading ecclesiastic at this convention was Archbishop Falconio, Papal Delegate to the Roman Catholic Church in America.

Is the Roman Church mistress of the Postoffice Department of the United States? If so, under what article of the original, or of the amended, Constitution of the United States is control of the Postoffice Department of this free Republic vested in the Pope and his agents? How anxious Rome is to have Protestant Federal officials ready and desirous to promote her interests, an extract from The Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, February 6, 1913, will explain:

MONFORT EXPLAINS POSTAL SAVINGS.

St. Xavier’s Students Listen to Exposition of Uncle Sam’s Bank.

Postmaster E. R. Monfort delivered an interesting^ address on “The Postal Savings Bank” last night, before the department of commerce, accounts, and finance of St. Xavier’s College.

“The postal savings bank” [he said] “is a new department of the greatest business on earth—the banking business. Few people realize the magnitude of the Postal Department. In Cincinnati alone last year over $17,000,000 changed hands in handling the mails. There are 2,650 mailcarriers in the city, and the salaries of the deliverers and the railway mail clerks with headquarters in Cincinnati amounted to over $1,000,000.

“The postal savings bank’, although a new department of the Mail Service, has grown so rapidly that it is at present one of the largest. The people put more trust in the postal bank than they do in the ordinary banks. It is designed merely to protect and take care of the earnings of the working class. Under this system the money that is placed in the care of the Government can be withdrawn at any time. At times, it is said, more than half the money of the world is out of circulation and in the pockets of the people. At such time the circulating money is not sufficient to carry on the business of the world, and a panic follows. The great financiers of the world have been unable to account for these conditions, but many think that this system, by placing cash at the disposal of the poorer people, will greatly lessen the hardships of such panics.”

In speaking of the rapid growth of the postal savings bank and its favor with the people, he let the figures speak for themselves. On January 1, 1912, there was in the bank $11,000,000; now there is $30,000,000. On this money the depositors receive 2 per cent interest. The Government, however, invests this money so that the department is self-supporting and so far has paid all its own expenses.

Not only in the domain of the United States Postoffice are papal agents busy, but also in other departments of Governmental control. Statements of sinister import come, for example, from Oklahoma of the activities of that adroit representative of the Papacy, Father Ketcham, in securing the selection of a Federal building site in Oklahoma City on land adjoining, or in close proximity to, the Roman Catholic cathedral, nunnery, etc., etc. Father Ketcham is Rome’s trusted agent in the manipulation of Indian affairs at Washington. Residing at the National Capital, he (Ketcham) is in such close contact with the Papal Delegation there, and with Cardinal Gibbons— the very crafty, though unlearned prelate of Baltimore—that he may be relied on to discharge the duties of the high functions you, sir, have seen fit to honor him with ; first, to the full satisfaction and benefit of the Vatican ; secondly, to the profit of papal priests, monks, and nuns operating among whites and Indians in Oklahoma, as well as elsewhere ; thirdly, with no consideration whatever for the real permanent moral upliftment of the Indian. In promoting Ketcham to a position of (administrative importance in the management of Indian affairs, had you, sir, in view the value of cunning, unscrupulous devotedness to a foreign priest and pontiff, rather than earnest patriotic purpose to do duty to the humanity of this great Nation by the upliftment, on Christian bases, of a fallen and vanishing race?

You can not, sir, be ignorant of the teaching of American History as to Roman Catholicism’s degrading and decimating influences on the Red Man everywhere, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Yet you give Roman Catholicism a voice of control in the person of Rev. Ketcham, trusted ally of Papal Delegate Bonzano and Cardinal Gibbons, over all Governmental dealings with the surviving Indian races under the jurisdiction of the American Flag. Nay more, Ketcham has potent say and sway in matters pertaining to the Postoffice Department. The great Congregational Church of ‘the United States had in Oklahoma City a site for the Federal Building, much better adapted to public needs than the Ketcham-papal site selected finally by the Department. The Congregational Church in Oklahoma City had, at the time the Ketcham Vaticanistic land deal was put through, a distinguished representative in the Rev. Thomas H. Harper, pastor of Pilgrim Church, a Republican of worth and a citizen of eminence, as well as a clergyman of unassailable purity of life. No man in all Oklahoma had, for clean government and for the Republican cause, which he considers inseparable, made more sacrifices than the Rev. “Tom” Harper. But Harper stood away from and far above any alliance or collusion with the infamous liquor ring of Oklahoma City, which is one of Rome’s most powerful instrumentalities in that prohibition State. Neither Rome nor Rum would have Harper for mayor of Oklahoma City. The people voted him in—the Roman bosses counted him out. The Government at Washington, coinciding with Rome and Rum’s estimate of this worthy man, has denied him and the masses of the clean-living people of Oklahoma’s principal city all say or suggestion in the selection of a Postoffice site for a city where Protestants may do the voting, while Romanists do the counting.

To return to my chapter on “Papal Despotism:”

Archbishop Falconio had good reasons [so the work on “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation” continues] for tendering his sincerest congratulations to the American Federation of Catholic Societies at its convention held at Columbus, Ohio, August 20-24, 1911, for its ” rapid progress” and “the effective good work accomplished’ ‘ by it. He was fully aware, I presume, of the destruction of much printed “matter offensive to the Church” in the postoffices of the United States of America since their last reunion at New Orleans.

With good reason there immediately follows in my book:

I know that several large parcels of printed matter mailed at the General Postoffice in Chicago during the months of December, 1910, and January and February, 1911, never reached their destination. This destruction commenced immediately after their New Orleans convention. On receipt of numerous complaints from subscribers the sender called on the Postoffice authorities for an explanation, but received no satisfaction whatever. This party’s mail continued to be held up, and, surmising the cause, the sender threatened public exposure of such unlawful action on the part of the Postoffice Department.

Are you, Mr. President, aware of the fact that Catholic employees in Post Offices are taught by their “father confessors’ ‘ that they are bound in duty to “Holy Mother Church” to prevent, by all available means, the circulation of any mail matter, be it letter, book, or paper of any kind, exposing the operations of the crafty, covetous, and lecherous priesthood and Hierarchy of Rome? So teaches “Father” Gury, the wellknown Jesuit theologian, whose “Moral (?) Theology” is the text-book of so many Roman Catholic training schools for priests.

I defy production of any Roman Catholic “theologian” who takes a stand on this point contrary to that assumed by Gury. The first duty of a devout Romanist is, according to all Jesuitical authority, (all modern Roman Catholic “moral” theological teaching is Jesuitical), to an infallible pope. A Catholic is a Romanist first, an American, an Englishman, or a German, a long way after. This is the doctrine taught at the Roman Catholic University at Washington, and at the Georgetown Jesuitical College, both at your very door; and by every Catholic educational institution in America and the world over.

The pope being, according to Jesuit theology, “king of all earthly kings,” “ruler of all earthly rulers,’ ‘ having power from on high to invalidate and suppress all legislation framed by Congress, Parliament, or any other law-making instrumentality on earth, is the sovereign to whom devoted confession-going Romanists owe first allegiance. Him, first, must they serve, even to the extent of violating oaths of office, injuring neighbor and fellow-citizen, betraying the country affording them life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

You have, sir, made appointments to several offices at the instance of and in accordance with the desire and request of Romanist bishop and priest. The professing Catholic so appointed must, to retain the good-will of the influences back of his appointment, be loyal to pope and papal requirements, regardless of all other interests involved in his discharge of official duty. To destroy, for instance, mail matter, by him, as a loyal Romanist, considered inimical to papal machine interests, is one of the essential obligations of the Romanist postmaster or Romanist post office employee.

The Romanist priesthood very often prefers for postmasterships—to say nothing, for the moment, of other offices—a professing, nay even ” pious’ ‘ Protestant, ready to prove his liberality in things denominational, by giving, when appointed, more attention to local “holy fathers’ ‘ than a Catholic postmaster might care to exhibit. The assistants of this weak-kneed, time-serving American official are certain to be either devout Romanists, or complacent non-Romanists, as ready as their chief to carry out the behests of the Vatican.

Vaticanism has, in America, its professing Protestant representatives. They are conspicuous in prayer-meeting, in Sunday school, and in pulpit. They sometimes reach leadership at synods, conventions, and even in ministerial associations.

The amazing power attained by Romanism in this Republic is, safe to say, due as much to socalled Protestant agencies as to direct Roman Catholic effort. The Protestant United States Senator, relying for re-election, on the support of a John Ireland of St. Paul, a Glennon of St. Louis, a Quigley of Chicago, a Blenck of New Orleans, a Moeller of Cincinnati, or any other papal archbishop or bishop, is more condescending to Romanist importunity for pelf and patronage than any professing Romanist could afford to be.

The professing Protestant Congressman, mindful of the big vote that “Father Tom” or “Father Mike” or some other priestly boss in his district, is believed to have under control; mindful of the close alliance in so many citieis between the priesthood on the one side and the saloon and the red light districts on the other, will recommend for appointment or reappointment no man distasteful to priestly demands and exigencies.

No New York man need be told of the alliance between Tammany Hall and the priesthood. Talk of the fat Church establishment of Protestant England! It yields positis ponendis, small revenue to Anglican bishop or priest compared with the vast annual flood of tainted gold turned into papal coffers of New York, through the activities and organized endeavors of Tammany Hall. No marvel why the pope looks away in disgust from the European countries, which place so many needed restraints on priestly greed and monkish rapacity! No marvel why his crafty eye lights up with cheer and hope as he gazes fondly on American Tammany Halls pouring into priestly, monkish, and nunnery treasure box volume after volume of glittering currency!

Every American city under Romanist control, and many are such cities, from Atlantic to Pacific, from Mexican Gulf to Superior’s shores, has its Tammany machine in some form. The boss may bear one name in New York, another in Louisville, another in Chicago, another in Cincinnati; his name may be anything that befits a Knight of Columbus, or a lay agent of Jesuitism. “Whatever his name, he sees to it, first of all, that tithe and toll are paid to pope, prelate, and priest from every wage of sin, death, and deviltry in his bailiwick.

Romanism, tried for centuries in France, Italy, and Portugal, as well as other Catholic lands of Europe, and everywhere found wanting, is fastening itself on the American Republic, on Great Britain, and on the British possessions of this and other continents.

Cast eye for a moment on French Catholic Quebec, a Province of the Canadian Dominion. The Vatican, having yoked that vast and rich domain to its chariot wheel, is now directing the overflow of Quebec’s ever-expanding population to the New England States. A French Canadian Catholic is already Governor of Rhode Island. French Canadian Catholic mayors are found in ever-growing numbers in the cities of New England. French Canadian churches, of cathedral size, proportion, and adornment, dot the towns of that one-time stronghold of Puritanism from Memphremagog to Narragansett pier.

Not a word disrespectful toward the French Canadian people, in so many regards admirable, do I speak when I refer with regret to their traditional subserviency to Rome. The French Canadian is himself welcome to the United States. Let him bring his beautiful language, let him bring his racial gallantry, let him bring his numerous progeny; but he must not, with American approval, be made the agent for the erection on this soil, sacred to liberty, of a Vaticanized Quebec, with its dearth of efficient public schools; rich in monkish minsters and in nunnery halls, but poor in agricultural school, in free library, in elementary education, and even in independent press.

There is, sir, at Ottawa a Papal Delegate, with powers similar to those of Delegate Bonzano at Washington. The delegate at Ottawa is striving to Quebecize, that is Vaticanize and enslave the great chain of provinces, extending from the St. Lawrence’s mouth to Vancouver Island. The Papal Delegate at Washington is preparing, through archbishop, bishop, priest, and nuns, the American States for an ultimate alliance with the Quebecized or Vaticanized Canadian Provinces, and for one grand Papal Dominion or Satrapy, extending from Florida to the sources of the Yukon.

Cable after cable tells of the pope’s blessing America. Every toll of American or Canadian gold laid at his feet—many and frequent are such tolls—calls for such blessings.

Rejoiced, especially, is “Holy Father” in the Vatican, when subservient Protestant allies of his American representatives make telling display of ” liberality” to the Papal System, As well for child to be playful with wolf, or maiden trustful of tiger as for free American to confide in papal rapacity.

The pope was for three centuries supreme in the Philippine Islands. You, sir, know the result— a beautiful archipelago and a region incomparably favored by nature, cursed till the other day by monkish superstition, priestly depravity, and hierarchical greed. With iEneas of old, the Filipino might, before the American occupation of his country, exclaim, “Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?”

Vaticanism has now put on American gloves and assumed American voice to levy toll off the Philippines, but while the hand of greed may be that of Jacob, the voice of the despoiler and ravisher is, assuredly, that of Esau! Clerical immorality is in the Philippines so deeply and so firmly rooted that the infusion or intrusion of American priests there, several of these as immoral as Spanish priest or native cleric in the archipelago, at the time of the American conquest, could not improve conditions.

Testifying to the Philippine Commission, of which you, sir, were leading member, Senor Don Felipe Calderon, a native of the Islands, educated by the Jesuits at Manila, declared October 17, 1900:

With respect to their [the Friars’] morality in general, it was such a common thing to see children of Friars that no one ever paid any attention to it or thought of it, and so depraved had the people become in this regard that the women who were the mistresses of the friars really felt great pride in it and had no compunction in speaking of it. So general had this thing become that it may be said that even now the rule is for a friar to have a mistress and children, and he who has not is the rare exception, and if it is desired that I give names, I could cite right now one hundred children of friars.

Asked if these children of friars were in Manila or the provinces, Senor Calderon added: In Manila and in the provinces. Everywhere. Many of my sweethearts have been daughters of friars.

Asked, again, if the friars who have had these children were still living in the Islands, Senor Calderon declared:

Yes ; and I can give their names if necessary, and I can give the names of the children, too. Beginning with myself, my mother is the daughter of a Franciscan Friar. I do not dishonor myself by saying this, for my family begins with myself. Requested to produce a list, Senor Calderon proceeded:

I can give it to you right now: In Pandacan, Isidro Mendoza, son of the Bishop Pedro Payo, when he was the parish curate of the Pueblo of Samar; in Imus, the wife of Cayetano Topazio, daughter of a Recolecto friar of Mindoro; in Zambales, Louise Lasaca, now in Zambales, and several sisters and brothers were children of Friar Benito Tutor, a Recolecta friar in Bulacan; in Quingua, I can not remember the last name, but the first name is Manuela, a godchild of my mother, is a daughter of an Augustinian friar named Alvaro; in Cavite, a certain Patrocinio Berjes is a daughter of Friar Rivas, a Dominican friar; Colonel Aguillar, who is on the Spanish Board of Liquidation, is the son of Father Ferrer, an Augustinian monk.

Dealing with the question of general licentiousness on the part of the friars, Senor Calderon states:

It was a general licentiousness, because, as I have said, the exception as to the rule among friars was not to have a mistress and be the father of children by her. The friar who was not mixed up with a woman in some way or other was like a snowbird in summer.

Continuing, Senor Calderon affirms that:

The moral sense of the whole people here had been absolutely perverted. So frequent were the infractions of the moral laws on the part of the friars that really no one ever cared or took any notice of them; and this acquiescence on the part of the people was imposed upon them, for woe be unto him who should ever murmur anything against the friars, and even the young Filipino women had their senses perverted, because when attending school they had often and often seen the friars come in to speak to their openly avowed daughters, who often were their own playmates.

Coming to the unpopularity of the friars in the Philippines, Senor Calderon defines this very clearly:

They [the Friars] were the expression of the most exaggerated despotism, not of the Government of Spain, but of their own despotism, which they exercised, using the name of the kingdom of Spain, because their system was to deceive both Spain and the people. That was the line they had laid down, and, unfortunately, they are still following it, as they used it during the time of the Spanish regime. They would say to the people, ”If it were not for me the Government would annihilate you,” and then they would say to the Government, “If it were not for me the people would overthrow you. ‘ ‘ And even at the present time there is not the slightest doubt that they have said to the American authorities that all of the Filipino people were a lot of anarchists and insurgents who were conspiring to overthrow constituted authority, while to the people of the Philippines they say the American Government will place a chain around the waist of each of them; I do not make this assertion as an emanation from myself. I have seen it in writing. In the confessional they say to them, “How can you be in favor of the Americans when they are absolutely the enemies of our religionV And they say that constantly to the secular clergy, adding that woe betides the poor Filipinos who deliver themselves over unconditionally to the American Government, and I have heard this from the very lips of Monsieur Chapelle (Archbishop of New Orleans and Papal Delegate to the Philippine Islands). — Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, pp. 139, 140, 141.

Joseph Roderigues Infante’s testimony in the siame State Document recites that in point of morality native priests and friars were about on the same footing:

All these priests have [he states] the same vices, and when you take into account that they were purposely kept from following their natural bent to obtain an education by the friars, in order to show the Pope that there was a natural want of capacity in the Filipino, it can be seen why they became easy tools of the Spanish priests and great mimics of them in their loose life. —Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, p. 148.

Senor Nozario Constantino, of Bigan, Province of Bulacan, a life-long resident of the Philippines, testifying at the age of fifty-eight, declared solemnly of the friars:

There was no morality whatever. . . . About the year 1840 and the year ’50 every friar in the Province of Bulacan had his concubine. Dr. Joaquin Gonzales was the son of a curate of Baliuag, and he has three sisters here and another brother, all children of the same friar.

. . . The multitude of friars who came here from 1876 to 1896 and 1898 were all of the same kind, and to name the number of children that they have would take up an immense lot of space.

. . . I will cite a case that actually happened to us. It was the case of a first cousin of mine, Don Soponee, who married a girl from Baliuag and went to live in Agonoy, and there the local friar curate, who was pursuing his wife, got him the position as registrar of the Church in order to have him occupied in order that he, the friar, might continue his advances with the wife. He was fortunate in this undertaking and succeeded in getting the wife away from the husband, and afterwards had the husband deported to Puerto Princesa, near Jolo, where he was shot as an insurgent, and the friar continued to live with the widow and she bore him children. The friar’s name is Jose Martin, an Augustinian friar. — Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, pp. 150, 151.

Maximo Viola of San Miguel De Mayumo, a native of the Philippines and a physician, declared as to the morality of the priests:

There was no morality. . . . I do not know of a single one of all those priests I have known in the province of Bulacan who has not violated his vow of celibacy. . . . From my own personal experience I think all the priests and friars are on the same level. I have never seen one that was pure. I do n’t deny there may be exceptions, but I have not seen them. The large majority have violated their vows of celibacy and chastity. For this reason I believe that Protestantism will have a very good field here, for one reason alone, and that is that the Protestant ministers marry, and that will eradicate all fear of attacks upon the Filipino families on their part. — Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, pp. 156, 157.

Of the native priests, Brig. Gen. R. P. Hughes, U. S. V., Commanding Headquarters at Iloilo, Island of Panay, said, sir, to you:

To be plain, Judge, there is no morality among them, not a particle. They gamble in their convents; they send for members of their congregation to gamble with them. There is no morality. — Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2d Session, p. 177.

That moral and social conditions can be improved in the Philippines, by the employment there of American bishops and priests, there is very small ground for hope, as my work, “Romanism— A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ very clearly proves. No stream rises to higher level than its source.

Drunkenness, graft, and immorality are very prevalent in American priestly ranks, from cardinals down to curates. Respect for public opinion compels, in many cases, concealment of priestly vices in the United States. But there is not a State in the Union without flagrant examples, not a few, of priestly profligacy.

Mr. Monfort ascribes to my pen the article in The Menace, published at Aurora, Mo., Saturday, January 25, 1913. This honor is not mine. The author of the said article is Mr. H. George Buss, at the time Staff Correspondent of The Menace, who, over his own name, assumed publicly full responsibility therefor.

Mr. Monfort, instead of writing direct to Mr. Buss at Washington, D. C, or to the editorial management of The Menace, at Aurora, Mo., addresses me January 29, 1913, stating of this case, then “entirely” out of his hands, “I have not received reply to my letter of January 24th, nor have you called at my office for an interview.” Then the Cincinnati postmaster menacingly adds:

Unless I hear favorably from you I shall write to The Menace and demand that my letter to you should be published as my defense, as I can not reach half a million people in any other way.

Why should I, sir, let me repeat, call on Mr. Monfort in reference to a case now admittedly, according to his own words, “entirely” out of his hands?

But if this case be “entirely” out of Mr. Monfort’s hands, it is attracting papal attention. So pleased are the Jesuits of Cincinnati with Mr. Monfort ‘s indorsement of Hurney that they have bestowed on Cincinnati’s postmaster what is, in eyes Jesuitical, a signal honor, by inviting him to lecture lat their college in this city, one of the most aggressively papal institutions of learning in the Middle West.

Jesuits confer no honors on Catholic or non- Catholic, unless the conferee have rendered notable service to papal interests. Close watch do Jesuits and other Roman representatives keep on the judicial bench of the United States, and of every State, that judges subservient to the interests of the papacy be appointed ; or that judges already on the bench may be induced to interpret law according to Roman interests. Are you aware, sir, that political parties in many cities and in many States place tentative lists of candidates for judicial as well as other offices before Roman Catholic bishops and other Church dignitaries? Any name objected to by the priesthood is sure to be obliterated.

Known, all over the land, is the constant interference, now open, again underhanded, of the priesthood in civil, military, and naval promotions. The participation of the priesthood in every stage of political activity, from the ward contest to City, State, and Nation-wide struggle for party domination, is everywhere in evidence.

Papial “statesmen by chemistry,” adepts in the art of removing rivals by poison, there are to-day, as well as in the days of the infamous Borgia, who on assuming the papal crown took the name of Alexander VI. The lecherous Cardinal Antonelli, Prime Minister of Pope Pius IX, found singular satisfaction in removing “by chemistry’ ‘ cardinals who refused to indorse his infamies. In passing, I might state that “His Eminence’ ‘ Cardinal Antonelli, to the knowledge of the Hierarchy, had a natural daughter (Countess Lambertini), who, on her father’s death, claimed through the Italian civil courts a share of her father’s estate, amounting to 100,000,000 lire.

The Right Rev. George Conroy, Bishop of Ardagh, Ireland, Papal Delegate to Canada and Newfoundland in 1877-78, was, in August, 1878, poisoned at St. John’s, Newfoundland, by the infamous Bishop Carfagnini, a greedy Italian, who had been forced into the see of Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, where he gave so much dissatisfaction and excited such opposition that Delegate Apostolic Conroy was about to recommend his removal.

What was done to Carfagnini? He was brought back to Italy and promoted to a better and richer see—that of Gallipoli!

In my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation” (pp. 51, 52, 53), mention is made of several cases of murder by expert clerical chemists and other papal assassins. Some of those murdered were Police Officer Hyland, Vicar General Dowling, of the archdiocese of Chicago ; a woman of Rev. Cashman’s parish, concerning whose death certain high ecclesiastics, such as Bishop Muldoon, could give full particulars. Pertaining to the same case Rev. Cashm’an states that he knows the person by whom “her mysterious death could be explained.”

The suppression of such a book as mine, through the offices of postal employees, is a work very close to the heart of Jesuit and every other class of papal agents.

Is it through the influence of these Cincinnati Jesuits that Postoffice Clerk Hurney, whose case is still sub judice, has been transferred from the city postoffice building to Station I, Avondale, Cincinnati! This transfer of Hurney is either a promotion or a demotion. If a promotion, it is an official vindication of him from the grave charges by me preferred; if a demotion, a censure altogether inadequate of the accused man Hurney.

It is, sir, in either event, an attempted disposal of the case, now “entirely” out of Postmaster Monfort’s hands. Actuated by no personal animus whatever against Postmaster Monfort, or any other officer of the Postoffice Department, I desire that this matter of my complaint against Hurney be so finally decided and equitably determined that public interests and private rights may be conserved conspicuously and permanently.

Time, indeed, that this complaint should be, both in the public interests and in my own, passed upon decisively. Hurney, it is very evident to me, his own statements to the contrary notwithstanding, not only knew me well by sight, but knew also the nature and contents of my book. Several of his fellow postal officials had purchased copies of my volume, which had thus become a subject of frequent conversation in postoffice circles. Acting clearly (to my mind) under Jesuitical inspiration and prejudice, Hurney grasped the first opportunity, to him looking favorable, for expression of profoundest animosity for myself and my printed production.

To me, it is easy, after Hurney’s blasphemous and obscene outbreak on August 15, 1912, to understand why several copies of my book, mailed by me personally at Window No. 9, Cincinnati postomee, between July 16, 1912, the very day of its publication, till August 15, 1912, the day of Hurney’s vulgar verbal assault on me, failed to reach their destination.

An American citizen, proud of this designation and this distinction, glad of the responsibilities, rejoicing in the discharge of every duty which American citizenship imposes, I raise humble but emphatic voice against special privileges for any class, creed, race, or individual in this Nation of freedom. Special privileges are, sir, to Americans, abhorrent. The heroes of the Revolution died that special privilege might perish from this land and ultimately from the world. A paper published in the Canadian Northwest utters a very significant truth—I quote from the Edmonton Bulletin:

In a new country of mixed peoples nothing more surely or quickly brings one class into general dislike and general disrepute than a suspicion that they have aims other than are common or claim rights or privileges other than are generally accorded. “Special privileges for none” was the watchcry of this Nation’s fathers and founders. The maxim it was, sir, of the first President of the Republic, the guiding star of the virile statesmen who led the American Ship of State through two great wars with Britain, through the struggle with Mexico ending in the extension of freedom’s boundaries to the Pacific; through the terrific conflict between the States, terminating in the triumph of the most cherished and most salutary of Washington’s purposes—the unity, the indivisibility, ‘and the sovereignty of the American Nation. Worship the name and memory; revere, do all Americans, the achievements and triumphs of Washington, because

This was the man God gave us when the hour
Proclaimed the dawn of liberty begun;
Who dared a deed and died when it was done.
Patient in triumph, temperate in power—
Not striving, like the Corsican, to tower
To heaven, nor, like Philip’s greater son,
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon
, Or lose the star to revel in the flower.
The lives that serve the eternal verities
Alone do mold mankind. Pleasure and pride
Sparkle awhile and perish, as the spray
Smoking across the crests of cavernous seas
Is impotent to hasten or delay
The everlasting surges of the tide.

I am, sir, at your command for any further information at my disposal. My affidavit in the case, dated August 17, 1912, has never yet been met, either wholly or in part, by any adequate or satisfactory contradiction.
I have the honor, sir, to be,
Very respectfully yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

CABLE ADDRESS
CROWLEY. CINCINNATI. JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY
Author, Lecturer, and Publicist
619 JOHNSTON BUILDING
CINCINNATI. OHIO. U. S. A.

Me. President: February 26, 1913.
I am enclosing, under separate cover, an “open” letter concerning postal and other matters. This “open” letter bears date February 22, 1913.

I am likewise sending, under still another cover, not only the various exhibits referred to in my “open” letter, but also a six-page circular illustrating my work.

I have the honor, sir, to be,
Very respectfully yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

To the Honorable William H. Taft,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.

Part of the circular referred to above is here given:

Most Remarkable Book of the Age!

ROMANISM-A MENACE TO THE NATION

The New and Original Work
By JEREMIAH J. (Father) CROWLEY
SECOND EDITION
Together with his former book, “The Parochial School a Curse to tho
Church, A Monaco to the Nation,” (two books In one)

A searchlight on the Papal System—startling charges against individuals in the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, made and filed by the author and a score of prominent priests, with letters, affidavits, cancelled checks, photographic proofs, etc., exposing Rome’s traffic in religion, (!) sin, and shame; stupendous exposures of the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Municipal, State, and Federal Governments.

This volume recites the authentic experiences of a man who occupies the unique position of having voluntarily withdrawn from the Priesthood and membership of the Church of Rome without being canonically excommunicated. Concerning Crowley and his unanswerable book Rome is as silent as the grave. Why? Because she dare not reply. However, she is secretly striving to prevent its circulation with such aid as she can command from certain employees in the Postal Service, and time-serving politicians of divers Church affiliations.

The charges in this book are either true or false; if true, the crafty, guilty priesthood and prelacy of Rome are a living menace to decency, truth, and liberty; a portentous danger to clean living and pure home life. They should be, as such, prosecuted and punished by their respective governments.

The governments of several Catholic countries have already dealt vigorously with this dread, ever-present menace to National, social, and individual life. Italy, France, Mexico, Latin America generally, and Portugal have banished religious orders—monks and nuns—either wholly or partially. Other Catholic governments are making ready to follow in their footsteps.

What the governments of Roman Catholic countries have done, or are preparing to do, America, Great Britain, and Germany must soon do. Why? Read this book.

If my specific charges were false, Rome surely would not hesitate to prosecute me! Why should any of the civil authorities, real or seeming allies of the Papacy, fail to take fitting action against me as a libeller?

Legal prosecution has not been, and shall not be, invoked against me ; for Rome and its governmental allies know full well that my distinct, repeated, and specific charges would be, before any tribunal of a free country, not only substantiated, but reaffirmed and emphasized with an hundredfold force.

Since I first turned the searchlight on priests, prelates, and “princes of the Church,” some of those by me specifically charged with crime have died by their own hand; some from drunkenness; others from unprintable diseases. But the majority of the surviving phalanx of accused, wicked Roman hierarchs have been promoted, or otherwise rewarded, for brazen criminality, accepted as “signal service” to Church and Pope! Nay more, some of my one-time ecclesiastical cooperators and financial backers—for example, Revs. Cashman, Smyth, McNamee, Croke, Foley, et. al. (see page 54 of book—have bartered conviction for advancement and profit at the hands of ecclesiastical authorities whom they once bitterly assailed. Easy, therefore, to see why they also prefer to keep ” operating’ ‘ lucratively among deluded Catholics and self-seeking non- Catholics. All done, of course, for ” God’s greater honor and glory,” with the authority, approbation, and blessing (!) of “Holy Father,” Pope Pius X, “Vicar of Christ,” “Our Lord God the Pope,” “King of Heaven, Earth, and Hell.”

The Vatican’s policy—that of cunning, calculating guilt’s systematic silence—should not be permitted to cover, even for one moment, from gaze of a confiding people the awful criminality and frightful perils confronting the nations.

Every citizen—be he Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or non-church-goer—all governmental agencies should combine to rid mankind of this vile incubus of treason, corruption, and organized diabolism— the Papal System.

Every man interested in the race’s welfare, every lover of truth, enlightenment, and liberty the world over should insist upon a stern and thorough investigation of the stupendous charges formulated and promulgated by myself and my associates, lay and clerical.

This volume will enlighten you; it will guard you, and, through you, your country, against the abominable conspiracies of ROMANISM. Many judicious readers declare this book a storehouse of incontrovertible facts. Estimating it in the same way, the Roman hierarchs fear that its dissemination will bring about a revolution in the Church of Rome, dethroning spiritual despots, great and small ; uprooting ecclesiastical rapacity and diabolism forever.

March 17, 1913.
The Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.
Your Excellency:
Called by an observant, appreciative, and admiring people to the highest office in the world’s gift, you have, in a career of singular and significant success, proceeded from position to position; advanced from responsibility to responsibility, ever justifying in your friends ‘ estimation the tribute paid to traveler of old: Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt.(Latin for “Change their climate, but not the soul of those who run across the sea.” — Google translate.)

Places, indeed, you have changed, but wherever duty has laid command on you, a remarkable fixity of purpose has animated your resolves, guided your determinations, and ennobled your successes.

You have, sir, as college professor and as president of a great university, inspired the flower of American youth with the worship of loftiness in ideals and purity in practice. You have stimulated ambition, fostered courage, developed righteousness, enlarged generosity, and directed way unerringly as well as invitingly to success untarnished by malevolence, unclouded by injustice.

You have as Governor of one of America’s historic Commonwealths shown firmness, foresight, and constructiveness in dealing with the complex problems of popular self-government constantly arising under our political system. To one feature in particular of your administrative methods, I may be permitted to refer. For American citizenship you hold reverential regard; for American citizens, both as individuals and en masse, you prove ready to use all Constitutional powers in you vested as safeguards against bosses and bossism. No citizen, however humble, suffering from injustice of any character, has been, so far, by you given deaf ear. You have, in your magnificent inaugural address, made appeals and defined principles which are at once an inspiration and an augury. Take, for instance, the following:

The firm basis of government is justice, not pity.
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.
The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one.

Again, these words of warning : There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great.

Then, the forceful declaration dictated by fearless introspection:

Our life contains every great thing and contains it in great abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded.

I rejoice, Mr. President, to find you in such thorough accord with your illustrious predecessor and fellow-Virginian, George Washington, who said:

I know that as, on one side, no local prejudices, no separate views or party animosities must misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye, which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, the foundations of our National policy must be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality and the pre-eminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. There exists in the economy of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness and between duty and advantage.

With the immortal Jefferson, you believe:

Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations ; the support of the State Governments in all their rights; the preservation of the general Government in its whole Constitutional vigor; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principles of Republics from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person. This road alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

Side by side with the solemn, undying utterances of these early chieftains in American statesmanship will history place your own matchless definition of National duty and of individual obligation:

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless in our unfeeling haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been that ” Every man look out for himself; that every generation look out for itself,” while we have reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves!

With striking and gratifying stress, as well as unanimity the American press receives your inaugural declarations as expressions of a patriotism above question; of promise above doubt; of determination without hint or suggestion of failure. Beginning with my home city, I find, sir, The Cincinnati Post writing:

In his inaugural address to-day the new President is like a reborn Lincoln.

For the first time in our generation, the Nation is asked by its elected head “to count the human cost” of greed and reckless ambition; TO PUT MEN AND WOMEN AND LITTLE CHILDREN BEFORE MERE DOLLARS.

Thus does the counsel of William Jennings Bryan, rejected with seeming scorn in 1896, become in 1913—a very brief time as time is measured in history—the will of the majority. For, make no mistake, the country is back of this appeal. Back of it so sincerely, with such firmness of determination, that no new outpouring of predatory money can debauch its purpose, no trickery or intrigue long delay the accomplishment of its aims.

The New York Times gives stately form to a general sense of approval:

No President of the United States, in any utterance, ever sounded a higher or clearer note of aspiration and idealism than Woodrow Wilson in his inaugural address yesterday. It is perhaps the most carefully studied, concise, and deeply moving expression that has yet been given to the new ideas which have become a force in our politics. The address will make a profound impression upon the American people and upon the friends of progress and of this Republic throughout the world. The people of this country will be inspired by the President’s word; inspired, we hope, with a resolve to do their part in accomplishing the noble purposes to which he dedicates and devotes his administration ; inspired, too, with confidence in their new President. Mr. Wilson speaks as a just man, as a man moved with the desire and with the intention to see that justice is done among men.

The Republican New York Tribune tenders congratulations in terms truly fitting:

President Wilson is to be congratulated on the scope and tenor of his inaugural address. The speech is creditably full of “vision and ideals.” It breathes a sincere desire to help the country forward, to protect and uplift the weak and those of narrowed opportunity, and to give free scope to the feelings of the new age which seek to bring into the conduct of human affairs a larger measure of mercy and justice.

Filled with hope, the New York Sun defines its attitude very cheerfully: We quote five words from President Wilson’s inaugural:

“We shall restore, not destroy.”

This is the promise, the pledge, the platform. If the promise is kept, the pledge redeemed, the platform obeyed, the administration now beginning with the good-will and good wishes and best hopes and reserved judgment of all of Woodrow Wilson’s fellow-citizens will be in the truest sense progressive, and in the truest sense conservative; and what more could any patriotic American desire?

Not to be outdone by Eastern contemporaries, the Chicago Tribune adds:

The inaugural address of President Wilson is an utterance singularly lofty in tone and felicitous of phrase. It is less a State document than an invocation, a prayer, and in that sense Americans of all parties will devoutly respond, Amen.

At any rate, the new President has made an appeal to his fellow-countrymen which will touch their loyalty and bring the cordial wish that he may cap high aspiration with noble achievement.

From cold and classic New England come the Boston Globe’s cordial acknowledgments:

The voice is the voice of a prophet and a leader. It remains to be seen whether the hand is the hand of a strong man, equal to the greatest task in the world.

Animated, sir, by the conviction that you are both prophet and leader, I call attention respectfully to the intolerable injustice on me personally, and through me, on the American public, as set forth in the columns of The Menace, a paper of National standing and circulation.

Jesuitical influences have, sir, busied themselves in protecting a Romanist offender and perpetuating the outrage by that Romanist offender on an anti-Romanist American citizen, unafraid of publishing the unhallowed personal experiences of twenty-one years of priestly life, the execrable purposes and stupendous crimes of Vaticanist agents and representatives. Persona gratissima is Postmaster Monfort of Cincinnati to the Jesuits, as The Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, February 6, 1913, very fully establishes.

The Jesuit colony in Cincinnati is, sir, one of the oldest and most successful of that crafty order’s establishments in the United States. It lavishes no such attentions as those extended so munificently to Postmaster Monfort without such strong motives as recognition of services done the Order; hope of further favors for proteges, such as the profane, obscene, and blasphemous Hurney ; expectation of continued injury and outrage to be visited upon anti-Romanist citizens like myself through complacent postoffice officials.

When Hurney offered me grossest insult, he was, sir, clerk in the Mailing Division of the Cincinnati Postoffice; he was therefrom assigned, about December 1, 1912, to Station I, Avondale; he now, I am credibly informed and have reason to believe, comes to the General Postoffice every day from Avondale to serve for eight hours, in sorting all mail going to Avondale, a leading suburb of Cincinnati, of which mail he is during these hours in full control.

It would from all this seem, to ordinary observer, that outrage and insult upon inoffensive and unoffending American citizens by Roman Catholic postoffice officials establishes for the offender strongest claim to protection, advancement, and reward.

The true attitude of the Romanism we have in our midst is, sir, denned with great emphasis and overpowering lucidity by the Rev. David S. Phelan, LL. D., Rector of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish, St. Louis, Mo., editor of The Western Watchman, official organ of Archbishop Glennon, active candidate for a “red hat” and high place among the “princes of the Church.” Editor Phelan enjoys not only the confidence of Cardinal that-would-be Glennon, but proudly points to the encomium of Cardinal Satolli, who declared him “the Dean and Senior of the Roman Catholic journalists of the United States.” The citation I offer from Editor Phelan ‘s assaults on American citizenship, on American loyalty, on American brotherliness, on the basic principles of the American Declaration of Independence, has never been disavowed by any higher Church authority; nor explained away, even in smallest measure, by its own author. The utterances of Priest-Editor Phelan are, therefore, the official declaration of war on American institutions by the Papal System in the United States. Why does Papal Delegate Satolli praise Phelan? Because Phelan is doing the will of his master in the Vatican. Why does Glennon of St. Louis so ardently co-operate with Phelan and make use of Phelan ‘s journalistic activities! Because Phelan is a person of importance, a scribe of value in the Roman System; a very Daniel come to judgment, valuable, indeed, in Glennon ‘s campaign for a cardinal’s hat.

The citation referred to above is taken from a copyrighted sermon which appeared in The Western Watchman, June 27, 1912, nnder the heading “Catholics Are Royal Now; They Will Be Divine,’ ‘ and which sermon was delivered by Priest-Editor Phelan on Sunday, June 30, 1912. He says:

We of the Catholic Church are ready to go to the Death for the Church. Under God, she is the supreme object of our worship. Tell us that we think more of the Church than we do of the United States; of course we do. Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen afterwards ; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between the Church and the civil government we take the side of the Church; of course We do. Why, if the Government of the United States were at war with the Church, we would say to-morrow, “To hell with the Government of the United States;” and if the Church and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say, “To hell with all the governments of the world. ‘ ‘ They say we are Catholics first and Americans decidedly afterwards. There is no doubt about it. We are Catholics first and we love the Church more than we love any and all the governments of the world; and we love the Church more than we love our fathers and mothers, we love the Church more than we love our own children. Why? Because we are children of the Church of Jesus Christ, and He says, “Unless you leave father and mother, sisters and brothers, kinsfolk and acquaintances for My sake, you are not worthy of Me.” I love the people of America; I love the people of every nation; I glory in their loyalty ; but let the governments of the world steer clear of the Catholic Church; let the emperors, let the kings, and the Presidents not come in conflict with the head of the Catholic Church. Because the Catholic Church is everything to all the Catholics of the world, they renounce all nationalities where there is a question of loyalty to her. And why is it the Pope is so strong? Why is it that in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the population, the Catholic Church is so much feared? She is loved by all her children, and feared by everybody. Why is it the Pope is such a tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the world! All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the Presidents of the world to-day are as these altar boys of mine. The Pope is the ruler of the World. Why? Because he is the ruler of the Catholics of the world, the Catholics of all the world, and the Catholics of all the world would die for the rights of the Pope. He is the head of the Church, and they would die for the Church. And the Church is the Church of Jesus Christ, and they need not have any misgivings on that score ; there need be no misconceptions there—the Catholics of the world are Catholics first and always; they are Americans, they ‘are Germans, they are French, or they are English afterward.

In the self-same sermon Priest-Editor Phelan, “the Dean and Senior of the Roman Catholic journalists,” spokesman-in-chief of Vaticanism, so declared and crowned with becoming papal laurels by Cardinal Satolli, bastard son of Leo XIII, and envoy extraordinary as well as minister plenipotentiary of the Vatican in the United States, goes on to state:

And even when Protestants come into the Church they find it profitable to say they are converts because they know the weakness of Catholics. The truth is, Catholics to-day look up to Protestants ; and to paraphrase the words of the first Pope, I repeat, “Look down on Protestants; yes, look down on them.” The poorest Catholic boy in this parish is a prince compared with the best Protestant boy in this city. Look down on them all. We, the children of the inheritance; we, the children of God, have a right to look down upon the plebeians of heresy and infidelity. Now, I tell you this is true in America, where we are all free and equal.

Defending the infamous “Motu Proprio” Decree of Pius X, Priest-Editor Phelan writes in his paper, January 25, 1913:

What hypocrites those Protestants are! Rowdies they always were ; but hypocrisy is now their most pronounced trait. Pius X did not retreat before the frenzy of the embattled Lutherans of Germany ; .he will not yield to the clamors of the hypocrites now. People are speaking for the pope, and some of them very close to him. We are assured that the privilegium fori does not apply to Germany, or to States with concordats. Don’t mind all such statements.

Pius X—Phelan to the contrary notwithstanding— yielding to the demand or command of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, did, soon after the issuance of the “Ne Temere” decree, declare it inapplicable to Germany. Had our Government taken due steps to inform the world that any man in these United States declaring a legal American marriage null and void would be visited with sternest punishment, no Ne Temere papal legislation would break up American homes or bastardize American children born in lawful American wedlock.

The attitude of Priest-Editor Phelan towards America and American institutions is in strictest accord with papal fulminations. In his Encyclical dated at Rome, December 25, 1891, Pope Leo XIII said:

The American Republic under Protestant rulers is with the worst enemies of the Church. . . . This Republic, having seized upon the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Catholic, and usurped the authority and jurisdiction of the Supreme Head of the Church, the United States is filled with obscure heretics. The Catholics have been oppressed and the preachers of iniquity established.

With deep sorrow we are now constrained to have recourse to the arm of justice, and are obliged to take action against a Nation that has rejected the Pope as head of all Church and State Governments.

The imminence of the issues raised in my work, ” Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” and alluded to but briefly in this letter, urges an emphatic appeal to you, Mr. President, to arrest, without harshness or injustice to any section of our very much mixed population, the Romanizing— the Jesuitizing—of this Republic. Two recent incidents offer proof very conspicuous and truly alarming of Romanistic efforts in this fateful direction, aided and abetted, unfortunately, by a man eminent in American public life. In the Roman Catholic organ of this city, The Catholic Telegraph, March 6, 1913, there appears this very striking narrative: :

Me. Taft and the K. of C.

One of the last private functions attended by Mr. Taft was a reception given to him by the Knights of Columbus, last Saturday evening, in their hall on E Street. The building was packed. An address of welcome, of appreciation, and of farewell was delivered by one of the eloquent members of the fraternity. The President, in his reply, said:

“I am very much touched by the cordial and altogether too nattering tone of your welcome .and of your kindly farewell. I am going to a humble station to work out as best I can the problem of supporting a family and of doing as well as you can for other people. You have no motive—I can conceive of none, except that of good-will, good fellowship, and sincerity.”

He then urged that the Constitution should be safeguarded, because it represents a thousand years of struggle for liberty protected by law, and he made a plea for the independence of the judiciary, because, finally, the courts are the guardians of our rights under the Constitution. He was frequently applauded.

At the conclusion of his impressive address he put this sentiment and signature on a large steel portrait of himself, which will be framed to adorn the council hall:

“For the Knights of Columbus of Washington, D. C, with heartfelt gratitude for their cordial farewell.
“W. H. Taft.
“March 1, 1913.’

His visit will long be remembered by the Knights in Washington.

What a heritage, sir, Mr. Taft has left you! The Knights of Columbus have been long dear to his heart. Addressing that body at Portland, Oregon, October 12, 1911, Mr. Taft stated:

Instead of being a reason why you can not be patriotic, loyal sons of the United States, willing to yield up your lives if occasion calls, the fact that you are members of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is an assurance that you are such patriotic, loyal citizens.

If, sir, it is the cheerful duty of Romanists, as Priest-Editor Phelan so clearly states it to be, to say, ‘ ‘ To hell with the United States’ should the United States dare differ from the Vatican — “To hell with all the governments of the world’ ‘ should the Government declare independence of the papacy—then strange, indeed, must be your predecessor’s view of patriotic loyal citizenship. The truly loyal and patriotic American citizen is loyal to America first, last, and all the time, regardless of desire, decree, edict, or ukase of foreign pontiff, kaiser, czar, or potentate of any dignity or description whatever.

You are, sir, a son of old Virginia, a State which made such generous sacrifices of blood and treasure for the doctrine of State Eights. The war between the States did not eliminate that doctrine from American political economy, but gave it more permanency through a clearer, more definite and enduring definition.

Enemy of that basic American principle of government is the Roman Catholic Church, the powerful ally of organized alcoholic endeavor in every State of the Union where liquor selling and liquor drinking have foothold, legal or illegal. To that Church, so closely tied up as to its financial interests and property development with the liquor trade, wholesale and retail, Mr. Taft paid, in the closing days of his reactionary and retrogressive administration, marked homage — testified to very fully by The Catholic Telegraph, already cited:

The Webb Liquor Bill.

The bill, introduced by Representative Edwin Y. Webb, of South Carolina, to prohibit the interstate shipment of intoxicating liquors from “wet” into “dry” States to be used in violation of the local prohibition law, which passed both Houses of Congress by large majorities, was, on February 28th, vetoed by President Taft, who said:

“After giving this proposed ^ enactment full consideration, I believe it to be a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, in that it is in substance and effect a delegation by Congress to the States of the power of regulating interstate commerce in liquors, which is vested exclusively in Congress,”

Mr. Taft supported his veto with citations of Supreme Court decisions and with an opinion by Attorney-General Wickersham confirmatory of the holding that the bill is unconstitutional.

Two hours after the veto was signed the Senate passed the bill again by a vote of 63 to 21, and on March 1st the House passed it again by a vote of 244 to 95.

So it is now law, and will remain law until a case can be decided by the United States Supreme Court.

No blow more lethal at States’ Rights, at the social security and moral uplift of Southern homes especially, could have been struck than the Taft veto of the Webb liquor bill. How the Bacchanalian cohorts of Rome’s ” loyal and patriotic” citizens applauded the President’s action! How zealously will this same element of moral turpitude and decay labor to induce the Supreme Court of the Nation to tear down the barrier, so honorably set up by Congress, between the homes of the South and the forces of liquor and lust!

What manner of men the Jesuits are is attested by a writer of National fame, Hon. R. W. Thompson, former Secretary of the Navy, who, in his celebrated work, “The Footprints of the Jesuits,’ ‘ openly charges that infamous body with the poisoning of Pope Clement XIII:

The impracticable demands of the Jesuits had brought on such an issue between the spiritual and the temporal powers as to leave no ground for concessions on the part of the sovereigns, so long as they were persisted in. They were bound to maintain their own temporal powers within their dominions, or else allow the Jesuits to rule over them according to their pleasure. To this they could not submit without absolute degradation. However strange it may now appear that the pope did not see this sooner, it should be regarded as creditable to him that, when he did see it, he bowed his head humbly before the pelting storm, and yielded to a necessity he could not avoid. Due credit should not be withheld from the man who does right, even at the last extremity, especially when, as in this case, after Clement XIII decided to change his course, he went to the extent of promising the sovereigns that “he would pronounce the abolition of the society in a public consistory,” and leave the Jesuits to suffer the consequences of their own folly. Having made up his mind to this, a day was appointed for the performance of the solemn act of signing the death warrant of the Jesuits. But this postponement led to a result which had not been dreamed of—one that furnished new evidence of the capacity of the Jesuits for intrigue. During the night preceding the day appointed for the public ceremony of announcing the abolition of the Jesuits, Clement XIII was suddenly seized with convulsions and died, leaving the act unperformed, and the Jesuits victorious. Cormenin, writing in France, where the Jesuits are better known and understood than here, records this event in these terse and expressive words: “The Jesuits had poisoned him. 9 ‘—pp. 223, 224.

The Jesuits put up a vigorous fight to elect a, successor to Clement XIII friendly to their society. The story of their failure is thus impartially recited:

It required three months to elect a successor to Clement XIII. The cardinals were divided into two parties—one supporting the Jesuits, and the other the Governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, united in opposition to them. The former desired to subject all civil governments to Jesuit dominion; the latter insisted that the Church and the State should each remain free and independent of the other in its own domain. After innumerable intrigues—such as are familiar to those who manipulate party conventions—the latter party triumphed by the election of Ganganelli, a Franciscan monk, who took the name of Clement XIV, and entered upon the pontificate in 1769.—Idem, p. 225.

To Pope Clement XIV, Mr. Thompson pays just tribute:

He was greatly esteemed for his virtues, and possessed a conspicuously noble character and a mind well and thoroughly disciplined. That he was a man of profound ability is abundantly shown by his letters, which have been preserved and published, and whieh contain many passages of exceeding eloquence and beauty. He was far better prepared, therefore, to form intelligent and impartial conclusions upon the evidence concerning the Jesuits than Clement XIII, because, apart from his qualifications, he was not under the dominion of undue prejudices. — Idem, p. 225.

Clement XIV courageously ordered the continuance of the investigation of the charges made against the Jesuits, already entered upon, till it should be completed, and determined that the questions involved should be decided according to right and justice.

This [says Mr. Thompson] was due to the sovereigns, to the public, and especially to the Church. Cormenin says he was suspicious of being dealt with like his predecessor, and that he took the necessary precautions to guard against it by substituting a faithful monk for the cook of the Quirinal, so as to guard against the possibility of poison. Howsoever this may have been, he persevered in his course with the courage of a man who fears no evil when in the faithful discharge of duty. Eesolved, however, not to act with undue haste, but to have all matters brought full before him, together with the evidence bearing upon them, he continued the investigation for the period of four years, so that when his final decision was made the world should be convinced that it was the result of calm deliberation and honest conviction. He says of himself that he “omitted no care, no pains, in order to arrive at a thorough knowledge of the origin, the progress, and the actual state of that regular order commonly called the Company of Jesus ;” and Ranke, the great historian, says he “applied himself with the utmost attention to the affairs of the Jesuits;” and adds that “a commission of cardinals was formed, the arguments of both sides were deliberately considered,” before his conclusion was announced. No greater deliberation and no more serious reflection could have been bestowed upon any question. The evidence was carefully inspected and everything duly considered. The scales were held at equipoise until the preponderance of proof caused the beam to turn against the Jesuits, when he was constrained by a sense of duty to the Church, to Christianity, to the public, and to his own conscience, to announce the result which gave peace and quiet to the nations and joy to the great body of Christians throughout Europe. This he did, July 21, 1773, by issuing his celebrated bull, “Dominus ac Redemptor”—called by the Jesuits a brief — whereby he decreed “that the name of the company shall be, and is, forever extinguished and suppressed,” that “no one of them do carry their audacity so far as to impugn, combat, or even write or speak about the said suppression, or the reasons and motives of it ; ” and that the said bull of suppression and abolition shall “forever and to all eternity be valid, permanent, and efficacious.” — Idem, pp. 226, 227.

Of what did Pope Clement XIV find the Jesuits guilty? He declares that, charged with things “very detrimental to the peace and tranquillity of the Christian Republic” by various sovereigns who had from time to time complained of them, Pope Sixtus V had found accusations against them “just and well founded.” He enumerates eleven popes, including Benedict XIV, who had “employed, without effect, all their efforts’ ‘ to provide remedies against the evils they had engendered. He accuses them of opposition to other religious orders; charges them with ” great loss of souls, and great scandal of the people,” with the practice of ” certain idolatrous ceremonies, ‘ ‘ with the use of maxims which the Church had “proscribed as scandalous and manifestly contrary to good morals;” with “revolts and intestine troubles in some of the Catholic States;” and with “persecutions against the Church” in both Europe and Asia.

Clement furthermore cites the fact that Innocent XI had forbidden “the company to receive any more novices;” that Innocent XIII felt obliged to threaten “the same punishment;” and Benedict XIV had decreed a general visitation and investigation of all their houses in the Portuguese dominions. Concluding that it would be “very difficult, not to say impossible, that the Church could recover a firm and durable peace as long as the said society subsisted,” Clement XIV pronounced final judgment in these impressive terms:

We deprive it of all activity whatever, of its houses, schools, colleges, hospitals, lands, and, in short, every other place whatsoever, in whatever kingdom or province they may be situated. We abrogate and annul its statutes, rules, customs, decrees, and constitutions, even though confirmed by oath, and approved by the Holy See or otherwise. In like manner we annul all and every its privileges, indults, general or particular, the tenor whereof is, and is taken to be, as fully and as amply expressed in the present Brief as if the same were inserted word for word, in whatever clauses, form, or decree, or under whatever sanction their privileges may have been conceived. We declare all, and all kind of authority, the general, the provincials, the visitors, and other superiors of the said society, to be forever annulled and extinguished, of what nature soever the said society may be, as well in things spiritual as temporal. — Idem, p. 231.

What happened to Clement XIV? Increased apprehensions as to the Pope’s personal safety followed the issuance of the bull, “Dominus ac Redemptor.”

The manner in which Clement XIII had met his death on account of the mere promise to suppress the Jesuits was [writes Mr. Thompson] well calculated to excite the fear that the same fate might befall Clement XIV in revenge for their actual abolition. Hence, all the avenues of approach to the pope were carefully watched, and the utmost precautions employed to guard against the possibility of poison. These were successful for about eight months, when a peasant woman was persuaded, by means of a disguise, to procure entrance into the Vatican and offer the pope a fig in which poison was concealed. Clement XTV was exceedingly fond of this fruit, and ate it without hesitation. The same day the first symptoms of severe illness were observed, and to these rapidly succeeded violent inflammation of the bowels. He soon became convinced that he was poisoned, and remarked: “Alas! I knew they would poison me, but I did not expect to die in so slow and cruel a manner I” His terrible sufferings continued for several months, when he died, ‘ i the poor victim, ‘ ‘ says Cormenin, “of the execrable Jesuits.” — Idem, pp. 227, 228.

Refusing to remain suppressed, the Jesuits finally succeeded, after forty-one years of intrigue, calumny, intimidation, and venality, in having their Society revived and restored by solemn decree of Pope Pius VII, one of the most reactionary pontiffs that ever filled the papal see. Pius conferred on the Jesuits the right to exist as an Order throughout the world, thereby approving and indorsing their vilification of his “infallible” predecessor, Clement XIV. He declared that his decree of restoration should be “inviolably observed,” and that it should “never be submitted to the judgment or revision of any judge.” He further commanded that “no one be permitted to infringe, or by audacious temerity to oppose any part” of his decree, declaring that any one guilty of disobedience thereto “will thereby incur the indignation of Almighty God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul.”

Sworn enemies of civil and religious liberty, of popular self-government, and of all the beneficent influences of the Reformation, the Jesuits, immediately upon their restoration, got busy in striking their hardest blows at freedom of speech, of the press, and of religious belief. Encourage, did they actively, the alliance between the papacy and the monarchs of Europe, because both stood for the union of Church and State as the surest guarantee for the preservation of monarchism. Going to Rome, they enjoyed the plenteous patronage of the papacy, and their cunning hand is seen clearly in the Congress of the “Holy Alliance” at Verona, where the pope and allied sovereigns pronounced themselves, in the most solemn form, that they would continue to prevent the establishment of popular governments, and would unite all their energies in preserving the monarchial institutions where they existed, and in re-establishing them where they had been set aside by the people.

It was this Jesuitical declaration of the Holy Alliance which called forth the Monroe Doctrine, that every liberty-loving American should cherish as a second Declaration of Independence.

Acquiring complete domination in the councils of the Church, the restored Jesuits induced Gregory XVI, immediate predecessor of Pius IX, a pontiff of our own day, to denounce the “poisoned sources” which produced “that false and absurd or rather extravagant maxim that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man,” and to anathematize the liberty of the press as “the most fatal liberty; an execrable liberty, for which there never can be sufficient horror.” He finally inculcated the duty of “constant submission to princes.”

It was Jesuitical intrigue and influence which railroaded the infamous dogma of papal infallibility through the Vatican Council. Leo XIII, a product of Jesuitical training and education, has again and again declared that the American people are doomed to rapid decay and ultimate ruin unless they reunite themselves with the Holy See of Rome and obey the pope and his successors, occupying the place of Christ on earth!

Well does Mr. Thompson indicate that a man 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 the 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 whenever the pope sees fit to command resistance. The Papal System condemns as violative of divine law these fundamental principles of free American institutions; the separation of Church and State; the freedom of conscience and of religious belief; the liberty of speech and of the press; the subjection of ecclesiastics to laws like other citizens; the people as exclusive depositaries 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 civil laws ; and last, but far from least, the American Public School System established all over this Republic.

The effect of the papal infallibility dogma is thus defined by a Romanist writer, Very Rev. Thomas Canon Pope, in his authoritative work, The Council of the Vatican:

The Council will vindicate its authority over the world and prove its right, founded on a divine commission, to enter most intimately into all the spiritual concerns of the world, to supervise the acts of the king, the diplomatist, the philosopher, and the general; to circumscribe the limits of their speculative inquiries; to hold up the lamp which is to light their only path to knowledge and education; to subjugate human reason to the yoke of faith; to extinguish liberals, rationalists, and deists by one stroke of her infallibility. Infallible dogma is a brilliant light, which every intellect must recognize, whether willingly or reluctantly. . . . The Church claims its right to enter the world’s domain, and recognizes no limits but the circumference of Christianity; to enforce her laws over her subjects; to control their reason and judgment; to guide their morals, their thoughts, words, and actions, and regard temporal sovereign’s, though entitled to exercise power in secidar affairs, as auxiliaries and subordinates to the attainment of the end of her institution, the glory of God, and the salvation of the immortal souls of men. — p. 11.

Your Administration is already preoccupied with the serious problems arising from disturbed conditions in Cuba, Mexico, and the Central American Republics. With the celebrated Leon Gambetta, of France, who, soon after the disastrous Germanic war, into which the French prelacy and priesthood had plunged that country in 1870-1871, uttered plaintive cry of warning, America may be at early date obliged to exclaim, “Le clericalisme, voila I’ennemi.”

The hand, sir, of the clerical disturber and white slaver is at work in Latin America to create conditions inimical to American interests in all this hemisphere, and particularly to American rights in re the Panama Canal. Synonymous are, in Latin America, the terms “las- Americanos’ ‘ and “los fanaticos.” Eome teaches Latin American youth to hate from earliest infancy this America of ours, as the land of hidebound heresy and of ancestral hostility to Latin civilization. Notorious is the fact that the priesthood of Spanish American countries advises the sending of sons land daughters of wealthy families to Europe that these susceptible young folk of Latin blood may be spared the contamination of close association with heretic American boys and girls!

So far is the antagonism of Central and South American clerics carried to our American schools that even Romanist schools of approved orthodoxy in the United States are considered perilous to youthful Latin Americans. The very atmosphere of these United States is considered unhealthful for the perpetuation of any of the Romanist superstitions, unfortunately too prevalent in the countries to south of us.

Bear in mind, should Americans, the prophecy of General Lafayette, reared and educated a Roman Catholic:

“It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country—the United States of America—are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty. They have instigated most of the wars of Europe.”

Responsible is this same accursed agency for unsettled conditions at present in America. Mexico, rent in sunder, its smoking ruins drenched in blood; Central America, torn by sanguinary fanaticism, brother fighting brother and father fighting sons ; Brazil, menaced with a revolution of Romanist priestly origin to restore the empire under an Orleanist Catholic prince; Venezuela, and various other Latin States, disturbed, distracted, and oppressed by priestcraft, greed, and superstition: all give evidence, painful and portentous, of papal activities and aggression.

The coldness and hostility of Latin American States towards this Republic is, sir, I say it without fear of contradiction, due in controlling measure to the influence of the Roman prelacy and priesthood. The property holdings of the Church in Spanish America are enormous—in Mexico its real property alone is valued at $200,000,000.

Nothing the priests of Spanish America fear so much as an ingress of American trade; an adoption of American educational methods; an advent of the American free school, free press, and free speech; an election of America’s cult of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as rights inalienable of all men, born free and equal. Better, in priestly view—ten thousand times better— superstition, degradation, internecine conflict, with inevitable, oft-recurring seasons of slaughter and rapine, than the establishment of permanent free republican institutions on the American model, with fullest liberty of conscience guaranteed to all, offering adequate instrumentalities for the suppression of conventual, clerical, and prelatical White Slavery systems. We guard sedulously and rigidly against cholera and bubonic plague, but cholera and bubonic plague are blessings compared with White Slavery as it flourishes under the aegis of Romanism from Montreal to Montevideo.

In my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ I charge that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Chicago profit very largely from contributions of gamblers, saloonkeepers, and white slave keepers, particularly so as a result of the work of the Vice Commission recently held in that city. I have it on the very best authority — authority that can not be disputed—that this Commission was manipulated and controlled by Roman priests. It serves to furnish them with most valuable information which they could not obtain through the Confessional or otherwise. Such information in the hands of the Roman Hierarchy affords a new and rich species of graft —Vice Commission Graft. The Vatican System thrives on ignorance, vice, and crime. No wonder the priests and prelates hope to establish similar Vice Commissions in the large cities throughout the country!

White Slavery is nowhere, sir, so rampant and audacious as in Roman Catholic countries. What Protestant city is the equal of Paris, Vienna, Naples, or Rome itself, in patronage of prostitutes and prostitution! “What Protestant country tolerates such irreverence for and disregard of the marriage vow as the Latin countries of Europe and America?

Illegitimacy is nowhere more prevalent than in Roman Catholic lands, both in the New and Old Worlds. Why? Because the priesthood holds not marriage in honor, nor womanhood in veneration.

You are, sir, to be asked by the Illinois Senate Commissioners to aid in the fight against White Slavery. The purity of your private life, the profound and abiding regard you inherit from Southern and Presbyterian blood for stainless family hearthstones, your record as educator and reformer, entitles you to leadership in such a movement. Tied up, should you not be, in slightest degree with Rome-bound and priest-ridden schemes of social reform, whether these schemes be indorsed by civic or State authorities.

The Roman priesthood has been in control of Latin America for four centuries. Where does prostitution more unrestrainedly flourish? Nowhere, save perhaps in the Latin countries of Europe, where for seven centuries or more priestly licentiousness has vitiated the very atmosphere and tainted every avenue, social and civic.

No, sir, no; Rome may not be permitted to inject her pernicious personality into the war on White Slavery. White Slavery is one of her most potent agencies of graft and gain—”Ubi Roma ibi infamia”—a war on White Slavery, with yon, sir, for chief, on the side of personal and domestic purity, can permit of no alliance or inmixtion with papal intrigue or priestly bestiality.

The greed, the aggressiveness, the intolerance of Romanist designs upon America has never been in recent years more deliberately, definitely, defiantly expressed than by the ” Right Rev.” Edward J. Hanna, Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco, to the Knights of Columbus. Bishop Hanna wants all of this country, fenced in with a papal wall of granitic intolerance, for pope and prelacy of Rome. I call, sir, your especial attention to the menacing words of this Roman propagandist. Not Loyola, in his most sanguine hope and enthusiastic purpose to subject the world to papalistic absolutism and bloodthirsty cruelty, ever thought out a plan more carefully or delineated it more cold-bloodedly than does this ardent envoy of the reactionary Pius X detail his claim for Roman Catholic domination, in temporals and in spirituals, over this free Republic. Here are Hannahs words:

This country is ours by inheritance. The world was given to Christ for His inheritance. Truth always has a claim where error can not come. The Holy Roman Catholic Church brought the truth to America, and as we are the inheritors of the earth, this glorious country is ours by right—it ought to be ours by right-—by right of fighting and by right of conquest.

This country was found by a great Catholic — the man after whom our order has been named. The Catholics have made this as great as it is because we hold in our power and grasp the high principles that go to make greatness. We found this country and we have made it great. America is ours because we found it and because we have conquered it.

And what a noble inheritance it is! God’s country, with its valleys and its mountains, its rivers and its oceans—and the Kingdom of Christ stretching from sea to sea. This is our inheritance, and it is your duty as Knights of Columbus to hold and to keep that inheritance which we found, won, and are making our own.

Were any non-Romanist citizen to utter sentiments so seditious and so perturbing, he were surely called to task, if not incarcerated, at the instance of Knights of Columbus or other prelatical agencies. Roman prelates, priests, laymen are allowed a license of speech menacing social tranquillity and civic order throughout the Union.

What a perversion of historic truth Bishop Hanna’s utterly untenable, because unveracious, statement that the Roman Catholic Church alone brought the Gospel truth to America? What little of truth it has brought, sir, is so darkened and distorted by priestly corruption, lechery, greed, and cruelty as to handicap the saving power of these few Christian messages of upliftment which papist monks, Jesuits, and priests have occasionally professed solely to cover crime, rapacity, and other infamy.

The pure Gospel message, delivered by men of pure purpose and sainted life, never degrades. It uplifts, purines, blesses, and strengthens peoples saved by its touch. The Eoman message of lust and loot degrades and decimates1 every land it afflicts with pernicious presence and activity. Those parts of America, from Quebec to Quito, where Eomanism has acquired domination suffer to this day from its deadly and deadening touch; those parts which have accepted the Christian message of the Eeformation, the sublime, Godgiven tidings of purification, of enlightenment, of disenthralment of the benign and loving Jesus, have from Mexican line to Arctic Circle prospered and advanced. No, no, Mr. Hanna! America is not of the pope’s domain. It is, as you, Mr. President, know, the land of the free and the home of the brave, free to worship God as conscience, not papal despotism and darkness, may dictate. Not one State in this Union—not even New Mexico, so long under the ban and bane of Eomanistic semi-barbarism — may be, by a proud, fearless, and God-loving, Bible-reading people, suffered to become a Calabria or a Quebec, the only spots on earth where papalism to-day enjoys undisputed sway and shuts out light of Gospel, grace, and freedom.

Such, sir, is the foe that I have denounced and exposed, boldly and unanswerably, in my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation.” Such the foe that, fastening itself on the postal service of this free country, exercises through complacent officials inquisitional powers.

I mail, under separate cover, copy of the book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ so generously lauded by people, press, and pulpit.

My purpose, Mr. President, is not to acquire mere personal gain or personal fame. A purer and, I would fain believe, better ambition impels me. My purpose is to live up to standard well set by Henry Van Dyke:

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher. There is a nobler character than that which is merely incorruptible. It is the character which acts as an antidote and preventative of corruption. Fearlessly to speak the words which bear witness to righteousness and truth and purity; patiently to do the deeds which strengthen virtue and kindle hope in your fellow-men; generously to lend a hand to those who are trying to climb upward ; faithfully to give your support and your personal help to the efforts which are making to elevate and purify the social life of the world — that is what it means to have salt in your character.

The whole question resolves itself, sir, into this plain formulary: Is this a Government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a Government of the pope, by the pope, for the pope?

Bearing on my standing as author and publicist, let me cite: Pages 693, 694, 695, 696, 697, 698, 699, and 700 of my book, ” Romanism— A Menace to the Nation.”

With all respect for you personally, and for the great office the Nation has called you to fill, I ask respectfully that the matter of my complaint against postoffice clerk Hurney, now before the Postoffice Department of the United States, be brought to speedy decision. My earnest wish is, Mr. President, that you may be blessed and strengthened throughout your official life, and ever after, by the Almighty Father, whose Book your lips on inauguration day touched at these sublime and comforting words:

And I will walk at liberty: for I seek Thy precepts.
I will speak of Thy testimonials also before kings, and will not be ashamed.
And I will delight myself in Thy commandments, which I have loved.
My hands also will I lift up unto Thy commandments, which I have loved: and I will meditate in Thy statutes.

I have the honor to be, sir,
Very respectfully,
Jebemiah J. Cbowlby.

DIVISION OF IN REPLYING
SALARIES AND ALLOWANCES MENTION INITIALS AND DATE
Post Office Department
FIRST ASSISTANT POSTMASTER GENERAL
Washington

Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley, Marcn U> 1913.
619 Johnston Building, Cincinnati, 0.
Sir:
The receipt is acknowledged of your letter of the 22d instant, addressed to the President [Taft], and referred to this Office for action, in reply to which I beg to state that your complaint has been sent to a postoffice inspector for a full and complete investigation, who no doubt will call upon you for any additional facts to substantiate the charges which you may be able to give him.

Upon receipt of his report you will be promptly advised of the action taken.
Respectfully,
Daniel C. Roper,
First Assistant Postmaster General.

Hon. Daniel C. Roper, March 25, 1913.
First Assistant Postmaster General,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
Mr. Charles Gr. Swain, postoffice inspector, called on me to-day in reference to my alleged complaint “as to the destruction of mail.”

My complaint in the letter addressed to President Taft, on February 22d last, and repeated in a letter to President “Wilson, dated March 17th, had to do exclusively with the outrageous insult and injury offered me by one Hurney, a postoffice clerk. That, sir, is the one subject of complaint from me now before your Department, and I do respectfully ask for early investigation and judgment thereon.
Respectfully yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

DIVISION OF IN REPLYING
SALARIES AND ALLOWANCES MENTION INITIALS AND DATE
C. F.
Post Office Department
FIRST ASSISTANT POSTMASTER GENERAL
March 28, 1913.
Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
619 Johnston Building, Cincinnati, 0.
Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 17th instant, which the President [Wilson] has referred to this Office, relative to your complaint against Clerk Hurney, of the Cincinnati, Ohio, postoffice, for using disrespectful language. In reply I beg to state that the matter was referred to a postoffice inspector for a thorough investigation on March 14th, and your letter just received has been forwarded for consideration in connection with the case. Respectfully,
Daniel C. Roper,
First Assistant Postmaster General,

Up to the moment of this book’s going to press no redress has been vouchsafed me by the Government at Washington for the grievous wrong recited in the foregoing letters to Presidents Taft and Wilson.

Our Washington statesmen are, it may be, too busy attending requiem high masses for deceased Roman Catholic rulers to attend to administrative duties on behalf of the American people. Observe the subjoined, from The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, April 24, 1913:

[Catholic Press Association.]

Washington, April 23d.—The President of the United States went to Mass on April 18th in St. Matthews Church, this city. The Holy Sacrifice was offered for the repose of the soul of Gen. Manuel Bonilla, the late President of Honduras. Msgr. Lee officiated, assisted by Msgr. Russell, Msgr. Mackin, and other priests. Vice-President Marshall, Secretary of State Bryan, other members of the Cabinet, the majority of the Diplomatic Corps, members of Congress, and other distinguished personages were also present. The Guardians of Bigotry and all the other bogus “patriotic” societies will have a fit when they learn that President Wilson was officially present at the celebration of Mass in a Catholic Church.

Americans who bow not before the idols of popery may well ask—Are our Presidents and Vice-Presidents, our Cabinet officers and the Judges of the Supreme Court, our Senators and Representatives placed in office to play part so subservient and so dastardly servile to Rome’s foulest purposes? Rome is now egging on Japan to annex Mexico, seize on the Philippines, on Hawaii and Alaska, to wipe off the United States of America from the map of the world’s great powers. While our Presidents are attending mass the Jap and other foreign emissaries in America are busy stealing plans from the Navy Department and studying every weak spot in our National armor, to report thereon promptly and fully to hostile governments.

Rome, hating a free, popular government like that of America, is ready to coalesce with Jap or any other agency—pagan, atheistical, or professedly Christian—to destroy our Nation. The following pages constitute a searchlight of unerring power and accuracy on Romish intrigue and diabolism.

The neglect of the United States Government to do me even elementary justice in the Hurney matter is paralleled exactly by the dilatoriness of the Iowa State authorities in adequately punishing my assailants at Oelwein, June 12, 1913, and by the cruel and callous refusal of Pittsburgh’s (Pa.) police system to investigate a robber’s forcible entrance to my apartment at the Hotel Henry, when he abstracted a watch especially valuable by reason of the memories it suggested. What form of brutal outrage must I next await?

Jeremiah J. Cbowley.
Cincinnati, 0., August, 1913.

Subject: Papal Intrigue, Usurpation, and Episcopal Vandalism, illustrated by the case of “The Most Reverend” John Baptist Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, U. S. A.

“Your Holiness:”
I feel free to address myself directly to you, not indeed because I acknowledge subjection in smallest measure to your authority, either in spirituals or temporals, but because I charge you — CHIEF OF WHITE SLAVERS, HIGH PRIEST OF INTRIGUE—with being the fountain-head of evils world-wide, the arch-disturber of humanity’s peace, religious and social; the relentless foe of the three basic principles of American National life and liberty—freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

From America you draw large part of the revenues used by your System to enslave mankind. Every one of your hundred and more bishops under the American flag is collector of “Peter’s Pence,” his standing with your government depending on the amounts he is enabled to wring from an already overtaxed constituency.

Generous in one respect only are you—in the bestowal of blessings which, singular to say, fail to bless recipients in any noticeable degree. One of your predecessors blessed the French armies setting out in 1870 to destroy Protestant Germany; another blessed Spanish armaments, setting out in 1898 to crush heretical America, but your predecessors’ benedictions did not save France, in 1870, from merited humiliation, nor Spain, nearly thirty years later, from crushing defeat and the annihilation of her colonial empire.

That your System is a direct tax upon this Republic the following effusive acknowledgment of a receipt of ‘Peter ‘s Pence’ very clearly demonstrates:

The Vatican.
January 23, 1913.
Secretariate of State of His Holiness. Right Illustrious and Right Reverend Lord:

The Petrine Alms that the Apostolic Delegate in the United States lately transmitted in your name, truly bespeaks the devotion of yourself and of your Faithful, and bespeaks the diligence of yourself and flock in the effort to collect so generous a sum. In this you have shown yourself so deserving that the August Pontiff praises you and embraces you with fatherly benevolence, and, through me, returns to you thanks, blessing you, your clergy, and your people.

I avail myself of this occasion to reassure you of the esteem in which I hold you, and to subscribe myself as Your Lordship’s Most humble Servant,

[Signed] R. Cardinal Merry del Val.

To the Right Illustrious and Right
Reverend Lord
Denis O’Donaghue,
Bishop of Louisville.

No need to dig into ancient history to find that your System of iniquitous repressiveness is at work actively, systematically, and industriously in America. Let the following dispatch speak:

Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 22.—Archbishop Sebastian G. Messmer, of the Catholic archdiocese of Milwaukee, and four bishops of the Catholic Church were sued for $100,000 damages in an action started Friday by a Polish newspaper published in Milwaukee.

The four mentioned with the archbishop are Bishops Joseph Fox, of Green Bay; James Schwebach, of Lacrosse; L. F. Shinner, of Superior, and Frederick Eis, of Marquette, Mich.

Conspiracy to ruin the business of the newspaper is charged.

The trouble is said to be largely the result of the efforts of the American Poles to obtain Polish bishops through the organization of the American Federation of Polish Catholic Laymen, founded by the editor of the paper.

Not one outspoken newspaper on this continent were permitted to live a day could your agents vent papalistic fury upon its publishers.

How different the sordid, selfish impulse and motive back of your nefarious System’s activities and purposes from the self-sacrificing, Christlike love that inspires and actuates the true Gos pel preacher!

“Unstained, unwhipped by passion or desire,
A thing clean, strong, and true uplifts its head
Above all grosser things for sale or hire,
Above the grasping hand for gain outspread.
It takes no bribe, it asks no recompense
For largess of the heart, but, in accord
With noblest impulses of soul and sense,
In glory of the gift finds full reward.

“It mellows, winelike, in the cask of time;
Knows naught of jealousy, the ego’s crime;
Monopoly doth scorn, and to the end
Shares friends and freedom freely with a friend,
It stands alone, apart, all else above.”

Papal eye has been for a long time fixed on America as fecund revenue producer for a System of which older countries have long ago grown tired. Vaticanism looks hopefully for early coming of the day when all Protestant forms of religion shall have disappeared and Eomanism shall stand alone in America as representative of orthodox Christian beliefs.

No writer better informed as to Vaticanist purposes and policies than Maria Longworth Storer, who acquired international prominence a few years ago by vain efforts to obtain a “red hat ‘ ‘ for John Ireland, holding from you the title and position of Archbishop of St. Paul. Mrs. Storer gives Americans benefit of her inside in- formation as to papal hop© and aim. Writing in The Cincinnati Enquirer, Sunday, March 9, 1913, she states under the heading:

The Religion of the Future.

President Taft is, therefore, entirely justified in asserting that:

“The one trouble we suffer from — if it is a trouble—is that there are so many Unitarians in other Churches who do not sit in the pews of our Church. But that means that ultimately they are coming to us.”

It is this fact of dissimilarity in creed which is commented upon by Bishop Raphael, the head of the Syrian Greek Orthodox Church in America, in a pastoral letter in which he declares a union between the Anglican or Episcopal Church and the Greek Church to be impossible. Bishop Raphael says:

“I am convinced that the doctrinal teaching and practices, as well as the discipline of the whole Anglican communion, are unacceptable to the holy Orthodox Church. I make this apology for the Anglicans, whom as Christian gentlemen I greatly revere, that the loose teachings of a great many of the prominent Anglican theologians are so hazy in their definition of truths, and so leaning toward pet theories, that it is hard to tell what they believe. The Anglican Church as a whole has not spoken authoritatively on her doctrine. Her Catholic-minded members can cull out her doctrines from many views, but so nebulistic is her pathway in the doctrinal world that those who would extend a hand of both Christian and ecclesiastical fellowship dare not without distrust grasp the hand of her theologians; for while many are orthodox on some points, they are quite heterodox on others. I speak, of course, from the holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic standpoint of view.

“I do not deem it necessary to mention all of the striking differences between the holy Orthodox Church and the Anglican communion in reference to the authority of holy tradition, the number of General Councils, etc. Sufficient has already been said and pointed out to show that the Anglican communion differs but little from all other Protestant bodies, and therefore there can not be any intercommunion until she returns to the ancient holy Orthodox faith and practices and rejects Protestant omissions and commissions.

“I, therefore, as the official head of the Syrian Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church in North America, and as one who must ‘give an account (Hebrews 13:17) before the judgment throne of the ‘Shepherd and Bishop of Souls’ (1 Peter 2:25), that I have fed the ‘flock of God’ (1 Peter 5:2), as I have been commissioned by the holy Orthodox Church, inasmuch as the Anglican communion (Protestant Episcopal in the United States) does not differ from some of the most arrant Protestant sects in things vital to the well-being of the holy Orthodox Church, direct all Orthodox people residing in any community not either to seek or accept the ministrations of the sacraments and rites from any clergy excepting those of the Holy Orthodox Greek Catholic Apostolic Church, for the apostolic canons command that the Orthodox should not commune in ecclesiastical matters with those who are not of ‘the same household of faith’ (Galatians 6:10).”

There seems to be every prospect that President Taft’s prophecy may be fulfilled in regard to the Protestant world.

A similar prophecy by Charles Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, is uttered in a pamphlet called the ” Religion of the Future,” printed by the American Unitarian Association. Mr. Eliot says: “(1) The religion of the future will not be based on authority, either spiritual or temporal. The decline of reliance upon absolute authority is one of the most significant phenomena of the modern world.” “(5) The religion of the future will not be propitiatory, sacrificial, or expiatory.” “(6) The religion of the future will not perpetuate the Hebrew anthropomorphic representations of God, conceptions which were carried in large measure into institutional Christianity.”

Mr. Eliot concludes that “in the future religion there will be nothing ‘ supernatural, ‘ ‘ ‘ and that “it is not bound to any dogma, creed, book, or institution.”

President Eliot bases his prophecy upon “the revolt against long-accepted dogmas, the frequent occurrence of waves of reform, sweeping through and sometimes over the Churches, the effect of modern philosophy, ethical theories, social hopes, and democratic principles on the established Churches and the abandonment of Churches altogether by a large proportion of the population in countries mainly Protestant.”

These, then, are two notable prophecies spoken by two American Presidents—one of the United States, and the other of our oldest and most important university. They are worthy of very serious consideration by the American Protestant world.

Now surely American Protestants will get good; and make ready, on the one hand, to drop allegiance to “any dogma, creed, book, or institution,’ or, on the other hand, kneel humbly to you or your successors.

Notable, in very truth, is it that Rome should here in Cincinnati offer such ultimatum to American Protestants. Remarkable, too, that this ultimatum should come from the pen of a former Protestant, who, with all the earnestness and zeal of a convert, strives for the Romanization of a country to which Romanism means destruction as certain as your System has visited upon Spain and other countries cursed by its domination and finally crushed by its despotism.

Cincinnati has known more, perhaps, than its share of Romanistic activities. Burned deeply in heart and memory of the Queen City are certain achievements of your System, which brought discredit on the community’s fair name, disaster upon families, and utter ruin upon individuals.

Your governmental records show that as far back as 1833 the papacy’s purpose was to make Ohio, land of beauty, fertility, and promise, an appanage of the Vatican. There was sent to Cincinnati in that year a representative of your System qualified in many respects for this task. No sooner had John Baptist Purcell taken survey of the field consigned to his episcopal care than he determined to make of Ohio an impregnable stronghold of Romanism, by the power of MONEY.

All real property donated or purchased for Church uses was conveyed to him in fee simple. This property he might sell, exchange, or give away, as in his own judgment he might determine. Lord and master absolutely of the whole situation as far as Roman Catholic holdings in Ohio were concerned, he lost no time in providing himself with adequate pecuniary resources. He transformed himself into a bank of deposit. Little or no difficulty did he find in persuading an ignorant, confiding flock to entrust its savings to him, whom the ” Vicar of Christ” had appointed their bishop. There was, from 1833 till 1879, a constant stream of depositors to the Purcell bank. From a list of receipts covering the period between 1847 and 1877 there was, it appears, deposited in the Purcell bank in that time a total of more than $25,000,000, as is shown by the following excerpts from Brief, pp. 39, 40 :

SUPREME COURT OF OHIO.
John B. Mannix, Assignee,
vs.
William Heney Elder [Archbishop PurcelPs
immediate successor], et al.

A hasty addition of the figures shows the following deposits for these years, and the amounts unpaid:

Year Money Deposited Unpaid
1847 $221,006 $14,481
1848 282,449 18,870
1849 220,454 20,199
1850 268,891 16,916
1851 401,351 31,319
1852 448,368 29,764
1853 460,621 36,874
1854 614,549 23,177
1855 558,601 23,024
1856 668,061 35,241
1857 375,431 30,300
1858 541,757 25,963
1859 817,814 65,204
1860 746,936 71,099
1861 487,392 64,831
1862 478,733 75,465
1863 393,768 38,241
1864 178,848 11,131
1865 162,260 19,053
1866 735,918 226,362
1867 101,348 32,424
1868 124,795 27,836
1869 128,719 56,119
1870 44,591 15,463
1871 237,656 102,008
1872 730,959 253,750
1873 725,470 211,859
1875 1,011.675 406,873
1876 413,086 212,858
1877 768,740 554,501
$13,349,847 $2,751,605

If we had all the books, we would probably find the total deposits reaching $25,000,000, and instead of an unpaid balance of $2,751,605, the unpaid balance would be between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000.

How much there was received from 1833 till 1847, the records having been suppressed or destroyed, it is impossible to state with exactitude. That the amount ran, however, well up into the millions is evident from the activities of John Baptist Purcell in the acquisition of valuable real estate and the building of schools, nunneries, priests ‘ residences, and churches. A conservative estimate places the total receipts of the Purcell bank, from 1833 till its disastrous failure in 1879, at $50,000,000!

The vast sums of money poured into Bishop Purcell’s lap by a confiding, ignorant people enabled that ambitious prelate to stand exceedingly well at the Vatican, where from time immemorial money has been all-powerful in the securing of honors and dignities. So well did John Baptist Purcell use his plethoric resources in Roman Court circles that, in 1855, he was made an archbishop—one step only removed from a seat in the College of Cardinals, his heart’s consuming desire, as it is to-day that of the Irelands, Quigleys, Glennons, and Moellers, who shine so conspicuously among leading lights of your System in America.

When John Baptist Purcell became a multimillionaire, millionaires in America were few indeed. Great, then, was his prestige among the impressionable and ignorant people of his diocese. • A very colossus of financial strength lie towered in their midst. With wonder and amazement they saw rising on every side churches, convents, monasteries, and the sight impelled them to cry out, ” Thank the Lord for the wise Pontiff in Rome who has given us so resourceful a Bishop in Cincinnati ! ‘ ‘

An astute politician was John Baptist Purcell. That he might have in his cardinalitial ambitions the backing of the Austrian Government (Austria was at the time predominant in Germany), Purcell favored the appointment of Germans in preference to Irishmen to episcopal sees in the great territory comprised in his archiepiscopal province, which included Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Irish had no powerful government behind them. Hence did this weak-kneed son of Erin raise and re-echo the cruel inhibition of Know-Nothingism : “No Irish need apply.”

His marked friendship for German bishops and priests gave impetus also to his money-getting schemes. Two-thirds of the depositors in the Purcell bank were Germans, and three-fourths of the total deposits were theirs. Direct assurances of the Archbishop’s personal and official responsibility for all moneys deposited with the Purcell bank were given, not only by the Archbishop himself, but by his brother and factotum, Very Rev. Edward Purcell, Vicar General of the Diocese, who acted usually and generally as the Archbishop’s banking agent. To inquiring depositors Archbishop Purcell and brother Edward would so say.

See excerpts from the evidence of Paul Arrata (Brief, pp. 10, 11, Supreme Court of Ohio).

Paul Arrata testified (see Vol. Ill, p. 1178) as follows :

Q. Did you ever have any conversation with the Archbishop?

A. Yes, about a couple of months before the assignment.

Q. What took you there?

A. I went there on the 2d or 3d of November ; I wanted my money out to use; he told me, of course, he had the money all out in the churches and he could not get it right away. I said, You promised me the money in three days; he says, That is all right, I can get it about the 20th of this month, it is all right; I went up about the 20th or 21st.

Q. The Court: When was this?

A. In 1878; it was before he made a failure; it was in November. I went there, and he told me he had not the money, but he expected $40,000 from Philadelphia by express, and to come there in the afternoon. I told him my business did not allow me to come up then, and I said I might come up the next morning; and I went up, and he said that the express had not come in, and I concluded to go and see the Archbishop ; I thought I would see him; I went up to the room, and I says, Look here, I deposited with your brother — Mr. Lincoln: This is objected to. The Witness: I says, I deposited a little money with your brother; he said, How much? I says, Fifty-three hundred dollars.

Q. The Court: This is to Edward?

A. To the Archbishop. I said, I want it understood that I deposited money with your brother, and he told me he was doing business for you; he says, That is all right, what my brother owes you we are able to pay you that amount; pay you double the amount, we could have it.

Q. When was that?

A. That was in the same month; I believe the 20th or 21st of November, 1878.

Q. When was it Edward told you first that he was doing business for his brother John?

A. In 1870, when I went there first.

Q. What was said then?

A. That was not with the Archbishop, it was with Edward.

Q. Very well, when you took money there ?

A. I saw that he signed his own name ; I says, do you receive money for yourself or your brother; he says, for my brother; I am doing business for him. That is all I asked him. See excerpts from the evidence of Mrs. Wheeler (Brief, p. 24, Supreme Court of Ohio). Mrs. Wheeler testified (see Vol. Ill, pp. 1060, 1062) as follows:

A. When I first took the money, he told me that the Archbishop was responsible for any money that he took.

Q. Edward did?

A. Yes, sir; that he had on deposit; then he told me that all the church property was responsible. Q. Did you go to the Archbishop about it?

A. No, sir; I did not think it necessary, and then about two or three years after that I brought it up one day; I told him I would not trust it with anybody but the Archbishop himself ; he said I had good security.

Turn to the assurances of Edward Purcell to Joseph A. Wempe (Brief, p. 26). Joseph A Wempe testified (see Vol. Ill, p. 1072) as follows :

A. About as near as I can remember, about two years before the failure, I went to Edward Purcell’s office to deposit money, I think it was either one hundred or one hundred and fifty dollars ; it was a small amount, and the Archbishop happened to be in there, and one of them made a remark, the Archbishop or Edward, ‘why do n’t you take this money and buy a home and pay for it.’ I had been depositing there, and my wife also. I said I wanted to save up enough to go into business; Edward says, ‘whenever you want any of this money you will have to give us two weeks’ notice, as we have it standing out among other congregations.’ The Archbishop said, ‘yes, yes, the money is out among poor congregations that have to get money from us;’ that was all the conversation I had.

Q. When did you begin to deposit money there ?

A. I think some five or six years before that. Similar statements were made to Mrs. Twohig (see Brief, p. 27). Mrs. Kate Twohig testified (see Vol. Ill, p. 1146) as follows:

Q. Are you a creditor of the Archbishop or Father Edward?

A. Well, when I gave my money to Father Edward, he told me that the Archbishop was good for it.

Even to bankers “Father” Edward Purcell was positive in defining the Archbishop’s responsibility for deposits and loans. It was this clergyman’s habit to assure credulous depositors that the sun was more likely to fall than the Purcell bank to fail. To all depositors Archbishop Purcell and his brother said in substance, as Judge Miller well states in said brief, p. 30, 31, 32 :

Listen to what Archbishop Purcell said to these poor people—aged and decrepit—when they went for the purpose of saving their money, and deposited with him their last dollar !

Give the money to Edward, he is just the same as me; Edward does business for me, he works for me; deposit the money with my brother; I am always the boss; it will be safe. You will not lose your money here; the whole diocese is responsible for the money; the whole diocese is good for it; you are safer here with us than you are with the banks on Third Street; safer here than you are any other place. We got plenty of churches and schoolhouses and land, if you bring your money here you can get it; we have credit for $1,000,000; we are not robbers and thieves, you will get every cent of your money; ladies and gentlemen, as sure as you see that cross, so sure is your money. He said he wanted money to get priests to help the churches; was sorry he had not priests enough ; he put the money out in the churches, and he put it among the poor congregations. He certified to the correctness of deposits, signed his name to notes, and followed it with “Abp.,” and offered to mortgage the Cathedral.

And listen to what Edward Purcell, the brother, priest, agent and vicar-general of the diocese, said to the same unfortunates when they deposited the money with him.

I receive the money for my brother; you do not need to see the Bishop, as I am his agent; I do the business; it is the same as giving the money to the Archbishop if you give it to me; I am attending to that business. I am the authorized agent ; there is no other agent, and what I do is the same as if the Archbishop did it; the Archbishop is good for it. The business is carried on for the benefit of the diocese ; the diocese is responsible for all money received on deposit; the property of the diocese is bound for the debts incurred ; the whole Catholic diocese is responsible for the money, and it is better than a mortgage ; you worked hard for your money, and you had better take it away from the Aurelius church, and bring it to me, for that is a dangerous place. The Archbishop is responsible for any money that I take; all the church property is responsible; you have good security; you have all the church property in Cincinnati; the churches are good enough for your money. The money is for the benefit of the diocese, and there is three, four or five millions of church property in the diocese ; the money is for the churches in the whole diocese; whatever goes to the Roman Catholic Church goes to one party, and we can pay everything— the church can; the church will be responsible for the whole Catholic debt ; the church is responsible to pay all the debts in the diocese.

We have the money standing out among the churches; if you want a mortgage on the Cathedral you can have it; now be quiet and go home, you won’t lose one cent of your money, we have the Cathedral and a good many churches in the country, all will have to pay, all the debts will be paid by them. The money is in the diocese, and the diocese is bound to pay; my brother has plenty of property and money in the diocese, you ain’t poor, don’t cry. You might as well tell the sun to come down as to sav that Bishop Purcell will fail; he has $5,000,000 worth of property in Hamilton county; the very sun will come down on this earth sooner than Bishop Purcell will fail. He said to the bankers, the Archbishop’s signature carried with it the liability of the property in the diocese, and when asked, he signed notes, John B. Purcell by Edward Purcell. And in addition to all this, Father Ferneding, Father Henny (see Vol. Ill, p. 1013), Father Halley and other priests, acted as solicitors from their pulpits and in their private walks to send their deluded followers with their money to John B. and Edward Purcell, to deposit it in the church, as the poor widows and orphans, and the aged and worn-out, who are left destitute, were made to believe.

The cases of Miss Lizzie Bruns and Miss Dorothea Bruns are of especial interest. Both of these good women, for many years and now respected residents of Cincinnati, are natives of Germany, born near Bremen. They are Protestants who came to the United States in 1856. Landing at New Orleans, November 15th, they reached Cincinnati March 5, 1857. They were nine weeks coming by boat from New Orleans. Their good father found work in a pork house, but falling ill, died April 9, 1857. The whole family lived in one room, paying therefor rental of $2.00 a month.

The devoted mother washed to support the children. When Lizzie reached the age of fifteen, the mother fell a victim of rheumatism and died some time after. Dorothea had been sick ever since landing in America, but worked for a tailoring firm on coats. Lacking strength for this work, she subsequently did housework and was, for a time, obliged to carry in coal and scrub sidewalks.

The Bruns sisters were advised by a Roman Catholic friend to put their earnings in Purcell’s bank. Edward Purcell, the Archbishop’s brother, assured them, on receiving their hardearned moneys, that these deposits would be used to raise up the religion of Christ. They gave their money to Purcell March 18, 1878. The amount they first intended to deposit with the Purcells was $1,396, but by pinching themselves raised it to $1,400.

Work was hard to get that Spring, but the Bruns sisters, having full faith in the Purcells, left their money with them. A week, however, before Christmas they were informed by a Catholic that the Purcell bank was in a shaky condition. Miss Lizzie Bruns called at the Purcell residence dozens of times. Edward Purcell at first assured her that people living outside of Cincinnati should be paid first. Leaning, on one occasion, on the mantle, Edward Purcell assured Miss Bruns, “As sure as there is a God in Heaven, you will get your money, for the Church is good for it. ‘ ‘

He said, on another occasion, “I ’11 give you my coat if it will do you any good. p ‘ Whereupon Miss Bruns replied, “I do not want your coat. I need my money. ” To a Catholic woman, who had been at one time rich and gave the Purcells $4,000, Miss Bruns heard Edward Purcell chivalrously exclaim, “Go on, you crazy thing, you!” This woman was forced afterwards to make a living, washing. She was a German Catholic. Working at home, when she could, making coats, one of the Bruns sisters was assisted by the other just as health and opportunity permitted. The Bruns women never sued the Purcells. When the latter died, Archbishop Elder became Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati. Miss Lizzie Bruns, calling on him, Elder stated, “Why, my dear child, I never got your money. All I have got here is my room, for which I have paid.” “But,” said the Bruns woman, “we need our money. We worked too hard for it to be beaten out of it.” Elder said, “Come about Easter, when my friends may help me. Whatever the Churches got from Archbishop Purcell, they will pay back to me.”

Miss Lizzie Bruns has worked alone for seventeen years to support herself and her invalid sister. Falling ill in December, 1907, this good woman went to the Sattler Hospital, where, at her request, the nurse wrote Archbishop Moeller requesting a payment. The letter was ignored. Afterwards when Miss Bruns was able to go to his residence on Eighth Street, “His Grace” said, “We can’t have you running here all the time,” to which Miss Bruns replied, “Pay me and I will never trouble you again.’ ‘ Later on Moeller declared, “I ’11 give you nothing unless you give up your notes. If you do so, I will give you ten cents on the dollar.”

His brother, “Chancellor” Moeller, meeting Miss Bruns on one occasion, at the Chancery office, Eighth and Plum Streets, threatened to kick Miss Bruns downstairs if she again dared to trouble “His Grace,” the xlrchbishop, to pay a just debt. That was in 1910.

Going, in 1911, to the Rev. Dr. Watson, a Presbyterian minister, to whom she told her story, the latter went to see the Moellers. Dr. Watson later on informed Miss Bruns that the Archbishop told him: “We do not have to pay, but we might do something—paying perhaps $100 or $150, provided Miss Bruns gives up her notes.”

Some time after Rev. Watson’s visit to the Moellers, priest Moeller gave Miss Bruns $10 ($5 on each note) and promised to pay $10 every two months; but when the total amount paid reached $150, she would, he insisted, have to give up her notes. To this proposition she has constantly demurred. Priest Moeller fusses and foams at all recent payments.

Priest Moeller, Chancellor of the archdiocese of Cincinnati, brother and co-partner of Archbishop Moeller, on another occasion, telephoned the police to come over to the Chancery office to arrest Miss Bruns, a woman defrauded and wronged by the Roman Catholic Church. The police, to their credit, refused to interfere. Safe are we in saying that if the police of Cincinnati attempted to place Miss Bruns under arrest, Cincinnati would have witnessed a repetition of the Bedini (anti-papal) riots of the fifties and the Tom Campbell courthouse riots of the eighties. Safe, too, is it to say that had the Purcell frauds occurred in the neighboring State of Kentucky, there would have been found, in due season, dangling from lamp-posts the worthless carcasses of some Roman prelates and priests, as well as those of some papalistic assignees.

The Misses Bruns are two of many Protestants duped into leaving money with the Purcells. Can Americans stand by quietly, idly, and pusillanimously to permit these good women, now, as many including myself well know, in straitened circumstances, to be denied what is theirs justly, that cruel, callous, and lustful prelates, as well as priests, may live in ” palaces,’ ‘ enrich houses of ill-fame, and lavish the money of such honest women on luxurious trips to Europe, the South, and elsewhere?

The attention of the Purcell creditors and of all readers is respectfully called to the Moeller ‘ Archiepiscopal Palace ‘ ‘ in aristocratic Norwood —a regal mansion of fifty or more rooms, with thirteen bath-rooms !

“His Grace” Moeller lives in highest style and luxury, while surviving creditors of his predecessor, Purcell, starve in their old age; while others eke out miserable existence in lunatic asylums ; and the ashes of many more fill the premature graves that opened hospitable arms to victims despoiled by a greedy, heartless Church.

“His Grace” Moeller, refusing to live where Purcell perpetrated his robberies, builds for himself a mansion in an exclusive suburb of Cincinnati, surrounding this veritable palace with wellkept lawns and stately approaches of prelatic pride.

Would not honesty, to speak not of elemental self-respect, suggest that before palace building, Moeller should have wiped out the stain and the shame from his Church’s brow by paying off all the good people living (or the heirs, executors, and assignees of those dead) who were plunged by Cincinnatian Vaticanism into financial ruin?

Archbishop Moeller's Seal.

Archbishop Moeller’s Seal.

The legend of this seal, that of the Archbishop of Cincinnati, reads, “Pasce oves meas”—translated literally, “Feed My sheep.” Had Archbishop Moeller consulted Justice—and God is Justice itself—he would have had for archiepiscopal motto, “Pay thy just debts,” and, acting thereon, Moeller had, since his accession to the archiepiscopal see of Cincinnati, in 1904, spared no effort to pay off the Purcell church debt of $4,000,000, due to widows, orphans, to aged men and women, Catholic and Protestant, for years eking out existence miserably because of this atrocious piece of papal rascality.

“Pay thy just debts’ ‘ ought a Christian conscience say to Moeller, inheritor of the Purcell profits from robbery and spoliation. Go into lunatic asylums and relieve the insane, driven into madness by that infamy. Go out into the byways and relieve the children of the dead parents, driven to premature graves by thy predecessor’s highwaymanship. Pay, O Moeller, pay thy just debts, and then feed thy sheep!

Clever financier, “The Most Reverend” Henry Moeller, Archbishop of Cincinnati. “Witness The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, April 10, 1913:

Seminary Collection.

It was with the greatest of pleasure that the Most Rev. Archbishop announced that the annual collection for the Seminary, taken up in all the Churches during the past year, was the largest that has been received since the Seminary collection was started, $23,427.71.

In the circular read in all the churches last Sunday announcing the annual collection for Pentecost Sunday, the Most Rev. Archbishop stated that a new chapel building will soon be a necessity at Mt. St. Mary Seminary and also that, as soon as the funds were at hand, the St. Gregory Preparatory Seminary, now temporarily closed, will be reopened at Norwood Heights, where a tract of land has been purchased for that purpose.

This money should, by right, go to paying off the still unpaid Purcell debt of thirty years ago or more. Go, it should, to still the cry of the defrauded lunatic, or dry the tear of wronged widow and undone orphan. But, go it shall, instead, to train young men into the fraud and filthiness of Liguori’s theology, that they may themselves, first, become adepts in lying and in lechery, and then teach others to become so!

The very direst visitations of Providence offer chance to financial experts of the Roman stamp to enrich Romanism and Romanism’s agents. The Catholic Telegraph, Moeller’s official organ, tells, April 10, 1913 :

Contributions foe Diocesan Flood Sufferers.

The following is the amount received by the Rev. Chancellor [Moeller’s brother] for relief of the flood sufferers up to Tuesday, April 8, 1913 : From Churches and Friends Outside Archdiocese.

From Churches and Friends in Archdiocese.

Total, $23,193.82 ; Amount received by Chancellor up to Tuesday evening, April 8, 1913.

Why did not Moeller turn over this flood fund of his to Mayor Hunt, or to some civic and secular agency, thoroughly equipped for the systematic relief of suffering? Why? Because moneys for the relief of flood sufferers, turned over to honest American citizens, would be used for one purpose only—that for which its donors intended.

The secular and civic boards managing flood relief funds never ask a sufferer if he be Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Gentile. The Catholic sufferer rarely, if ever, gets aid from his priesthood. Papal funds are deaidedly “personal, private, and confidential! ‘ ‘

Few indeed would have been the Purcell bank’s depositors had the impression taken strong ground that the properties held in fee simple by John Baptist Purcell ($5,000,000 thereof in Hamilton County, Ohio, U. S. A., alone), were not considered responsible for his monetary obligations.

Beneficiaries of Purcellistic generosity got busy when the bank failed in seeking to shield the author of so much disaster to the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. An “ambassador of the New York Sun” was, for instance, induced to write an apologetic sketch of Archbishop Purcell.

Eulogists of Purcell have harped repeatedly and monotonously on the personal honesty of John Baptist Purcell.

Is the betrayer of a trust an honest man! In his funeral oration over John Baptist Purcell, Bishop Gilmour, of Cleveland, said of the dead prelate :

He has consecrated eighteen bishops, ordained hundreds of priests, and received the vows of thousands of consecrated virgins. Fifty-seven years he has served at the altar; fifty years he has sat in the chair of Moses—a ruler, a Prince in the House of God, with but one thought—God ; one desire—good; one ambition—the salvation of men.

Noble instinct! noble ambition! worthy the highest aims of human desire and the tenderest affections of the human heart. Nobly begun, nobly ended. The name of John Baptist Purcell will go down to history stainless in its manhood, stainless in its priesthood, amid the tears and affections of his people, whom he loved so well [and robbed so well]. … A purer mind, a more disinterested Bishop has seldom gone to God. [Of course his victims, Catholic and non- Catholic, go to Purgatory and Hell.]

Bishop Gilmour further said: His whole life was one abiding offering. He received but to give, as all well remember who ever came in contact with him. Money he valued only so far as it was a means to do good. His giving was only limited by his inability to give more.

John Baptist Purcell was, truth to tell, part and parcel of the System of which you are the head, a System utterly without heart for the suffering, the poor, and the helpless. What right had John Baptist Purcell to use poverty’s deposits, labor’s savings, left with him in sacred trust, to bribe greedy followers of your court, to buy mitres for ambitious priests, and to gild a pathway for himself to a seat among your cardinals? When he betrayed his trust, the pope of Rome was his partner in betrayal. Yea, the pope was author of that betrayal. Agent was Purcell of the pope, for the pope, and by the pope, for all papal schemes in the entire Middle West. The approval of your predecessors, expressed or clearly implied, he had for all his schemes of banking, bartering, stealing, and looting. Says Bishop Gilmour again:

Not within the century has there been a richer tint to the name of the dead than that of Purcell to the Episcopacy. For fifty years he [Purcell] has stood a prominent factor in the American Church. He has seen it grow from tender infancy to stalwart manhood, a sapling to a sturdy oak. A part in its creation, a hand in its direction, he has been a prominent factor in its history. At one time almost dominant in her councils, everywhere his influence has been felt. When through this “prominent factor’s’ ‘ financial failure, his robbery of thousands of confiding people, suffering widespread was inflicted, what did your predecessors do to alleviate the sufferings of those wronged and undone by the Purcell brothers? Your immediate predecessor is credited with writing to the Catholic Society of Vicenza :

Justice have I worshiped. Long struggles, labor, chicanery, plots, and hard blows have I borne. But, of faith the champion, I will not flinch. For Christ’s flock how sweet to suffer; yes, even in prison ; how sweet to die!” Fine sentiments indeed, but these sentiments of your predecessor did not, evidently, apply to the United States. Nowhere is it on record that he made any adequate effort to secure for the Purcell creditors reparation for the losses so cruelly inflicted by one of his most prominent representatives.

When, “Holy Father,’ ‘ have you, or any of your predecessors, taken time from familiar pastime of denunciation and cursing, to bless the multitudes of this struggling race of men in its upward movement?

The Kaiser Wilhelm once summoned before him a bishop of Alsace-Lorraine who had “cursed’ ‘ a grave on German soil. To that “cursing” bishop the Emperor of Germany spoke in terms plain and energetic. “Your office is,” said the Emperor in substance, “not to curse, but to bless. Why dare you curse the grave of a loyal son of the Fatherland? Withdraw, sir, and be ashamed of your unchristian conduct.” That bishop was, after all, doing just what, as he saw it, duty to his master, the pope, demanded and commanded. No person, priest, prelate, or layman, believing in or submitting to the doctrine of papal infallibility, can be truly loyal to another government. The moment a man acknowledges another power superior to his country’s in claims on his allegiance, he becomes that very moment traitor to the country under whose flag he enjoys blessings of freedom and security. Your present theological system, dating from 1870, declares the pope infallible in matters of faith and morals. Within the domain of morality lies every duty political, civil, social, domestic, and individual that man is called to fulfill. The Roman Catholic is, at every turn, at every step, within the sphere of daily duty met by the imperious command that, above Presidents, Princes,

Congresses, and Parliaments, is pope of Rome. The history of papal intrigues and usurpations, dating from Constantine, brings us through the fiery struggles against the independent National life of peoples by Gregory VII; the insolent parcelling out of a New World between Spain and Portugal by the infamous Alexander VI; the establishment of the Jesuits, the unchristian definitions of the Council of Trent, and, finally, the horrible blasphemy of the Council of the Vatican. Bishops, at one time considered your equals, are now mere puppets in the stern, selfish, unfeeling hand of your System.

John Baptist Purcell, of Cincinnati, the creation and creature of modern papalism, was, in all his treachery to the toiling masses, whom he duped and robbed, a faithful type of Rome- made and pope-crowned bishop. No sin for him to rob laborer Paul that he might give abundantly to grasping, greedy prelate in Rome calling himself successor of Peter!

I am, Respectfully,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

Subject: The Purcell Case but one instance of Eomanistic greed and intrigue.—Canada fruitful field for papal exploitation.

“Your Holiness:”
John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati, defaulter for at least $4,000,000 to honest German and other toilers—some of these Protestants—was typical agent of your iniquitous System of rapine and pillage, whose history, written in the blood of twelve centuries of martyrs, is one of humanity’s darkest reproaches. How faithfully Purcell toiled for your System, that he might, at nod or beck of some predecessor of yours, be raised to the rank of cardinal, is borne out by Bishop Gilmour in his funeral oration, cited in my first letter. He says:

I have seen him in the rude shanty sitting for hours, hearing the confessions of the people who came from far and near to see and hear the farfamed prelate, and when the day’s work was done for others, hear him in the courthouse, explaining the doctrine of the Church. He seemed never to weary, nor did the gay and cheering words of the hard-worked missionary ever fail. … No matter how hard the work or difficult the task, no one ever heard him complain or murmur at the toil.

How was the fidelity of this trusted agent of your System rewarded by the papacy? A French proverb expresses very clearly the significant truth: “Dans Vadversite on connait ses vrais amis” (In adversity one knows his true friends). When John Baptist Purcell’s day of adversity came, where did the papacy stand? Did it arise, equal to the occasion, and draw from its hoards in British, Dutch, and other banks, the moneys necessary to pay off the sums due to Purcell’s 3,485 creditors? A loan of $4,000,000, secured by the Archbishop of Cincinnati’s diocesan property, worth easily three or four times that amount, could have been, without difficulty, made by your predecessor.

Or, your predecessor might have issued command to the Church in America to raise the needed amount as suggested by the New York Herald. See The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 12, 1879, p. 5, col. 5:

The Archbishop’s Debts.
[New York Herald.]

There are in the United States about six million Catholics, and less than a dollar from each would cancel the indebtedness. It is very probable, however, that upon investigation the grand total of the amount deposited with the Archbishop will be found to be much less than $6,000,- 000 ; but even should it reach that sum it could be paid in a day by general subscription. The moral effect of so splendid an illustration of Christian faith and good works would be incalculable. As an evidence of solid faith it would be of more practical value than a score of costly cathedrals. The Catholics of this country have, in our opinion, the greatest and grandest opportunity to show the faith which is in them, and at the same time perform a noble charity, that was ever offered to a religious denomination. To serve their poor, ruined brethren of Ohio by a united effort would be the most impressive moral spectacle of the century, the brighest chapter in the history of the American Catholic Church. To allow the opportunity to pass unimproved will be to deepen, if possible, the stain that has fallen on the Catholic name and character.

But ungrateful master, indeed, is your Roman System. No helping hand is hers for sorrow or misfortune. No practical sympathy did the papacy show to its fallen and humiliated prelate, of whom a generous writer then spoke in these feeling terms: ‘ ‘ His step is unsteady, his hands tremulous, his eyes unsteady, and his face deeply lined, evidently more by mental anxiety than by years. ‘ ‘

Into Vatican recesses failed to penetrate the sobs and sighs of despoiled, penniless victims of the Purcell fraud. From The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 2, 1879, I take the following:

One man said yesterday in the Trustees ‘ office : “I had $2,000 in the Archbishop’s hands. I have no work and no money. My wife and children are barefoot, and but for the charity of some Jews who are my neighbors they would have starved. This morning a good friend of mine, a good man with a family, who has $900 in the Archbishop’s hands, came to me and said, ‘ Good-bye ; I am desperate ; my family starve, my money is gone, and I will kill myself.’ A poor woman went crazy in the Trustees’ office a few days ago, maddened by her trouble. Scores of such cases might be enumerated of utter desperation born of misery.

One sees them thronging every morning at the Archbishop’s door, asking the monotonous question: ‘Is there anything for us yet? Even a little to buy some bread?’ ”

The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 4, 1879, states :

All yesterday the office of the Trustees, at the corner of Main and 5th Sts., was thronged with creditors of the Archbishop, clamorous for the settlement of their claims. They filled the rooms of Mannix & Cosgrove, the Trustees’ attorneys, so that it was impossible for the Trustees to hold their usual meeting, and at night dozens of them besieged Father Quinn in his room at the Archiepiscopal residence. During the afternoon Father Albrink, one of the trustees, and Mr. Mannix, started out in search of a suitable person to accept the position of assignee to the Archbishop, but their search proved futile. Archbishop Purcell has fully determined upon an assignment and will make it as soon as an assignee can be procured. At present he is engaged in a Lenten retreat [!] a few miles out of the city, but within an hour’s call whenever needed.

The Purcell case attracted universal attention. In the New York Sun, March 25, 1879, appeared another very striking article entitled :

THE ARCHBISHOP’S FAILURE.

How the Lost Money Came, How it Went, and Where it Has Gone.

The thing which people seemed to find most difficult in understanding about the failure of Archbishop Purcell is, “What has become of the money?”

It is without precedent in the history of bankruptcies that so vast a sum should leave so little trace of its disappearance. . . .

The allegation has been made that large amounts of the depositors’ money had been sent to Rome.

While the creditors of your System’s agent, John Baptist Purcell, had to go without bread, Catholic authorities were giving strong assurances that all the Purcell obligations would be liquidated. The Enquirer, March 8, 1879, quoted “One (N. Y.) Catholic clergyman’ ‘ as saying:

There need be no fear that the funds will not be furnished to make good all claims against Archbishop Purcell. When St. Peter ‘s Church in Barclay St. was involved to the extent of $100,000 under the administration of Father Pise and Father Power, Archbishop Hughes appointed Father Quinn, now Vicar General, to take charge of its affairs, and under his administration the debt of the parish was almost entirely paid off. Since then, however, St. Peter’s has become deeply in debt again. Another more notable instance occurred recently in Orange, N. J., where a Catholic clergyman bought considerable property, built a fine church, and established an orphan asylum, incurring a debt of about $170,000 on property that would not sell under foreclosure for more than $50,000. Bishop Corrigan, of the Newark Diocese, however, assumed the whole debt, saved the property from foreclosure, and has now paid off nearly all the claim.

With the Vatican’s ears closed, and its heart (?) steeled against cries of distress from Cincinnati, with the failure of brother Bishops in America to make up the Purcell obligation, with the diocesan priests of Cincinnati enjoying life as has been always their wont, oblivious of everything save personal good cheer and comfort, the Purcell creditors went without their money. To their graves have gone hundreds of these plundered people in the last thirty years, some in their dying hour cursing both Pope and Purcell. One of the saddest scenes which I ever witnessed while I was a member of the Eoman Hierarchy was that of an old maiden lady in Manchester, N. H., who died in 1886, cursing Archbishop Purcell and the pope of Rome for having swindled her out of her hard earnings. See “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” Chapter VI, p. 108.

Here it may be well to ask why was not the like treatment meted out to ordinary bank defaulters and trust looters, administered to the Purcell brothers! The law’s just severity duly applied might have brought about as prompt and complete settlement of the sad affair. Clear is it that the Purcells obtained money under false pretences ; clear, also, that they misused the moneys to their care entrusted. Why were they suffered to escape the punishment such atrocious misconduct so richly deserved?

The Cincinnati steal is but one instance of papalistic intrigue and rapine in America. There has been besides, the Wagoman Catholic University defalcation, and many another of less prominence. Greed and rapacity are predominant characteristics of your infamous System. Look, for example, at one of the garden spots of Romanism in America.

The Province of Quebec, Canada, is certainly striking instance of Roman activities and influences. From a paper, Holy Father, friendly to you and the causes you represent, edited by a Protestant clergyman, Rev. J. A. MacDonald, I take the following clear exposition of conditions in one Canadian city only, in the matter of municipal taxation. Writing from Montreal, February 20, 1913, Toronto Globe’s duly accredited representative, J. C. Ross, says:

Montreal, Feb. 20.—Toronto is not the only city in Canada which is agitated over the land-tax question. Montreal is now facing a phase of this question which promises to develop into one of the most important and far-reaching controversies in the history of the city. In Toronto, apparently, the question is largely one of the relation between improved and unimproved property. In Montreal it is the question of whether or not property belonging to religious organizations shall be exempt from taxation or not.

At the present time over one-fifth of the property in the city of Montreal is exempt from taxation. The seriousness of allowing this wholesale exemption of property to exist is further shown by the fact that Montreal has a civic debt to-day which absorbs every year over 27 per cent of the entire revenue raised by the city.

IN THE SUBURBS TOO.

The case in Montreal is not an isolated one. The city of Outremont, a residential suburb of Montreal, has over one-third of its property exempt from taxation. The city of Westmount and other municipalities adjoining Montreal, show a similar condition of affairs. Not only in these outlying suburbs, but in Montreal as well are located large farms owned by various religious orders, on which not one cent of taxes has ever been paid. In addition, valuable down-town business sections owned by Church organizations are largely free from taxation. To spend over 27 per cent of the civic revenue for interest charges and to exempt over one-fifth of the total property places unnecessary and severe burdens upon the citizens who contribute to the city coffers.

The abuse which has grown to such tremendous proportions began in a small way. At the outset churches and religious orders were poor and comparatively few in number. With the growth of the city they increased in number and wealth, until to-day not only are churches and the property they hold exempt from taxation, but all sorts of charitable, educational, or religious organizations in any shape or form connected with the Church has become exempt. In some cases religious orders have made all their investments in real estate. They purchase valuable property from private owners, which immediately becomes non-revenue-producing to the city as soon as it passes into the hands of a religious order. As they are not forced to pay taxes nor in any way assist in the upkeep of the streets, police, fire, light, or other public utilities serving the property, these religious orders can hold their property for an indefinite time, and undersell, if necessary, the man who holds property alongside, on which heavy taxes have to be paid. As soon as a property becomes sufficiently valuable these religious orders sell it and immediately reinvest in a still larger property; thus the evil spreads, and more and more property is passing from the revenue-producing to the non-revenue-producing class.

STRIKING EXAMPLES.

An example or two will illustrate this: In May, 1910, the Grey Nuns purchased a property at the corner of St. Lawrence boulevard and Sherbrooke street for $135,000. As soon as they purchased it, it ceased to contribute to the revenue of the city. The nuns held it for a year and a half, and then sold it for $395,000, making a profit of $260,000 not a cent of which went to the coffers of the city, whose activities made the land increase in value. A few years ago the ‘ ‘ Hornerites ‘ ‘ purchased a property on Bleury street for $3,000, built a little church on it which cost $4,000, and sold it a few months ago for over $80,000. St. George’s Church, opposite the Windsor Station, was recently sold for upwards of $1,500,000, although it cost but a very small fraction of this. For the Archbishop ‘s palace on Dominion Square, assessed at but a trifle over $800,000, an offer of $3,000,000 is said to have been made.

The Seminary of St. Sulpice maintains a farm of nearly one hundred acres in the heart of Montreal and Westmount. It is valued at $1,750,000. Various other farms within the city limits are valued at from a quarter of a million to half a million dollars. These farms are entirely surrounded by the highest class residential property and entail enormous expenses on the citizens who contribute to the city’s upkeep. Sidewalks and streets must be opened past these farms, street railway lines constructed, sewers and water mains laid to the residences beyond, telephone lines and all other public utilities carried past these vacant spaces. The improvements made to the residential property adjoining these farms enormously enhance their value, and many of these farms, if broken up into building lots—as is done from time to time—would sell to-day at over two dollars per square foot.

AN ECONOMIC QUESTION.

It must not be inferred from the above that the Roman Catholic Church is the only Church which has its property exempt from taxation. Every religious denomination is exempt, but as the Roman Catholic Church constitutes over fourfifths of the population, their exemptions naturally greatly exceed those of all the other denominations combined. In addition the Roman Catholic Church has many semi-religious, educational, and charitable bodies connected with its organization, who seem to have specialized in real estate investments. Many of these orders have become immensely wealthy, and to-day own large farms in the residential districts, on which they pay not one cent of taxes. When the question does come up for settlement, it will be dealt with not as a religious question, but as an economic one. If all the Churches and religious orders were made to pay taxes on their holdings, none of them could reasonably complain. They should at least contribute part of their unearned increment to the city, which furnishes them with public^ utilities and makes possible the increase in their realty earnings.

Certainly something must be done to secure more revenue. Montreal’s total assessment today is $638,000,000, of which $136,000,000 is exempt from taxation. Three years ago the taxable property in the city was $260,000,000, while the exempt property was $68,000,000. In the three years the exempted property has more than doubled, while the taxable property has not shown a similar increase. The city has a debt of $63,- 000,000, or a per capita debt of $118. Out of her revenue $2,750,000, or over twenty-seven per cent, is paid out yearly as interest charges. The city has the unenviable reputation of being the worst governed city on the continent. Its streets are dirty, poorly paved, and ill-lighted, while the whole civic machinery is open to condemnation. In spite of all this, Montreal adds to her exempted property millions every year. The more thoughtful business men in the city and in the council are asking where it is to end. The question is one of the biggest confronting the people of Montreal to-day.

Not alone in the matter of municipal taxation is the Roman Church, of which you are the head, enemy of the people of Quebec and of the Dominion of Canada, but also in the grave issues of sanitation. Read from The Toronto Globe, Ontario, organ of Sir Wilfred Laurier:

(Special Dispatch to The Globe.)

Montreal, Feb. 16.—The smallpox situation in the Province of Quebec at the present time is causing some uneasiness in medical circles. There are now 31 counties in the province reporting smallpox cases, and the total of cases reported is between two and three hundred.

The more funerals, the more revenue for priests and Church !

Two rebellions in the Canadian Northwest were started and guided by the Roman priesthood. The leader of each of these rebellions was one Eiel, at one time a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Archbishop Tache, the leading Romanist hierarch of the Canadian Northwest, was a hater profound of the English language and, in especial manner, of the Irish race. He wanted the great Northwest, now divided into the flourishing Anglo-Saxon and Protestant provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, closed against immigration and settlement. Certain high officials of the Hudson Bay Company, from which the Roman prelate received large pecuniary subventions, lent inspiration and encouragement to Archbishop Tache’s anti-British and anti-Canadian crusade, in re Northwestern colonization.

But for his anti-Canadian writings on the subject of the Northwest’s acquisition and settlement, there had been no Riel rebellion, no shedding of Protestant blood at Fort Garry in 1870. All of old Canada resounded at the time with the call of the West:

The West is calling, calling,
Seeking men who can rejoice
In her beauties all-enthralling;
Quick, awaken to her voice!

Wild her cataracts are falling,
Reigning lone in mountain glen
Aye, the West is ever calling,
Ever calling loud for men !

Hark, her deserts vast are chanting
Out their song—a voiceless song;
And, her arid wastes are panting
Neath the sun the live year long.

The West is calling, calling;
Wake, ye dreamers, hear her cry !
See her beauties all-enthralling
Spread their wealth beneath the sky!

Golden sunshine in abundance,
Fruits and flowers and joy’s release—
Eden’s garden’s fair resemblance
Lies within her land of peace!

This call, so well expressed by Eugene Carroll Nowland, appealed profoundly to all Englishspeaking and Protestant Canada. But Archbishop Tache, direct agent of the Vatican, desired to have the Northwest closed forever against Anglo-Saxon colonization or transformed by iniquitously partisan and sectarian legislation into another Quebec.

Archbishop Tache ‘s successor in Manitoba is as much in earnest in 1913 as was Tache himself from 1851 till 1894 in the work of Gallicizing and Romanizing the Canadian Northwest. The Montreal Star of May 7, 1913, states :

R. C. Archbishop Commends Roblin Education Policy.

Winnipeg, May 6.—Archbishop Langevin has issued an important pronouncement upon the school question in the form of a letter to be read in the Catholic churches. A portion of the document was read at High Mass in St. Boniface Cathedral on Sunday by Monsignor Dugas, Vicar- General, and the remainder is to be made public on a future occasion. The letter is an exposition of His Grace’s views on the school issue.

The Archbishop laments that the bill enlarging the boundaries of Manitoba did not safeguard the rights of the minority. The Coldwell amendments were, he says, the result of negotiations at Ottawa, following the passage of the bill.

It is also pointed out that the acceptance by the Winnipeg School Board of the proposition made by Mr. Coldwell would be a partial concession, and would not be regarded as a settlement in full.

The Roblin government is highly commended for having given French-Catholics their own normal school, three inspectors of their own language and faith, the right of French schools to employ teachers in religious garb, and to keep the crucifix upon the walls of the schools.

These are declared to be “appreciable services.’ Commendation, though less specific, is also passed upon the Saskatchewan government.

The letter closes with a declaration of unalterable hostility to national schools, State university, and compulsory education.

A province of Manitoba, a postage stamp on the map, was in 1870 carved out of the immense Canadian Northwest. Catholic separate schools and the French as an official language were promptly forced on the new province.

This Jesuitical scheme failed, however, to work. Of the immigrants to the newly-opened Northwest nine out of every ten were Englishspeaking and Protestant. The French was, first, abolished as an official language. Sectarian Romanist schools were, next, done away with. The priests had been drawing salaries, in most cases, as teachers, and never kept school !

No sooner, however, were the so-called Roman Catholic schools abolished, than the Hierarchy raised the cry of persecution! Appeals were made to the general government at Ottawa and to the government of Britain against the action of the Manitoba legislature in providing free public schools for all children in the provinces, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic. Grave crime, of course, in papal eyes!

Your Holiness can not name any non-Christian country on earth into which your missionaries have entered and bettered permanently the inhabitants. I present, in this connection, the following Washington dispatch published in the Courier- Journal, Louisville, Ky., February 8, 1913:

Washington, February 7.—With the transmission to Congress to-day by President Taft of a special State Department report on Anglo- Saxon exploitation of South American Indians in the Putuyamo District of Peru, conclusions on the same subject by Frederico Alfonso Pezet, Peruvian Minister to the United States, were made public by the State Department.

The latter statement shows that the Peruvian Government has been aware of every step taken by American Consul Stuart J. Fuller, and the minister gives the assurance that already steps have been taken by his government for the improvement of conditions in the Putumayo territory.

Although it was at first feared that Consul Fuller’s efforts had been rendered valueless in many respects by the espionage of agents of a British rubber company, State Department officials now are hopeful that the crying abuses of which the native Indians have been long-suffering victims eventually will be terminated.

TO RELY UPON CATHOLICS.

In bringing the Putumayo District under the protection of Peruvian law, the administration of justice, the minister points out that his government will rely largely upon the co-operation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The moral uplift of the aborigines has received very special attention [says Minister Pezet] . The administration ha s decided to erect at Iquitos, on the Amazon, a bishopric, and to establish at different places in the region five missions.

These will have a sufficient number of priests to serve the spiritual needs of the Indians, as well as to furnish instructions to them. By thus living with and among them, these Indians will be effectively protected from any new attempts to maltreat or brutalize them in any manner or form.

He says the government at Lima will seek to keep in constant communication with the Putumayo country by wireless, and a flotilla of gunboats will patrol the streams in the district to see that there is no return to the old outrages.

GUILTY TO BE PUNISHED.

As a result of the investigations by the Peruvian Judicial Commission [he continues] the several parties indicted for the crimes against the aborigines will be brought to justice and such of the criminals as had fled the country will be brought back as soon as the proper extraditions can be obtained.

Consul Fuller finds that the travesty on justice which exists in the rubber section is entirely in the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company’s section chiefs. It is the Putumayo country’s remoteness from the Peruvian capital, from all governmental authority, that has left the natives entirely at the mercy of the company, according to the report.

The Andes form an almost impassable barrier to the westward, while, to reach the outside world through the Atlantic Ocean, river craft must traverse almost the entire 3,300 miles of the Amazon. Railroads are unknown, and no highways exist worthy of the name. In this far-away corner, with no means of appeal or redress, the Indians were held at the mercy of the company’s overseers. When they failed to bring in a toll sufficient to satisfy the demands of the overseers, flogging, mutilation, and sometimes death followed, it is asserted. Several of the overseers are declared to have admitted that they had put Indians and even white laborers in stocks for minor offenses. Many of the Indians whom Mr. Fuller saw bore scars of floggings and other maltreatment.

Mr. Fuller found that the labor of the Indians is secured by a system of peonage based on advance of merchandise. Although payment is made for this labor, it is declared to be nothing more nor less than forced labor.

Debt is declared to have been the chain with which the Indian has been fettered. By being encouraged to buy more imported goods than they could ever hope to pay for, they have been reduced to what Consul Fuller found was virtually slavery. As claims are transferable, the person of the debtor being transferred to the new creditor, the Indians and their families really are bought and sold. Families pass on indebtedness from generation to generation.

Your missionaries have been for four centuries among the aborigines of South America, Peru, of course, included. They should, surely, in that time have made the influences of Christianity, if these influences were really represented and reflected by them, felt among the aborigines of South America. The fact is that your Romanistic System does not anywhere, either in the Canadian Northwest or in Central or South America, work for the real upliftment of the ignorant or the downtrodden.

When Roman hierarchs in Montreal, Canada, in anarchical defiance of their country’s and of the British Empire’s laws, annulled a marriage legal before God and man, reducing lawfully wedded wife to rank of concubine and branding her children as bastards, the Orange Order of the Canadian Dominion rose up generously to protect womanhood wronged and childhood outraged.

Romish divorce courts, sitting under the very shadow of the very Vatican itself, are, every day, issuing divorces. So they are in all other countries of Europe and in all parts of America — conspicuously so in the United States and in Canada. These anarchical agencies act more openly and defiantly in French-Catholic Canada, where in very recent times they have separated a vinculo et thoro Mrs. Tremblay, a lawfullymarried woman, from her husband, who, on finding another woman he liked better, went to popish priest and had the latter declare null and void, for cash considerations, of course, his marriage to lawful wife, and mother of his children, that he might marry the other and younger party with full approval of Church and State.

How utterly indefensible is the Roman Catholic priesthood’s action in this matter is very clear, from the fact that the priest who first married the Tremblays was bound by Church law to ascertain if any relationship or other impediment existed to prevent their marriage. Having satisfied himself on this point, he might proceed with the ceremony, either on his own authority or through the dispensing power of his bishop.

No justification whatever, in any case, is there for the annulment of a marriage between third cousins when the Church, after every opportunity to investigate, declares the parties competent under ecclesiastical law to wed. The State allowing such infamy is unfit for self-government.

Thus tells The Toronto Globe, April 5, 1913, of the Tremblay case:

REQUIRED SECURITY FOR APPEAL OBTAINED.

Orange Grand Master Sends Balance Necessary, justice to Mrs. Tremblay.

Her Counsel, Arnold Wainwright, Asked Extension of Time, but Court of Review Reserved Judgment.—Real Estate Equivalent to Cash.

[Canadian Press Dispatch.]

Ottawa, April 4.—The Grand Master of the Orangemen of British North America, Lieut-Col. J. M. Scott of Walkerton, has, it is understood, forwarded to Montreal the balance of the amount of the security required by the judgment of the Court of Review of Quebec to be deposited within fifteen days for appeal to the Privy Council in the Tremblay-Depatie marriage case.

Arnold Wainwright, K. C, of Montreal, has the now famous suit in charge. Although both parties are Roman Catholics, it is felt by the Orange Order that the cause is one of justice to Mrs. Tremblay. The limited time set for the appeal to the Privy Council necessitated immediate action, and the response to Mr. Wainwright ‘s appeal has been prompt. J. H. Burnham, M. P. for West Peterborough, contributed $500 to the fund earlier this week.

EXTENSION OF TIME ASKED.

Montreal, April 4.—Arnold Wainwright, K. C, counsel for Mrs. Napoleon Tremblay, the appellant in the fourth-cousins marriage annulment case, this morning made application before the Court of Review for an extension of the time set for the deposit of $2,000 as security for costs before the appeal to the Privy Council can be taken.

Mr. Justice Delorimier said that it would not be necessary to put up cash, as real estate would be considered as security by the court. His Lordship also stated that Mr. Wainwright yet had nine days in which to get the security, and he thought that would be adequate.

Mr. Wainwright, it is said, had made his application because the court rose to-day until the sixteenth.

Paul Germain, K. C, who appeared on behalf of the husband, objected to the delay, and argued that Mrs. Tremblay, when the appeal proceedings were begun, months back, should have then made provision for the security for costs. He also held that an affidavit from Mrs. Tremblay authorizing the appeal should have been submitted to the court.

Mr. Wainwright said he had filed his own affidavit that Mrs. Tremblay ‘s authorization to proceed had been secured. He further remarked that no matter what happened, the decision of the Privy Council on the case would be obtained.

Judgment was reserved by their Lordships.

Quebec is the most illiterate and backward Province of the Canadian Dominion, because its school system is priest-ridden. Ontario is every day becoming more and more a Romanized satrapy, because political partisan exigencies connive at the Gallicization and Romanization of whole counties in its eastern section. Rome has blotted out the Protestants of Quebec as a political factor in that important section of the Dominion. There were, in 1867, when the Canadian Provinces were federated, from fourteen to sixteen counties in Quebec, with Protestant populations sufficiently large or influential to entitle the minority to sixteen out of sixty-five representatives in Parliament. There are to-day four counties only in Quebec out of sixty-five where the Protestants are numerically strong enough to insist on having a Protestant representative in Parliament.

The school system of Quebec is under control, absolutely and exclusively, of the French bishops of Canada. All the bishops who have dioceses, either wholly or partially in Quebec, are members ex-officio of the Council of Public Instruction. The Archbishop of Ottawa, the Bishop of Pembroke, and the Vicar Apostolic of Temiskaming, who all live in Ontario, and the Bishop of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, having portions of their dioceses within the territorial limits of Quebec Province, are also members exofficio of this French Canadian Council of Public Instruction. Three or four lay delegates are reluctantly permitted by the Bishops to sit and vote as members of this Council.

This Council, having full and entire charge of the school system of Quebec as to religious instruction, discipline, text-books, teachers and their qualifications, meets four times a year in the Parliament Buildings at Quebec City.

The members are given mileage to and from their places of residence, all the Bishops having at the same time in inside pocket railroad passes ; they are further paid $10 per diem for arduous services in the promotion of popular benightment and moral degradation.

The rural schoolhouses of Quebec, and many of those in towns, are in disgraceful condition of dilapidation and inefficiency, the text-books antiquated and inferior, the teachers poorly qualified. But their “Graces” and their “Lordships” of the French Hierarchy of Canada wax fat and rich on the unfortunate people forced to bow to their i i educational control. Of Americans and all other civilized men, I ask—Do you want this Romanized Quebec present-day system of schools foisted upon your children to darken their minds, enslave their bodies, and paralyze their every energy?

The English language was at one time frequently enough heard in the Quebec Legislature. Now it is very rarely used in that body. No French member thinks of using it. The English speaking member who employs the English language in a supposedly British Legislature at Quebec is forced to address empty benches!

Your System has made the English-speaking British subject an alien in language, laws, and religion in a land over which his country’s flag is by the Vatican still permitted to float!

I am, Respectfully,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

Subject: The Failure of the Romanist Priesthood as an Instrumentality of Human Upliftment.

“Your Holiness:”
Your priesthood has been tried and found wanting. Your missionaries have nowhere builded structures of permanency. Why? Because they have preached popery, not the gospel of Jesus Christ. You point, indeed, to your Francis Xaviers and others. Xavier was a gloomy fanatic, whose work left no enduring result in the Far East, where your historians claim for him millions of conversions. Compared he may not be for one moment with the immortal David Livingstone, brave, tireless “watchman of the night, who toiled when all was dark.” What other man, but true Christian missionary like Livingstone, could draw fitting eulogy like that from the diamond pen of Adelaide M. Plumtre:

Who is ‘t that asks that he be not forgot?
Why should he miss his fellows’ common lot?
Why speak of him, after a hundred years,
When Time has wov’n oblivion o’er his peers?

This was the man who left the laboring loom,
Forsook the student’s life, to pierce the gloom
Of matted jungle, brave the swamp’s foul breath,
In Africa. Where ofttimes lonely Death

Stood by the flood, lurked in the treach’rous grass,
And watched, with greedy eyes, his victim pass.
Dauntless, the traveller walked; nor storm nor sun
Feared he, “immortal till his work was done.”

Light weighed he wealth, and those dear household joys
That dip the scale when men in judgment poise
That good ‘gainst this, wejl knowing that they choose
But once. So chose he, wittingly, to lose

All that strong men hold dear, that he might save
From his long doom of woe the moaning slave.
This was his hope—to salve “the open sore”
That bled the world, and for this cause he bore

Loss of all earthly honors, counting it but gain,
If he might win the world to loathe the stain
And curse of slavery. Yet not this alone
Could satisfy the heart of Livingstone.

Forever as he went he held on high
The Cross of Him who loved enough to die.
So passed he through the land, righting the wrong,
Helping the weak to struggle with the strong.
Telling of love and making love seem true
Because he sought the deeds of love to do.

I have interesting testimony from the Very-
Rev. E. J. Vattmann, “Missionary Apostolic,” and Chaplain U. S. Army, an enterprising Catholic priest, who, by President McKinley’s own appointment, visited the Philippine Islands on an official mission. His mission was to ascertain, right on the ground, the social and religious conditions of the Philippine populations, with the view of enabling the American Government to devise—from information such as he might obtain— the best measures for establishing an enduring form of government in the archipelago under distinctly American auspices.

Father Vattmann informed me personally on his return from the Philippines that ninety-eight per cent of the priests in the Philippines were living brazenly and defiantly in concubinage the most flagrant and often revolting.

When Vattmann gave me this information, he was soliciting immunity from exposure for his friend and co-worker, Father Heldmann, to whose shameless exploits explicit reference is made on pages 412-415 of my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation.’

Vattmann, when stationed as Senior U. S. Army Chaplain at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, spent the major part of his time going about from one priest’s house to another in the city, dining, wining, and soliciting moneys for purgatorial masses, reaping rich harvests indeed.

Vattmann is now a pensioner on the United States Treasury—but besides drawing pay from our Government for services (?), he acts as Secretary, member of the Board of Directors, and of the Executive Committee of “The Catholic Colonization Society, U. S. A.,” with headquarters in Chicago. This Society has agents at work all over Europe. See “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” Chapter VI, pp. 104-108.

For his services as Secretary and Director of this organization Vattmann draws liberal pay. He stands in well with railroads and other transportation agencies, to whose revenues the land companies controlled by this Catholic Colonization Society are liberal contributors, for the conveyance of immigrants to their destination in various parts of the West and Southwest.

The owners of the lands upon which the Catholic settlements of Vattmann’s organization are founded provide, free of charge, Romanist church buildings, schools, nunneries, and priests ‘ houses, thus placing foreign-governed Roman Church in absolute control of large sections of American territory.

Your missionaries replace a purely pagan superstition with a semi-Christian superstition incapable of inspiring respect for the Christian domestic life established by the religious system of Jesus Christ. Your unmarried missionaries often lead in pagan lands lives sadly at variance with Gospel teachings. The lecherous missionary can not inspire intelligent heathens, (millions of intelligent heathens there are), with respect for clean, moral living.

Your clergy are taught disrespect for the married state. Often they revolt from the cruel condition of unmoral servitude imposed by a heartless System. A recent instance is just one of many constantly occurring in this and other countries:

Vows of Celibacy Cast Off by Priest for a Rectorship.

Special dispatch to Commercial Tribune,

New York, Feb. 16th.—For the first time in New York Church circles a Roman Catholic priest of years of experience, and for the last five years of great prominence, entered to-day upon the rectorship of a Protestant Episcopal Church.

The Rev. William Thomas Walsh, a leading member of the Society of St. Paul, or as they are better known, the Paulist Fathers, whose church is that of St. Paul the Apostle, at Columbus Avenue and Sixtieth Street, became rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Alexander Avenue, near 142d Street, one of the old and well-known Episcopal Churches of the Bronx.

During his connection with the Paulist Fathers, Father Walsh was one of the special preachers to non-Catholics. He was selected for this work because of his eloquence and because of his ability to argue in favor of Catholicism and against the Protestants. Last November Bishop Greer received him into the Episcopal Church without additional ordination, but requiring a good deal of study of the Protestant position. To-day he put him in charge of St. Mary’s, whose vestry has formally elected him rector. — The Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, February 17, 1913.

The Independent, New York, July 3, 1913, refers to the withdrawal, within a few years, of seven Paulist Fathers from that Order, and of not a few other priests in this country and in Europe, a number of them even Jesuits.

No respect has your System for the sacredness of the marriage tie. Money may buy divorce from your courts, which override and defy all State laws on the subject of marriage. How the papal divorce tribunals bleed litigants for all they are worth is clear from the following:

Rota to Consider Gould-Talleyrand Marriage.
Defender of Matrimonial Bond Appeals from Recent Annulment.

Rome, March 8th.—Mgr. Parrillo, defender of the matrimonial bond, has appealed against the recent decision of the Rota Tribunal, annulling the marriage of Count Boni de Castellane and Anna Gould, now the Duchess de Talleyrand.

Two decisions have already been rendered by this court—the first, against Count de Castellane, who sought the annulment, and the second, reversing the former decree and granting the annulment. The case will now come up for the third time at the sitting of the Rota, about two months hence, and Mgr. Parrillo Js appeal has been entrusted to Mgr. John Prior, an English member of the Rota Tribunal, for the necessary investigations.

No matter what the decision of this court may be, another appeal is possible, but only if based on errors in the procedure or in the law, or on new evidence. In that event the Segnatura Tribunal, the Supreme Court of the Vatican, might either reject the appeal, or, if it admits the claims, decide that there must be another hearing before the Rota Tribunal. It is not probable that a final decision will be reached before July or August. — Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., March 9, 1913.

Boni Castellane Wins New Victory.
Papal Tribunal Annuls Marriage—Verdict Will
Be Combated by Another Body.
Special Cable to Commercial Tribune.

Rome, May 3d.—The verdict of the Tribunal of the Rota annulling the marriage of Count Boni de Castellane to Anna Gould, now the Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, will shortly be published. Count Boni de Castellane has been trying to secure this annulment for some time, and has carried the matter through several of the Vatican tribunals. The following is an authentic summary of the decision of the Rota Tribunal:

“This case was brought before three Judges of the Rota Tribunal, who heard the evidence of the plaintiff, which showed that Anna Gould’s consent to a Catholic ceremony and the other necessary agreements before the marriage was invalid. Following this witness, the court heard Count John de Castellane, a brother of the plaintiff; Prince John del Drago, and Mrs. Catherine Cameron.

“Further evidence was brought by the plaintiff to show that even after their marriage Anna insisted that she was free to divorce her husband. The evidence produced by the defendant with the object of proving that neither before nor after marriage had she spoken of divorce consisted of the following witnesses: Howard Gould, Edwin Gould, George Gould, Edith Kingdon Gould, Addie Woodward Adams, and Edna Montgomery. After quoting numerous canonists, the Judges declared the marriage null and void for lack of consent.”

As soon as this decision is promulgated the defenders of the matrimonial bond will appeal against it, and the case will be brought before the Rota Tribunal. The Duchess Talleyrand- Perigord has instructed Mgr. Patrizi to look after her interest and further evidence, since the case has been decided against her for lack of sufficient evidence. — The Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, May 4, 1913.

Pope Pius X, “Vicar of Christ” acting as Chief Justice in the Castellane-Gould divorce case recently before the Vatican’s Supreme Court of Divorce, decides finally in favor of Count Boni. The Catholic Telegraph, June 19, 1913, tells part of the inhuman, un-Christian story:

CASTELLANE-GOULD CASE
Finally Decided in Favor of the Count
[Catholic Press Association.]

Rome, June 7.—The second Rota judgment in the Castellane-Gould marriage case upsets the previous sentence and declares the marriage null. The count based his first appeal to the Holy See on the plea that Anna Gould married him with the intention of getting a divorce—which is contrary to the very essence of Christian marriage. The Rota found that his case was not sufficiently proved, and decided against him. He appealed. The evidence he adduced was that a quarter of an hour before the marriage Anna Gould declared to his (the count’s) mother that she did not really know if she wished to be married or not. To the Prince del Drago she said:

Yes, I will go before the archbishop, as you tell me that it must be so, but, understand clearly, I am getting married without really knowing why, and under pressure from the count, without having time to reflect. In my case, I want both you and the count to fully understand that I am a Protestant and an American, while he is a Catholic and French; that marriage for us has not the same significance ; and that I am determined to leave him and get a divorce if I like. We have the advantage over you Catholics that we can marry again and you can not. That is why I did not want to become a Catholic.

Three other witnesses besides the Prince del Drago bore out this statement.

Anna Gould denied having used these words, and said she accepted the marriage freely. She never spoke of divorce during the first three years of married life. Then she had suspicions, later amounting to certainty, of his infidelity, and she got a separation, and subsequently a divorce. Asked if at the moment of marriage she intended to remain always with her husband or if she had a divorce in her mind, she replied :

I was still quite a child. The possibility of a second marriage had not occurred to me. I said “yes” as I was getting married in the ordinary way that any one gets married. I had no other thought.

The judges note several discrepancies in her evidence. Turning to the law of the case, they put above all the absolute principle of the indissolubility of marriage being a sacrament. They quote authorities, from St. Thomas Aquinas to Cardinal Gasparri, to the effect that a marriage in which the indissolubility is not recognized is not a marriage. On that account they upset the previous decision and declare the marriage null.

The Roman Catholic Church decrees and declares that her pious, pure, faithful, and loyal son Boni is now free to marry again, and that the children born to him by his lawful and legitimate wife, Anna Castellane, nee Gould, are “bastards”!!!

Were the litigants in this Castellane case poor, Rome had never given it the smallest attention. But Boni de Castellane has managed somehow to lay hand on an abundant supply of cash; the Duke de Sagan has now, and always has had it, in plenty; so also have the Goulds. Thus the Roman ecclesiastical vampires fatten on the prolongation of this and similar cases. And yet, we are told there is no divorce in the Catholic Church.

The most indecent and libidinous books extant are the treatises on what the Romanist clergy call Moral (?) Theology. These books are for the exclusive use of the clergy. They laugh and joke about their suggestiveness in every-day speech. Before, in fact, any young man is advanced to priestly orders, he is subjected to special instruction on sins of the flesh, even the most forbidding and abominable, by some older priestly professor.

To keep up appearances as defenders of social purity, the Romanist bishops of Ireland have of late entered upon a crusade against British papers accused of licentious tendencies and teachings. A letter from Dublin, February 22, 1913, to the Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., gives a view of this hypercritical, not to say hypocritical, Romanist movement:

Dublin, February 22d.—(Special.)—The campaign against the “vile publications which come to us from across the water’ ‘—the words are those used by the Catholic Bishop of Derry — gathers in force and vehemence. It must be admitted that the enthusiasm which has led to the boycott of Dublin news stores which handle certain English publications is not entirely due to a dislike of pernicious literature.

The opportunity of getting even with English newspapers is far too tempting to be resisted. With characteristic humor even the “Hooligans” of Dublin have joined in this purity crusade, which has for its professed object the suppression of the sale in Ireland of half a dozen Sunday newspapers published in England, which get huge circulation chiefly by their detailed reports of filthy divorce and police court cases.

It will interest American readers to know that the Sunday newspaper published by W. R. Hearst in London — The Weekly Budget—is not blacklisted by these crusaders. It is one of the few English Sunday newspapers that are now allowed to be sold openly in the streets of Dublin.

May Cause Trouble.

This agitation has already resulted in arrests, and may cause actions for criminal conspiracy to be brought by the English proprietors of the banned newspapers. Two well-to-do brothers named Larkin recently were arrested and fined $5 apiece for causing obstruction on Sunday afternoon by distributing handbills in Dorset Street, outside of an offending news-vendor’s store, and refusing to desist in compliance with the policeman’s request. The LarMns are members of the Dublin Vigilance Committee, supported by practically every bishop in Ireland, and is adopting in the cause of Christian purity those time-honored methods of boycott and intimidation that played such prominent part in Ireland’s struggle for self-government.

The handbills which caused the disturbance bore the inscription: ” Do n’t deal with shops which sell bad Sunday papers or other evil literature.”

After the arrests were made a great crowd threw mud into the news-vendor’s store, and his windows were covered with Purity placards. Other arrests are likely to be made in the near future.

An interesting phase of this agitation is that in the eye of the law the blacklisted English newspapers are entirely respectable. They also have the largest circulations of any newspapers in the world, two of them exceeding 2,000,000 every Sunday. Yet they publish details in connection with assault and other cases that would never find their way into a daily newspaper in the United States.

Irish Are Determined.

How determined the Irish people are to put a stop to the circulation of such newspapers can be gauged from the statements made on the subject by the following religious leaders:

Cardinal Logue—”I have often before warned the people against the moral ruin to which so many are exposed by vile publications, which are not only offered, but forced upon them by every device ingenuity can suggest. Unscrupulous agents for a little ill-gotten gain circulate these publications in spite of all remonstrance. What is most astonishing is that this corrupting traffic goes on openly under the very eyes of the supposed guardians of public order and decency, without the least effort to bring the delinquents to account. They tell of detectives and employ every device and disguise—and rightly so—to trap even those who adulterate food; one would think that similar ingenuity would be well employed in detecting the corrupters of public morals. It is not so in other countries, even in those governed by the professed enemies of Christianity. Thank God! our people have at last taken the matter in their own hands ; and they have embarked in a noble cause.’ ‘

Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin. ” There are in this city persons calling themselves Catholics who, by taking part in this sinful traffic in publications of a debasing, seductive, or otherwise irreligious character, lend themselves to the diabolical work of undermining both the morals and the faith of our Catholic people. Let it be clearly understood that such unworthy members of the Church, as long as they persevere in their evil courses, are unworthy to be admitted to the sacraments.”

Dr. Healy Advises a Boycott.

Dr. Healy, Archbishop of Tuam. — ” Those booksellers where this unsavory 190 THE POPE—HIGH PRIEST OF INTRIGUE literature is exposed for sale must be cautioned, and if they persist in such noxious traffic, the faithful must be warned against frequenting their shops for any purpose.’ ‘

Dr. Fennelly, Archbishop of Cashel. — “In the case of the destroyers of purity by the sale of bad literature, the Lord will rush at them on the day of judgment with the fury of a wild beast robbed of her whelps, and take vengeance on them for the souls of which He is being robbed by their abominable traffic.”

Dr. McHugh, Bishop of Derry. “Irish publications like the Irish Press are as a rule pure and clean. The great source of danger is to be found in the vile publications which come to us from across the water. Is it not an intolerable state of things to find a few persons for the sake of worldly gain undermining and corrupting the morality of a people!”

From the foregoing it can be readily seen how determined and serious are the leading spirits of this campaign, although half the zest of the fight, from the public point of view, lies in the fact that all this class of literature is published in well-behaved England.

If the prohibition of immoral literature came from a notably clean and moral body of men, attention profound it would surely command. But the Irish Roman Catholic bishops are not noteworthy for clean moral living or sobriety. One Irish bishop was by Leo XIII forced to resign on a well-proven charge of bastardy. Others just as guilty have escaped deposition because cunning enough to cover their tracks.

There lived for several years in Toronto, Canada, one Timothy O’Mahony, Bishop of Eudocia, in partibus infidelium (in infidel parts), Auxiliary to the Archbishop of Toronto, and pastor of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in that city. This man O’Mahony came to Canada with a past redolent of grossest licentiousness. O’Mahony, native of Cork, Ireland, was product direct and legitimate of the Roman Propaganda. Educated in Rome, ordained in Rome, Roman to the very uttermost limits of his being, in morality, in ambition, and in activity, he came back to Cork, where he was appointed assistant pastor of St. Finnbarr’s parish. To prove the orthodoxy and thoroughness of his Roman training, he became while there father of a child, “Mary O’Mahony.’ ‘ Named soon after, in 1870, Bishop of Armidale, Australia, he voted in the Vatican Council for papal infallibility, and then went to his antipodean diocese to test the fallibility of women. He became in a short time father of several children. Archbishop Vaughan, of Sydney, impelled by public opinion, petitioned Rome for O’Mahony’s removal. Brazen and defiant, O’Mahony went to the Eternal City and made some attempt at defense, but the Propaganda, knowing his record in Ireland and in Australia, promoted His Lordship to Toronto, Canada — “Promoveatur ut removeatur” (“Let him be promoted that he may be removed”).

* When Bishops have to be shelved for crime, or any other cause, or given a titular standing, Rome accords them a title taken from AEgean Sea Islands or Asia or Africa, where schismatics, pagans and infidels now hold sway. The shelved or nominal prelate is not obliged to go to his new diocese. He is simply reduced to a condition of innocuous desuetude. Leo XIII. abolished the title in partibus infidelium, substituting for it “Titular Bishop of Eudocia, ^Echinas, etc.” Coadjutor and auxiliary bishops receive only titular standing.

Archbishop John Joseph Lynch, of Toronto, himself under gravest charges of personal misconduct, happened at the time to be in Rome. Lynch entered into an agreement with the Propaganda. If the latter dropped its charges against him, he (Lynch) would relieve Rome and the Propaganda of the very unwelcome presence and importunities of Papa O’Mahony. Coming to Canada, O’Mahony began conspiring against his benefactor, Lynch, and made himself odious to the public in the Christian city of Toronto by some deplorable alcoholic outbreaks.

There was, in 1874, held at Quebec a bicentenary celebration of the foundation of that Roman Catholic diocese. Bishops from all parts of the Canadian Dominion were invited to be present. The English-speaking preacher for the occasion was to be “The Most Reverend” John Joseph Lynch, of Toronto. But “His Grace” was, on the night appointed for his sermon, so very much under the influence of intoxicants as to be forced to remain in retirement. The sermon was preached by an itinerant priest !

“The Right Reverend” John Walsh, Bishop of London, Ontario, Canada, paid for years house rent for a disreputable woman. This same prelate was several times taken off the street by his priests when his helplessly intoxicated condition gave scandal to passersby. His grossly immoral conduct caused several sisters to leave one of the convents of his episcopal city. His administration there ended in financial scandal.

This same bishop imported from Ireland a priest, whom he appointed Secretary of the Diocese and pastor of St. Mary’s Church, London. His Lordship’s secretary proved an enterprising disciple of Venus. He supported several mistresses. He was forbidden the home of a wellknown Catholic publisher, this judicious publisher having an impressionable daughter who had fallen victim of the Secretary’s good graces. This lecherous “Ambassador (?) of Christ” is now office bearer—to-wit, one of the Examiners of the clergy—in the State of Nebraska !

For his success in promoting morality per se et per alios, the libidinous Bishop of London aforesaid was by Rome promoted to the archiepiscopal see of Toronto, Canada.

“The Right Reverend” John O’Brien, D. D., Bishop of Kingston, Ontario, died, in 1879, of alcoholism in a Quebec hotel. The see of Kingston having fallen vacant under circumstances most painful and humiliating, the Vatican appointed thereto an Irish priest, James Vincent Cleary, of the diocese of Waterford. Cleary was high-strung, injudicious, and intemperate. He had large quantities of Irish whisky shipped to him direct from the “old sod,” the boxes bearing the label, ” Books, not to be opened.’ ‘ A zealous customs officer at Kingston, allowing his curiosity to master discretion, once insisted on having a box of these episcopally consigned ” books’ ‘ opened. There were in the box more bottles than books. But the indiscreet officer soon after got warning from his superiors at Ottawa to leave the Bishop’s “books” severely alone.

A favorite at the Vatican in marked degree was Bishop Cleary. He was a liberal contributor to “Peter’s Pence” collections. He brought on his every visit to Rome a heavy contribution, levied vi et armis, from his Canadian diocese. Bishop Cleary was in consequence promoted to archiepiscopal honors. But no honors that Rome could give increased his popularity in the Canadian Dominion. He was, from first to last, one of the most unpopular prelates that ever held ecclesiastical sway in the Dominion.

J. M. Bruyere, who served as Vicar General under three Upper Canadian Bishops—De Charbonnel, of Toronto; Pinsonneault, of Sandwich, and Walsh, of London—had a typically interesting “missionary” career. Coming to America from Lyons, France, he first distinguished himself in New Orleans as an ardent devotee of Venus.

Things getting too warm for him on the Gulf Coast, he moved northward to Kentucky. There his attentions to Negro wenches and white slaves involving him in trouble, he moved to Toronto, where Bishop De Charbonnel, his fellow-countryman, made him Vicar General. He was not long in Toronto till he seduced a young woman of St. Paul’s parish. Father Fitzmaurice, a respectable priest, pastor of that Church, entered formal protest against Bruyere before Bishop Phelan, of Kingston, Senior Bishop of the Province. But Bishop Phelan, dying a few days after the receipt of the complaint without action taken thereon, the Fitzmaurice document, found among Pbelan’s papers, was acted on in a way very different from that which justice and decency called for.

De Charbonnel, getting hold of the complaint, suspended Fitzmaurice for noble duty done! The people of Toronto refused, however, to approve Bishop De CharbonnePs action. All the more so as Soulerin, another French Vicar General of this very French Bishop, had, about the same time, seduced a nun. Murmurs of discontent first filled the air; a roar of indignation was headed off by the Vatican, which, advised of the demoralization brought on in Toronto by the beastly impurity of that city’s two Vicar Generals, Bruyere and Soulerin, as well as other priests in high places, disgusted at De CharbonnePs incompetency, which had made him a by-word and a reproach among leading Canadian Catholics, finally forced him to take an Irish-born Coadjutor, the aforesaid John Joseph Lynch, who, consecrated on November 20, 1859, became Bishop of Toronto April 26, 1860. De Charbonnel, followed by curses of a long outraged people, retired into a French monastery, where he died in obscurity in 1891.

Bruyere withdrew, on De Charbonnel’s retirement from Toronto, to another French Bishop, Pinsonneault, of Sandwich, a little French town opposite Detroit, made an episcopal see solely because it was French. There Bruyere, installed again as Vicar General, once more made himself odious to priests and people. Pinsonneault, vain and weak-minded, following Bruyere ‘s evil counsels, went on from one blunder to another till, forced to resign in 1866, after a ten years’ inglorious administration, he sunk into needed oblivion.

When the aforesaid John Walsh became, in November, 1867, Bishop of Sandwich, he retained Bruyere as Vicar General. Moving the see back to London in 1869, Walsh brought Bruyere to that thriving city. There for twenty or more years this little Frenchman, owing to Walsh’s alcoholic incompetency, lorded it mercilessly over priests and religious, male and female. His whole career in America was blackened by cruelty, lust, and selfish intolerance. Typical Roman ” missionary’ ‘ indeed!

The case of Rev. J. P. Molphy, of Ingersoll, Ontario, calls for special mention. Dying, this man left $10,000 to a young lady, Miss , forgetting his two poor sisters, whose hardearned money—made by them as chambermaids in New York City—secured him ordination as a priest. Molphy stood at one time so high in his Church as to be elected to the office of Grand President of the Catholic Mutual Benefit Association, commonly called the C. M. B. A. Noble celibate, in very truth!

Coming to Ottawa, the capital of the Canadian Dominion, we find a young French Canadian priest named Duhamel, made, in 1874, bishop of that important see. Little else had this young man to commend him for episcopal honors save the fact of his being a French Canadian, an allimportant qualification with the hierarchs of Quebec.

The leading, the most active priest then in Ottawa was a native of old France, “Father” Porcile. Full of Gallic enthusiasm, Porcile established, with Bishop DuhamePs warmest approval a new Religious Order to be devoted to teaching Catholic children. Some well-meaning young men entered the new Order. It had not been many weeks in existence when the whole community was startled and shocked by the revelation that Porcile had attempted to pervert the first home of the new Order into a temple of Sodom! Porcile fled, and the short-lived Order was suppressed. Not so, however, Porcile. He joined in New York the Order of the “Fathers of Mercy.” Of this Order, notwithstanding his Ottawa record, he became a presiding officer. He established at Vineland, N. J., under the auspices of the Fathers of Mercy, a College of the Sacred Heart, which became in a very short time such a repellent den of infamy that, upon repeated complaints from Vineland’s good citizens, Bishop O’Farrell of Trenton was compelled to suppress the institution. Porcile is now, or was recently, pastor of “Our Lady of Lourdes ,, Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Some years after his Porcilian experience, Bishop Duhamel sent for clerical training to Rome a young Irish Canadian candidate for holy orders, named Farrell J. McGovern. Returning to Canada immediately after ordination, McGovern was named “private Secretary’ ‘ to “His Grace” Archbishop Duhamel. The latter had been, in 1886, raised to the archiepiscopal honors due his overwhelmingly generous contributions to “Peter’s Pence.’ ‘ Young McGovern, profiting by his Roman training and experiences, resolved to secure for his own use and benefit in Ottawa a subservient and devoted “priestess.” He found the “priestess,” but his attentions to the lady were so defiant of discretion and decency that the Archbishop was obliged to relegate his “private Secretary ‘ ‘ to rural quiet and oblivion.

Interesting, too, is the case of “Father” H. J. McDevitt, D. D. (Doctor of Divinity), now of Portland, Oregon, where he is rector of the cathedral. McDevitt is a graduate of the American College in Rome. Made pastor, soon after ordination, of the Sacred Heart parish, Dayton, Ohio, he led a life of scandal so gross that he had to fly suddenly and finally from that city and State under threat of certain public exposure. The article for the press in re the McDevitt scandal had been actually written and was ready for publication at the time of his flight.

McDevitt told his credulous friends, before leaving Dayton, that, finding the life of the ordinary secular priest not rigorous enough, he had decided on joining the Passionist (should it be passionate?) Fathers.

Instead, he went to Omaha, but, things getting too hot for him even there, he moved to the more inviting and salubrious atmosphere of the Pacific Coast. He is Archbishop Christie’s fidus Achates, and champion of the Knights of Columbus.

McDevitt ‘s successor as pastor of the Sacred Heart parish, Dayton, was “Father” Finnerty, who had for housekeeper an English ex-barmaid of undoubted sportive proclivities. Finnerty ‘s conduct with this and other women was so shameless as to constitute a grievous public scandal. He went so far as to visit a hotel in a neighboring city with this ex-barmaid mistress, and register with her as husband and wife. This audacious indecency forced the Catholics of Dayton to rid themselves of his uncleanly presence.

A Dominican priest named Thompson was, according to the Daily News, Portland, Oregon, December 3, 1909, indicted there by the Federal Grand Jury for sending indescribably obscene matter through the United States mails, to two women in San Francisco. (See “Romanism— A Menace to the Nation,” p. 387.)

The evidence against Thompson was overwhelming and most revolting. Language refuses to express the baseness of the fellow’s conduct, decency rebels at the monstrosity of his indecencies. There is no parallel for his fiendishness, even in the annals of the Borgian papal era. I have personal knowledge of all the facts and details of this most forbidding case, derived from official sources, which, should it be translated into print, would damn forever the whole iniquitous institution of the Romish priesthood.

“Rev. Father’ ‘ W. R. Thompson was brought before Judge Wolverton. To head off revolting exposures, Priest Thompson entered at once a plea of guilty. There was no evidence, in detail, submitted. The confession of guilt was made to preclude it. Judge Wolverton, instead of immediately pronouncing condign punishment on this vile transgressor of all laws of civic and personal, Christian and individual decency, suspended sentence! Mild, humane Judge! How considerate to a priestly leper, deliberately using the mails of the United States to spread the virulence of his own moral distemper!

Judge Wolverton, finally yielding to pressure of prelates, priests, and politicians, turned Thompson over to the Dominican Fathers, with the understanding that he be placed in a sanitarium.

Where is Thompson to-day? Why is he not behind prison bars ? Why is not this wretch who polluted the country’s mails with sponges filled with his own seminal emissions not on a rock pile, where others are expiating crimes of less revolting character ? Let intriguing Romish prelate and ward-heeling Knight of Columbus answer. Why is this infamous corrupter of American womanhood, this base and brutal violator of American homes permitted to walk a free man on the soil of the United States, while the youth who steals a nickel, mayhap, to buy food, is incarcerated for years in reformatory cells?

The Thompson incident is typical manifestation of uncontrollable priestly lust and turpitude. All, who dare do it—I refer to priests—or would do as Thompson did, if the fear of lynch law did not hold them back.

Among Rome’s legion of lecherous priests in America there are hundreds of Thompsons. Look to it, reader, that some such an one is not, at this moment, polluting the sanctuary of your own home, or, at all events, busy with lechery in your own home town !

The Postoffice Department at Washington is being appealed to by Roman Catholic societies, and by individual Romanists of influence, lay and clerical, to exclude The Menace and such papers from the mails. The Menace is letting in the light on Roman infamies, such as the Thompson case. This good work is being promoted by several other papers of courage and conviction. The Romanists demand the exclusion of all such from the mails.

Romanists complain of The Menace and papers of its kind and class, but is there one of their own publications that does not, week in and week out, month in and month out, wallow in libellous and lying attacks on Protestant Christians and on Protestant organizations? Protestant denominations are, by the Romish press, denounced continuously, in language of the foulest character; Protestant clergymen, of highest class and standing, calumniated and vilified in lowest forms of speech; Protestant societies and orders charged with every crime on the calendar; Protestant missionaries abused and ridiculed.

The Catholic paper and periodical reek with infamous libel. Libel is, in fact, their chief stock in trade. Without it, they had little to say. With it, they fill column after column with choicest billingsgate and coarse mendaciousness.

The young mind, fed on the un-Christian, iniquitous, untruthful, and slanderous pabulum doled out every week by the Catholic press, blessed by pope and commended by prelates and priests—the people in many cases are ordered to pay for and take these vile sheets—is certain to be warped and darkened, perverted and demoralized.

If the mails of the United States are to be denied to any class of papers, it should be to Romanist organs of mendacity and calumny. Catholic books, too, filled with savage assaults on Protestantism, or reeking with obscene filth, or blackened with historic lie, pass in tons every year through the mails of the United States. Should these not call for attention from the Postmaster General?

Now, I do ask the fair-minded people of America, and the Postoffice Department in particular: Are you going to deny the mails to The Menace and other outspoken American papers, and permit priestly violators of America’s postal laws like Thompson, to go scot free, when convicted of guilty misuse and pollution of the mails f Is there to be one law for Protestant Americans and another for Romanist priests? Must the one suffer for denouncing organized crime, while the other is permitted to use the mails of the country to debauch girlhood and destroy womanhood?

Does Woodrow Wilson’s Administration want to plunge America into the horrors of a revolution?

No city in all rural Ohio with a more lawabiding and self-respecting Christian people than Troy, in Miami County. Startled, beyond power of expression, was this decent community when, in the early spring of 1906, rumor, specific and persistent, fastened on “Rev. Father’ ‘ F. J. Knipper, of St. Patrick’s Church, the shockingly atrocious charge of mistreating several young girls of his parish, in manner and by methods of revolting and unnatural indecency. These stupendous indecencies were committed on young girls most of them not yet out of short dresses, while Knipper was, ostensibly, preparing them for Confession and first Communion.

Advised of Knipper ‘s misconduct, Archbishop Moelier tardily appointed one Quatman, priest of Sidney, Ohio, to visit Troy and investigate (?) the charges against Knipper.

Knipper had, meantime, fled the coop. Quatman ‘s visit to Troy had been fixed by Archbishop Moeller for a Sunday, but, on the previous Wednesday, Knipper got to Cincinnati, whence, with the connivance no doubt, of his superiors, he fled into parts for a time to the general public unknown.

Quatman, after reading at the close of “Holy Mass” the letter of Archbishop Moeller, of Cincinnati, sympathizing with the broken-hearted parents of the outraged girls, and with the congregation generally, knew very well that Knipper was somewhere beyond the clutches of Ohio law, and the indignation of an aroused American community, closely safeguarded from just punishment by “Holy Mother Church.’ ‘ Hence, he (Quatman) felt free to condemn, in stentorian tones, the infamous and unnatural fugitive from justice, and hope (?) that he might be captured!

Quatman read, also, to the congregation of St. Patrick’s, Troy, the archiepiscopal document appointing him auditor of an investigating (?) committee, and then bravely invited every one knowing anything against the fugitive Knipper to appear before him.

William Burgin, father of one of the wronged girls, who had sworn out a warrant against Knipper, made accordingly a statement to Quatman, who urged him not to blame the Church or Knipper ‘s family for the misdeeds of the foul priestly monster, flying from the law and from the wrath of an outraged Christian community.

Here it is pertinent to call attention to the Bull, ilMotu Proprio,” issued October 9, 1911, by Pope Pius X, which excommunicates any person, lay or cleric, man or woman, who shall without the permission of ecclesiastical authorities, summon any Roman Catholic ecclesiastic before a lay tribunal either in a civil or criminal case. (See “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” pp. 185, 186.)

Between the Wednesday, when Knipper was seen in Cincinnati, and the Sunday on which Quatman visited Troy, Knipper had found time, as it soon after developed, to get over to Canada, and find safe asylum in one of the clerical fortresses of that country, where priestly inebriates, lechers, seducers, sodomites, and murderers obtain for a time hospitable and even luxurious cover. Quatman Js investigation was a farce. Moeller’s letters added insult to injury! For Moeller actually paid for Knipper ‘s keep in Canada.

These ecclesiastical houses of refuge, relaxation, and entertainment for criminal priests, of which there are several in the United States, are worth attention from officers of justice and the public generally. There the popish Church harbors, protects, amuses, and cheers up not only criminal priests, drunkards, seducers, rapists, sodomites, and even murderers, but also lay criminals of every sort able to put up the cash. And the irony of the whole abominable travesty on justice and religion is emphasized by the fact that the foul priests immured in these shelters of unpunished rascality actually celebrate “Holy Mass ‘ ‘ every morning !

So shameful the conduct of these ” protected’ ‘ criminal priests that the civil authorities at Longue Pointe, Canada, felt constrained in the public interest, to forbid the “Ambassadors of Christ” retired to the priestly refuge house in that locality, from appearing on the king’s highway, which some of these saintly hermits had enlivened by insulting women and girls.

There was executed in Massachusetts not long ago a Baptist minister named Richeson, who had seduced and then poisoned a too confiding girl of his flock. Richeson’s crime was grave and the punishment meted out duly called for. But how different the treatment awarded to Catholic priests guilty of destroying girls? Instances like the Knipper case abound everywhere. That, for instance, of Priest Boyle, of North Carolina, who some years ago turned his church edifice into a brothel, attracted nation-wide attention. He assaulted in his room in the church building a respectable young lady, daughter of one of the leading Catholic families of the Southland. His guilt was so atrocious as to be incontestible, and when the sentence of death was first pronounced on him, not a dissenting voice was raised in all North Carolina or anywhere else, North or South. James Cardinal Gibbons and other Catholic prelates at once, however, got busy. They first had the death sentence modified into one condemning Boyle for life to State’s prison. No sooner had Boyle been placed behind the State’s bars, than the aforesaid Gibbons and his hierarchical associates started to obtain his release. They finally succeeded, and Boyle is to-day busy in priestly ranks somewhere, under some assumed name, seducing other women, violating girls, and preparing himself generally by studied and ceaseless licentiousness for high place in the priestly elysium. No purgatory for Boyle and his likes!

One O’Grady, an Irish priest who had seduced a girl named Gilmartin, in the old land, followed her to America, where she had fled from his lecherous attentions. Tracing her to Cincinnati, ‘Grady foully murdered her on Central Avenue, a busy thoroughfare of Cincinnati. The cowardly murderer then feigned insanity, and finally succeeded in escaping from the lunatic asylum. Rome’s cunning Italian hand is all too visible in ‘Grady’s deliverance from the punishment his atrocity called for. ‘Grady is to-day exercising the “sacred” ministry under an assumed name, of course.

That the race of Knippers is still alive and active in Ohio, two other Ohio instances of priestly depravity, both recent, very clearly demonstrate. The police records of every city of any size in America can offer similar, and several even worse, instances of depravity on the part of James Cardinal Gibbons’ “Ambassadors of Christ.’ ‘ But let the Ohio cases speak here.

There was arrested on Jnly 26, 1912, at 10.15 P. M., as the police official records very clearly show, one “John Smith,” residence, Cheviot, Ohio. He gave his occupation as “clerk,” and his age as twenty-eight. The arresting officer was George Gerwe. The officer in charge of this police station was Lieutenant Jacob Conver. “John Smith’s” real name is “Rev. Father” Otto B. Auer, of St. Martin’s Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.

He had been carried from a saloon, southeast corner Harrison and Spring Grove Avenues, in a state of intoxication which had reduced him almost to helplessness. Placed, at first, by Patrolman Gerwe and an unknown citizen in a hallway of the Buck Building, at southwest corner Harrison and Spring Grove Avenues, he befouled himself, vomited on the floor, and created such a stench about the place that a lady residing on the third floor, after making investigation and discovering the real facts of the case, called up the Fifth District Police Station, and threatened to notify the Chief of Police unless the vile drunken priest was at once taken out of the place. Lieutenant Conver directed the patrol to gather in “Father” Auer, who at the Police Station registered as “John Smith.”

Having been gathered in for safe keeping only, “Father” Auer was let out in the morning to go and “sin some more.” Xenia, Ohio, not to be outdone by Dayton, or Troy, or Cincinnati, offers for consideration one “Rev. Father” F. P. Quinn, who in Kennedy’s Official Catholic Directory for 1913, registers as pastor of St. Brigid ‘s, Xenia, Ohio, where, besides a church, he has a parochial school, conducted by five Sisters of Charity, having in charge 132 pupils. What manner of instruction a school under Quinn ‘s direction and control can impart will be made evident by the police record of Quinn, taken from official papers on file in Cincinnati police headquarters.

“Father” Quinn, a frequent visitor to Cincinnati, and patron of its gin mills and houses of prostitution, fell into the hands of this city’s police, June 3, 1913, at 4.15 A. M. The charge registered against Quinn is that of disorderly conduct, his occupation that of “Priest (Catholic).” He was arrested in Bernice Parker’s notorious dive, 307 Longworth Street. The police report of the case is signed by Lieutenant August Keidel, officer in charge.

The disturbance leading to Quinn ‘s arrest on that date arose out of his refusal to meet the financial terms of the landlady. He had paid the Parker woman $5 to take out one of the girls in a taxicab. Returning to the house on Longworth Street, he offered $5 in addition to stay all night. The Parker woman demanded $10, but finally yielded for peace’ sake to Quinn’s offer. The girl he wanted, however, fearing physical injury from Quinn, refused to spend the night with him.

Quinn thereupon started a “rough house” breaking up furniture and gas fixtures till the police patrol took him to the station.

The official records show that Priest Quinn was released on bond at 6.55 A. M., June 3, 1913, but failed to appear for trial at 9 A. M., sending to Judge Arthur Fricke a statement that he was ill from acute gastritis. Judge Fricke thereupon facetiously remarked on the suddenness with which ” these fellows’ ‘ took acute gastritis to escape appearance in court. The case was continued till July 10, 1913.

The testimony offered by Bernice Parker was to the effect that “this priest’ ‘ had been a frequent visitor to her house of prostitution, and had been on several occasions during his eight years of visits to the place refused admission because of his brutal treatment of the girls and Ins generally violent conduct. Quinn had on this particular occasion (June 3, 1913), besides breaking up the furniture, etc., struck one of the girls in the Parker house, and driven all the women under cover to a room which they feared he might break into.

Searched at the police station, a pint bottle of whisky was found on him, and he fought hard to retain it. When the case was finally heard, July 10, 1913, there was no prosecution and Priest Quinn escaped with a fine of $2, covering the costs in the case !

The information here given concerning Priests Auer and Quinn is, I repeat, taken from police and court records. The press of Cincinnati was studiously silent on these men’s gross misconduct. Had either been a minister of a Protestant denomination, columns of notoriety had been given their lapses. One Cincinnati paper only gave brief mention to Quinn ‘s indecencies, and then described the culprit as merely ” saying’ ‘ he was a priest.

No uncommon thing is it for priests in large cities, such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans, to spend nights in houses of ill-fame, and ascend altars next morning in parish and convent chapels to say “Holy Mass!” The country priests come into the cities for lustful gratifications. The city priest moves away, for like purposes, a few blocks from his ordinary place of residence. Rome, Rome, lust and hypocrisy are thy name !

Now comes Archbishop Moeller with dozens of such lecherous men under his charge issuing orders against ” tango” dances. The Cincinnati Evening Post, August 5, 1913, publishes the following :

Catholics Are Told to Shun Tango Dances.

Any Cincinnati Catholics who may dance the tango, the turkey trot, and other objectionable glides, can not obtain forgiveness of their sins, according to an announcement made Tuesday by Archbishop Henry Moeller. The statement of the archbishop indorses the stand of Bishop Thomas B. Byrne, of Nashville, who declared:

‘Should any priest attempt to absolve such a penitent, the absolution would be worthless and the confession would be a curse rather than a blessing.’

Bishop Byrne ordered his priests not to forgive those who do these dances and repeat the sin after confessing it.

‘Some time ago I warned Catholics/ teaid Archbishop Moeller. ‘ There is no doubt that the dances in question are immoral. Forgiveness for sin can only be given by priests to those who are truly penitent and resolve never again to commit sin. I have issued no order to the effect, but every clergyman in my archdiocese has the right to refuse to absolve those persons who persist in performing immoral dances.’

The Pittsburgh Catholic, July 17, 1913, offers the following:

Bishop Byrne’s Edict.

Rt. Rev. Bishop Byrne, of Nashville, Tenn., has put the ban of his official censure on ‘animal’ dances—the turkey trot, the tango, and the bunny hug. His edict was read from every Catholic pulpit in the diocese on Sunday, June 29th. It is the most drastic yet recorded in the fight against rag dancing.

To turkey trot and remain a Catholic is now practically a matter of impossibility. The edict bars all offenders from participating in the sacraments. Bishop Byrne in his edict said that the new dances were ‘an immoral amusement and the approximate occasion of sin.’ While they rarely failed, he declared, to affect the dancers.

The laity may not dance the ” turkey trot,” the ” tango,” or the ” bunny hug;” the priest may, however, bring the blush of shame even to red-light women by monstrosities in their resorts that none save a Satanic disciple of highest degree could perpetrate. Why not, Prelates Moeller and Byrne, lasso your libidinous priests before forbidding the ” turkey trot,” the ” tango,” and the ” bunny hug” to the laity?

Think of it! The priest receives a purse full of cash from weeping, credulous poor people to say Masses for the release of their deceased kindred from Purgatory, and forthwith hies himself off to the red light patch to throw away this money, consecrated by the tears of unselfish love, upon the scarlet women of infamy!

Like instances of up-to-date priestly rottenness in all parts of the world could be related ad infinitum.

There is, “Holy Father,” coming in America an awakening that will shake the religious world to its lowest foundations. That awakening is modestly but clearly forecasted by the Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, February 12, 1913:

On a recent Sunday evening we attended a service in one of our Churches to hear a sermon on “Ecclesiastical Tyranny, or Roman Catholicism.” We went through curiosity as well as interest in the subject. This was the closing theme of a series the pastor had been giving his people, with many good results, among them a splendid increase in his Sunday evening congregations. We were told the church would be crowded to the door, that many people were interested in the subject, that the pastor would have a great opportunity to preach the Word of God. That was a service we wanted to attend. A great crowd has always appealed to us. And a sensational theme is not against our taste. As predicted, the church was crowded even to the door. People were turned away. As we sat with the pastor before the multitude of faces, we kept asking questions of ourselves: Why this demonstration? Are all these people interested in the subject to-night? What has brought them here? Is this the regular congregation built up by the eminence of the pastor? Is it the sensational character of the subject of the sermon, “Ecclesiastical Tyranny,” has that drawing power? No, surely. Is it the last part of the subject, ‘ ‘ Roman Catholicism?” Is that growing to be a live topic? Is that the reason this multitude of men and women are here to-night? If so, then this pastor has discovered a live subject for the Protestant pulpit. Does this mean that men are awakening to the heritage of Protestantism? If so, again let us say it, let this note ring out with loud acclaim across the land. Here is where we need to rally our forces. Protestantism was once a unit in doctrine and life. We stood joined compactly under one standard and to one end until denominationalism came to threaten our dissolution. We witness to-day the fiercest struggle and the darkest problems Christianity has ever faced, notwithstanding the enforced optimism which at times is urged upon us. The commendation that may be given us and the one center of hope is, that we are working harder at the solution of our problems than ever it was given man to toil for any cause. Only in this lies the cause for optimism. Our embarrassments are not those of Catholicism, and she, witnessing our discomfiture, takes inward pleasure and registers what she thinks is the disintegration of her old antagonist, expressing the complacent faith that the “Church of God stands sure.”

A candid review of the present conditions of Protestantism assures the verdict that this heritage, once given unto men, seems to be no longer appreciated. Is it because we no longer lay emphasis there? Are we like those who enjoy and squander their patrimony without counting its cost to those who gave it, neither our loss without it? It is verily true that the interests of denominationalism have overshadowed the very movement which gave us birth. Better a thousand times sink denominationalism in the sea of oblivion than to lose the heritage bought so dearly by the fathers of Protestantism. Why not a revival of the old doctrine of Luther and Wycliff, John Huss and Savonarola? Why not a welcoming of the old champions of “justification by faith’ ‘ and the priesthood of every believer? Why not a return to the heights of faith in Jesus Christ, whose atoning grace can be received by faith without any intermediary? Why not a revival of Protestantism? Yes, why not? Men and women will hear that call. They will rally in defense of that heritage if the pulpit will awaken to the opportunity. How many of that great audience will come again? How many of them will appreciate the fact that they are Protestants? Many of them look upon the Catholic Church with dread and fear, and never think of taking any relation to the Protestant Church. Many of them never think of joining the forces of the pastor whose words they applauded. Here is their culpability. They are Protestants, but not of the Protestant Church. They enjoy the civil liberty she has bought for them, and because of their recreant attitude toward her, the very cause for which her sons suffered loses its authority over men. Can we not call these multitudes back to our ranks? Can they not be led to see the obligation they owe the Church and the heritage which is slipping away because Protestantism is through their hands losing its religious character and becoming a civil force! We predict an awakening in this line in the next few years. This heritage must not be surrendered. If it proves a live and pulsating subject, the men of the pulpits will not fail to take it up.

America once fully aroused to its enormities, your System’s final and early downfall is sure as crack of doom.

I am, Respectfully,
Jeremiah J. Chowley.

Degradation and demoralization of the confessional and kindred agencies.

Fellow-men:
David, King and Prophet, filled with a genuine and grateful exaltation of spirit, at all the benefits received from his God, exclaimed:

O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord.

For this sublime invocation of the Royal Prophet papal eulogists of to-day may invite us to sing:

O praise the pope, all ye humankind: praise him, all ye nations. For his goodness is ever at command of highest bidder, and his favor endureth as long as suppliant’s gold holds out.

The great whore of Babylon, by all sane interpreters of Holy Writ held to be the Papacy, is ever active in securing new fields for the exploitation of victims and the garnering of harvests of infamy-won gold, characteristic of whorishness, never to be satisfied!

The whore of the seven hills of old Rome has in America an army of 20,000 priests and as many more monks of various type and degree, holding in White Slavery the most atrocious 150,000 nuns and half a million at least of other women. The ordinary white slave receives some form of recompense for her servitude: the Romanistic white slave naught but black-hearted injury and, finally, neglect, cruel and callous.

Lord Robert Montague, who, when the British aristocracy felt, half a century ago, a strong Rome-ward impetus, became a Roman Catholic, had excellent opportunities to study from the inside the iniquitous workings of the Papal System. Given an Irish seat in the British House of Commons by the Hierarchy of Rome, Lord Robert stood for a time in high favor with papal priesthood and prelacy. But his ancestral Protestant blood at length recoiled from the lethal touch of the Vaticanist serpent. Leaving the Romish System, he wrote, with remarkable clearness, power, and repudiative skill, concerning the Papal System of human enslavement. Of Lord Robert, as writer, it may well be repeated, Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. Read, for example, his exposition, masterly and unassailable, of the Roman Curia:

The System of the Church of Rome is a wonderful mechanism. Its center is the pope. Yet it is independent of the pope. Many a pope has been a dotard: very many have been debauchees. Yet the machine works on irrespectively of his idiosyncrasies. It is the cabinet, the privy council, the college of cardinals that governs.

Very true, indeed, the statement of Lord Robert Montague:

The advance of the papacy has always been the advance of the plague, irresistible, unsparing, remorseless, and deadly.

POPE ALEXANDER VI.

POPE ALEXANDER VI.

This is the infamous Pope Borgia, whose reign and rule rival in licentiousness, those of the pagan emperor, Nero. Borgia’s daughter, Lucretia, with whom he is believed to have had incestuous relations, became mother, afterwards, of several children, from whom the leading European royal families of this twentieth century, Protestant and Catholic, are descended.

For fuller particulars concerning this murderer, adulterer, and incestuous brute—this “infallible Vicar of Christ,” see “Romanism— A Menace to the Nation,” pp. 323-331.

Gury’s “Manual of Moral Theology” is the text-book of all leading Roman Catholic theological seminaries of the present day in the United States, and several other countries. The author was a Jesuit.

Jesuits are the most popular of confessors. Priests guilty of gravest crimes flock to Jesuits for absolution. To priestly offenders the Jesuit Father confessor is very “easy” indeed. To adulterous priest, to priest guilty of seduction or sodomy; to self-abusing, drunken priest “easy,” in very truth, the Jesuit confessor, especially if offending priest has money, political pull, or good, solid standing with his bishop.

The poor workingman sinner may be obliged to do severe penance—to fast, to pray for hours on bended knee for offenses against God’s law; taxed he may be very heavily, as to purse and physical endurance, by the fashionable Jesuit confessor, so lenient with priestly or episcopal transgressor.

Let besilked and perfumed adulteress enter the Jesuit’s confessional, and she is at once made welcome. Her “slight irregularities ‘ ‘ are dealt with in spirit of unctuous leniency. To sisters in sin she proclaims “Father Stanislaus’ ‘ the “sweetest of confessors.” ‘ He gives her, for multiplied adulteries, just “one Our Father” and “one Hail Mary” to recite, and then she goes forth to sin some more.

To the rich and the powerful the Jesuit confessor is studiously and systematically complacent. The poor and powerless he repels by stern frigidity and relentless severity. Instructed by Gury’s Theology as to sins of the flesh, committed or committable, by women married or single, he seeks to attract to his confessional women, and not men. Twenty-five women and girls, to one man or boy, go to confession.

Are regularly and frequently confessing Catholic women better than Protestant women, who, abhorring the very suggestion of confession to a sinful man, avoid it as they would death itself? The records of police courts, of county jails, of reformatories, penitentiaries, and State prisons prove the contrary. Prostitution draws the major part of its recruits everywhere from Catholic womanhood and girlhood, perverted by the lewd and lascivious interrogatories of the Jesuit confessors. Nearly all modern confessors may be, whether members or not of the Society of Jesus, termed Jesuitical, for all study theological textbooks whose authors are Jesuits.

With what species of filth the minds of Jesuitically trained confessors are filled, I refer the reader to ” Saint’ ‘ Liguori’s and ” Father’ ‘ Gury’s ” Moral (?) Theology,” which contains a mass of sensual abominations that hell itself alone could suggest. The priest is bound to question the girl or woman penitent in manner most forbidding. Not alone her most secret actions, in all their revolting details, but her most private thoughts must be circumstantially related to carnal male monster sitting in the confessional.

Liguori and Gury make the young matron mental slave—often, too, alas! corporeal—of the wily and obscene confessor. He questions her as to her most private and sacred relations with husband—who may be, perhaps, a Protestant. Bound, she is, to detail minutely her carnal intercourse with lawful consort, as if such were sinful. To excuse his perverse questions, the confessor declares it his duty to find out if married female penitent is guilty of sin in her sexual relations with husband!

If American manhood, if the manhood of the civilized world realized the infamy of the questions put by unmarried priests—many indecent in life and character—to girls and women, for the most part of purest life and disposition, a speedy end were put, the world over, to this infamy operated under the sacred name of religion. Liguori’s theology, the fountain of all the vile theological treatises of the confessional, placed in the hands of priests, could not be translated into any form of English which were not appallingly disgusting and repellent.

Yet, guided by this text-book, inspired by this sensuous author and his disciples, the confessor is directed to put to maiden and to matron seeking divine grace and guidance in the confessional the most indecent of questions, virtually instructing young souls in practices of infamy the most darksome and stupendous. Why does civilization stand for such organized debauchery of the young? From no other institution but the papal church would such crime upon national youth and human vitality be permitted. When will the governments of the modern civilized world arise against the White Slavery which has center of activity in the confessionals of Rome’s corrupt priesthood?

Instructions most minute and disgusting are given by confessors, not only to married young women, but to virgins about to wed, as to when, how often, and in what manner they are to yield husband his marriage rights. Well does Prof. Joseph F. Berg, in his “Synopsis of the Moral (?) Theology of ‘ Father ‘ Peter Dens,” say of the chapters thereof, treating of sins of licentiousness:

It would not be decent to translate even the least offensive of these chapters. The most outrageous forms of bestiality which it is possible for iniquity to assume are gravely discussed, and held up with most revolting particularity before students of divinity, who are under a vow of chastity and perpetual celibacy. The filthiness of this slimy puddle of Romish casuistry is so offensive that I must be excused from stirring the scum; I can not permit its effluvia even from a distance to annoy the mental olfactories of my reader by a translation. — Berg, Synopsis of the Moral Theology of Peter Dens, pp. 339, 340.

Come we now to the doctrine of Mental Restriction,’ or Mental Reservation, under which Jesuitical teaching Catholics may lie for sake of Holy Mother Church. Mendacity may take any one of several forms. A liar may lie grievously by silence; by verbal negation or verbal affirmation; by a partially uttered truth that is a whole lie.

Professor Berg, in his “Synopsis of Peter Dens’s Moral Theology” (pp. 316-320), concludes with these striking observations:

The closing remarks of this section [Dens on Lying] plainly show that equivocation is no sin, in the estimation of a disciple of Peter Dens. This is no new discovery, and it is therefore not becoming that we should speak of it as something strange or unexpected. A very little acquaintance with the practice of the veracious pupils and admirers of Peter Dens is sufficient to teach us that they understand the art of equivocation to perfection. But the horrid attempt to make the Blessed Saviour, whose title is, faithful and true witness, encourage the practice of this detestable vice, is blasphemy for which we were not prepared. The very attempt at refutation would be irreverent. Let the reader turn to Luke 24: 19, and he will see that nothing could have been further from the Saviour’s mind than the intention of furnishing a precedent for the deceitful equivocations which are the glory of the Church of Rome.”

Jesuit Gury, in various portions of his Moral (?) Theology, particularly in his treatises De Actibus Humanis; De Justitia et Jure, De Contractibus and De VIII. Decalogi Prcecepto, not only excuses, but commends falsehood, especially when the interests of Holy Mother Church are concerned. Gury’s teaching is just this, in brief:

The Catholic may lie ; may break an oath, commit theft or violate solemn obligation, if, in his judgment, Holy Mother Church is to benefit from such perversity. Lie, in fact, must the devout Catholic, break, must he, solemnly sworn oath or any other obligation, commit theft or even murder, if Holy Church’s needs call, in the opinion of his confessor, for such misdeed.”

The Ten Commandments of God translated into papal language are thus rendered:

1. One Lord and one God shalt thou adore, in the “Supreme Pontiff” at Rome, “Vicar of Christ,” and like unto Christ, sinless and infallible.

2. Bless every day of thy life the holy name of pope and pontiff, proving thy sincerity by daily offerings to “Peter’s Pence.”

3. Keep holy the feast days of “Holy Church,” especially those of the Blessed Booze and the cherished St. Boodle.

4. Honor the “Holy Fathers” of thy Church and reverence the “Holy Mothers” of White Slavery, toiling so steadily for “Holy Fathers” comfort.

5. Kill thou shalt not, save “Heretics”, “Schismatics” and other enemies of the blessed White Slavery of the Vatican.

6. Commit not adultery, unless thou faithfully pay the price set by “Holy Church” for many masses for “souls in Purgatory.”

7. Steal not, unless to hand over proceeds to “Holy Fathers” for saloon, red light, and other agents of needed priestly refreshment and recuperation.

8. Do not lie, save and except when duty to “Holy Church” and the interests of its White Slave and Wine Room activities demand.

9. Covet not thy neighbor’s wife, unless thou art prelate, priest, or monk.

10. Covet not any of thy neighbor’s goods that thou couldst not turn readily into coin of the realm, for the benefit of White Slave Institutions and Temples of Sodom, under control of “Holy Fathers” for the spiritual upliftment of men and women.

The hugest and most heartless trust in the world, and at the same time most criminal, is the Church of Rome. Its first effect is to kill patriotism; for it demands for its sovereign (the pope) alien and hostile to the independence of every nation in the world, the first endeavors, affections, and the deathless allegiance of men of every country under the sun, especially that of Roman Catholics. If a man have anything of affection and allegiance left after the Vatican is satisfied, he may give it to country, to king, to flag, and then only by permission of the pope!

The most Catholic populations of the world, those of France, Italy, Portugal, and Mexico, have, in consequence, cut loose from Rome. Spain and others must, for self-preservation, soon follow. Impossible for any people, for any government, to stand in with the papacy, without giving up everything that racial or national self-respect, traditional and geographic ties, governmental and civic achievement, invest with sacredness.

“God is God, and Mahomet is his prophet” is cry of ferocious Mussulman; “The pope, my Lord God on earth, forever ” cry of the sincere Romanist. Why does decay cover, with gloomy, death-like pall, every country afflicted with papalism? Because the hearts of that country’s people are turned away from its betterment to the aggrandizement of a greedy, insatiable autocracy with headquarters on the yellow Tiber.

There are 3,000,000 Catholic Federationists in the United States, all actively at work, not for American, but for papal interests. “Forced into politics” the Knights of Columbus claim to be; but their politics is as yellow as tawny old Tiber itself. “Forced into politics,” even as are the Knights of Columbus, is the German Federation of Catholic Societies. The Catholic Union and Times, March 13, 1913, publishes the following:

GERMAN FEDERATION.
Members Thereof Object to Appointment of Miles.

The Federation of German Catholic Societies of this city has sent a copy of the following letter to the congressman from this section and to the United States senators from this state:

Honorable Sir: We, the undersigned, representing the Federation of German Catholic Societies of Erie County, New York, in compliance with a resolution adopted by said body, herewith protest against the appointment of General Nelson A. Miles as a member of the committee on celebration of the 100th anniversary of Commodore Perry’s victory on Lake Erie. We protest on the ground that General Miles is not a proper person to represent any constituency of true and loyal American citizens, as he is the head and representative of a bigoted and unpatriotic organization calling itself the Guardians of Liberty, an organization whose avowed purpose is in contravention to the constitution of the United States. It seeks to deprive a large portion of the citizens of this country of the rights and privileges guaranteed to all citizens, without regard to racial or religious affiliations.

We very much regret that we must register a protest conferring any honor upon a man who is supposed to have distinguished himself in the past in the service of our common country. We would have preferred very much to join our fellow-citizens in any mark of honor or distinction that might have been accorded him on account of his past service. But in view of his prominence and leadership in this un-American and unpatriotic organization we feel that we would render ourselves and our ten thousand members unworthy of the dignity of American citizenship if we did not resent the insult, which, through his appointment, is directed to more than fourteen millions of the population of this country, which includes men and women in all branches of our government, national, state, and municipal.

Furthermore, we fear that if this insulting appointment is not revoked, the celebration will be a fiasco, and the effect which is so much desired by all true and loyal citizens be entirely lost.

Very respectfully yours,
Nicholas Scherer,
Henry J. Doll,
JOS. M. SCHIFFERLI,
Committee.
Alois J. Werdein,
Secretary.

When General Miles was fighting his country’s battles on hardest fields of struggle—first in the war between the States ; again, in repressing the savage red man of the wild West ; and later, in the effacement of Spain and Spanish papalism from America—where were these Scherers, Dolls, Schifferlis, and Werdeins? In Bavaria, Wirtemberg, or Naples? They were not, at all events, at the front. Not at any front can they be ever found, save at that of popish legions, warring against Americans and Americanism.

Not satisfied with Joseph Patrick Tumulty as Private Secretary to President Wilson, the papal agents, “forced” into American politics, have successfully landed in other high governmental places Charles Patrick Neill and Dudley Field Malone. How many more will they land before President Wilson’s term is completed? The Catholic Union and Times, of Buffalo, might tell. In its issue of March 13, 1913, it boasts proudly of Neill ‘s appointment, which is very distasteful to the South:

DESERVED RECOGNITION.
President Wilson Retains Mr. Neill Head of Labor Bureau.
Special Corr. Union and Times.

Washington, March 11.—The most important appointment that President Wilson has yet made, as indicating a general policy by the new administration, came last week, when he sent to the senate the name of Charles Patrick Neill for commissioner of labor.

Mr. Neill was appointed labor commissioner by President Roosevelt and was reappointed by Mr. Taft, so the President has filled this important post with a man who has served through two Republican administrations and whose leanings are supposed to have been toward Republican principles.

President Taft had appointed Mr. Neill for a third term, but his appointment was one of the number that were held up by the Democrats in the senate. His reappointment by Mr. Wilson is regarded in Washington by independent observers as admirable, so far as the interests of the Bureau of Labor are concerned, and indicate conclusively that Mr. Wilson is looking first to the character of the men, and not to the political service they have rendered.

Mr. Neill was born at Rock Island, 111., in 1865, but spent most of his life in Texas. He has degrees from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins. He was the first instructor of Political Economy in the Catholic University of America.

No use has Knights of Columbus’s organ for non-Romanist fraternal societies. No use for the Masonic or other orders devoted solely to man’s upliftment, through brotherhood, and free absolutely from Romanist tinge or taint. Bonds and barriers it would place between honest Catholic wishing to join the popeless and priestless orders of true benevolence, commanding, in thorough papal style, every Catholic to enter pope and priest-ridden society only. Here is the mandate :

No Catholic need join outside societies to get insurance or to make friends. We have plenty of societies—religious, social, fraternal, protective. The man who permits himself to be led into the secrets of the outsiders is foolish. — The Catholic Forester.

Political machines many has this world seen from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to Nero; from Nero to Pope Borgia (Alexander VI); and from Pope Borgia to Pope Sarto (Pius X); but no political machine ever devised by the wicked ingenuity of man has equaled, in the deadliness of its execution, the extortionate exactions of its rapacity, the mercilessness of its unceasing demands, the papal machine doing business at Rome. All honor to the immortal Elizabeth of England for delivering her race forever from the thraldom of such a machine. All honor to Luther, the bold, majestic, and magnificent apostle of conscientious reform in Germany, for delivering the Teuton and Scandinavian races forever from that vile and sanguinary curse ; all honor, also, to the French Revolution for inaugurating for Latin Europe an era of liberation from Vaticanistic vengeance and papalistic pollution; all honor to the intrepid reformer, Savonarola, who was burned to death in 1498. When the bishop of Vasona said to the dying Savonarola, “I separate thee from the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant,” Savonarola replied in firm tones, “Not from the Church Triumphant—that is beyond thy power,”

The Romish Church would now like to enroll Savonarola amongst its “Saints.” Having put him to cruel death, the papacy sees, with deepest regret, that his name and fame have not suffered in popular estimation. Hence the Church of the twentieth century would gladly place the name of Savonarola as a “Saint” on that roll where the crafty Leo XIII recently inscribed that of the infamous Inquisition leader of Spain, the bloody Torquemada.

But Rome may keep its peace; humanity has already made of Savonarola one of the patron saints of conscientious freedom, as it has of Luther, Calvin, and the many martyrs of the Bloody Mary’s inglorious reign. The world is unerring in its judgment of men, unselfish and brave enough to die for the race. It has made saints of Livingstone and Lincoln, of Washington and of Wilberforce; and it will go on, without let or hindrance from papal intriguer or Vaticanist corruptionist, adding to its list of the sanctified, name after name of emancipator, whether soldier, statesman, or divine.

Rome sacrificed Joan of Arc, the worshipful maid of Domremy; burnt that noble, heaven blessed girl at the stake, and then, to cover its own infamy, made her, centuries after her cruel sacrifice, a “saint!” Joan of Arc is more than a Roman saint. She is, like Savonarola, a saint in Humanity’s Catalogue of unselfish achievement.

Rome sells its titles of sainthood as it does its red hats of cardinalitial power; but the world, an emancipated and disenthralled humanity, places just value, and that only, on all the meretricious favors of the crafty and corrupt Vatican court.

The head of the papal machine is the pope of Rome but its controlling, dominant power is the Curia, or College of Cardinals. Principal agents and beneficiaries of the System, in outside countries, are archbishops and bishops. They may, like Turkish tax collectors, gather in all they can from the superstitious hopes and fears of the servile or ignorant multitude, keeping for themselves a most abundant share, provided they yield to Italian grafter at the Vatican his stipulated “pound of flesh.”

Surpassing, perhaps, all other Vaticanist tax collectors are bishops in English-speaking countries, in Ireland especially, and in the United States, in constant demands upon their people for contributions to papal exchequer and to private coffers of extortionate prelates in Rome, whose good offices these bishops so often need to pull them out of trouble accruing from illicit relations with nuns and other women, and also from too close an acquaintance with genial old Bacchus.

Lesser agents and beneficiaries are leading priests and monks, who preach “Peter’s Pence,” and other thievish schemes of the machine, to complacent people. Observe, reader, that nine and ninety out of every hundred Roman priests come from poor and unlettered, thriftless, and even worthless families. The clerical training and education of these sons of poverty and social debasement—some of them bastards—is paid for by the Church, from the Seminary Fund maintained by yearly contributions extracted largely from the poor.

Most devoted agents for extortion and rapine do beggars make for plutocratic principal. The beggar born thrills with pleasure at contact with gilded and purpled lord and master. To serve as menial to such a lord and master is, for pauperbred priest, glory indeed.

Noblesse oblige, the French put it—” Blood will tell,” the English form of it—applies not, except negatively, to these servile agents of Vatican vampire. Young men of birth and blood, of good family surroundings and training, do not enter the priesthood. When, rarely indeed, one such does become a priest, he soon regrets his mistake, and quits, or the machine gets rid of him; witness the unfortunate Father Tom Sherman, and numbers of others. Cardinal Howard, himself of English royal blood and lineage, died a few years ago in Rome, a helpless, hopeless madman, his heart broken by the wretchedness and infamy of the System. Too much was papalistic mendacity for his noble British blood !

The machine sends special envoys to foreign countries to interfere with the local political and also the international affairs of these nations. These envoys are, in some places, called Nuncios ; in others, Apostolic Delegates. Whatever their appellation, they represent everywhere a force of mischief, of conspiracy, and of deterioration. Catching Lorenzelli, the last papal Nuncio in Paris, with documentary proof of guilt, striving to destroy the French republic, France banished the intermeddler, and broke off forever diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

“My Kingdom,” said Christ, “is not of this world.’ ‘ But think and assert otherwise does the ” Vicar of Christ,” so called, in the Vatican palace. “All kingdoms, and the gold and gems thereof, with the crowns or presidential seats thereof, also, belong to me,” is blunt and brutal avowal of present-day papal statesmanship. Every man forming part of this world-wide machine— from the pope himself down to humblest parish priest—is grafter and political marplot a teacher, preacher, and practicer of anarchy — ready, with priest Phelan of St. Louis, to shout, “To hell with my country’s flag and government, when that flag and government come in conflict with pope and papacy.”

General W. T. Sherman called war “hell,” and he was right; let some other fearless American call the papal machine hell’s most powerful and most blood-thirsty agent on earth, and I will feel that that American has used the American language righteously and to enduring good purpose.

ROMANIST SOCIETIES AGENTS OF INQUISITIONAL SAVAGERY.

Going the rounds of a portion, at least, of the non-Romanist press is, still, the alleged oath of the Knights of Columbus. Some of the Knights deny the authenticity of this oath. I leave in abeyance, for the moment, any detailed discussion of that particular point. The leaders of the Knights of Columbus are, in many cases, infidels. They are Knights of Columbus and leaders of Romanism for political or personal profit only. The rank and file of the Order are well-meaning men used by skillful politicians. The Order itself is a passing phase of Romanist effort to fasten papal political hold on the governments at Washington and elsewhere. That done, the papacy will apply a liberal and vigorous segment of shoeleather to the Knights of Columbus. It is not, however, amiss to state here that the alleged oath of the Knights of Columbus should not concern the public so absorbingly, when oaths of cardinals (see “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ pp. 199, 200), archbishops, and bishops (further on recited) establish the diabolical, destructive hostility of papalism toward heretics and non- Romanists generally. The Knights of Columbus are bound, by strictest allegiance, to obey all commands of pope, cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. The servant is not, in this or any other case, greater than his master. The Knight of Columbus must, if true to his obligation of unquestioning subserviency—miscalled obedience — to his superiors, walk, when called on by these superiors, knee-deep in Protestant blood, as did the predecessors of the Knights of Columbus in the thirteenth-century massacres of “heretics” in Southern France, of which Professor Draper, in his “Intellectual Development of Europe,” states:

Language has no powers to express the atrocities that took place at the capture of the different towns. Ecclesiastical vengeance rioted in luxury. The soil was steeped in the blood of men, the air polluted by their burning. From the reek of murdered women, mutilated children, and ruined cities, the Inquisition, that infernal institution arose. Its projectors intended it not only to put an end to public teaching, but even to private thought.

Judge S. A. Miller, of Cincinnati, one of the most eminent jurists in his time, after thus citing Draper, goes on to declare:

The fourteenth century beheld the close of the Crusades, while it witnessed the relentless brutal murders of the Inquisition and the extirpation of whole classes and orders of people who ventured to examine the Scriptures or to think for themselves in any matters of learning or advancement. Light had begun to shine upon the minds of men in some parts of Europe, and hence the bloody massacres under the decrees of the pope to shut it out and continue the pall of darkness and ignorance.

The fifteenth century was marked by the same arrogance, crime, and brutality on the part of popes that characterized the preceding century. The canon law still prevailed over nearly every nook and corner of Europe. A single example will illustrate the respect which is due to it as then understood and enforced. John Huss was a professor of divinity in the University of Prague and an ordinary pastor of a church, but he endeavored to withdraw the University of Prague from the jurisdiction of Pope Gregory XII. His religious opinions were conformable to the established doctrine of the Church, except he declaimed against the infallibility of the pope. He was summoned to appear before the Council, which was assembled at Constance, where for these reasons he was declared a heretic and burnt to death, under the canon law, by the canonists themselves on the 6th of July, 1415, and his friend Jerome, who accompanied him to the Council, by the same canon law and at the hands of the same canonists was made to perish in the flames on the 30th day of May, 1416. This is the Council that enacted a decree branding the name of Wickliff, who was long since dead, with infamy, and ordered all his works and his books to be committed to the flames. — Argument of S. A. Miller before Supreme Court of Ohio, in re John B. Mannix vs. William Henry Elder et al, pp. 142, 143.

Well does Judge Miller insist that

The burning of heretics, the most horrid and brutal punishment ever inflicted, was a crime committed against those not guilty of any wrong or offense. It originated in the Roman Catholic Church and was used to intimidate the innocent and destroy the strong-minded, the intelligent, and the thoughtful. The burning of heretics, a punishment and a crime unknown to the Roman Empire, to antiquity, to the Persians, the Tartars, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the American Indians, is the birthright of the Roman Catholic Church, and the canon laws of the Inquisition, which condemned so many to the stake, are only suspended—not revoked. — Idem, p. 141.

Revived shall be, here in America, the fires of the Inquisition, just as soon as Romanism feels warranted by numerical strength and political control to order their rekindling. In the Altoona, (Pa.) Tribune of March 3, 1913, was a report of a sermon by a priest named Sheedy in that city, in which the priest said :

In thirty States the Catholic Church exceeds all other denominations in strength. In fifteen States 50 to 90 per cent of all Church members are Catholics. All the six New England States are overwhelmingly Catholic. Five-eighths of the Church membership in New York is Catholic. All the large cities are overwhelmingly Catholic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were 85,000 Catholics in the United States; now there are 15,000,000 under the flag. The speaker said this growth has alarmed certain classes, despite the tolerance of the age, and that the hierarchy has been described as a political machine. President-elect Wilson has been warned against the appointment of a Catholic to his Cabinet. A Catholic is to be the President’s private secretary. The country is flooded with vile sheets full of foulest calumny against the Church and Catholic societies. All this, to every thinking man, is falsehood ; it is an appeal to the ignorant and the prejudiced, he said.

Priest Sheedy’s figures are gross exaggerations, but it is in and through exaggeration that such intolerants and bigots express the real purposes near their hearts. Mark well my words, American reader:—the Church that ordered St. Bartholomew’s massacre in France, that lighted the brutal fires of Smithfield, that slaughtered one hundred thousand Irish Protestants in the first half of the seventeenth century, will repeat on American soil all these and other atrocities as soon as her College of Cardinals deems the times opportune.

But, friends, in God we trust. Rome shall not, on this soil consecrated to freedom, ever acquire domination. The control she now enjoys, too extended in area and in population, the good citizenship— the brave manhood and pure womanhood of America—must first abridge and finally abolish.

Whatever the Knights of Columbus swear or do not swear, all persons having charge of cathedral and superior churches, monasteries, convents, houses, and any other places soever, of all regular orders soever, even of military ones, and all persons assuming dignities, canonries, and any other ecclesiastical benefice, are bound to take the oath of Pope Pius IV:

I recognize the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the mother and mistress of all churches ; and I promise and swear true obedience to the Roman pontiff, successor of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ. All other things also delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred canons and ecumenical councils, and by the holy Synod of Trent, I undoubtingly receive and profess; and at the same time all things contrary, and any heresies soever condemned by the church, and rejected and anathematized, I, in like manner, condemn, reject, and anathematize. This true Catholic faith, outside of which no one can be saved, which at present I readily profess and truly hold, I promise, vow, and swear, that I will most steadfastly retain and confess the same entire and undefined to the last breath of life (with God’s help), and that I will take care, as far as shall be in my power, that it be held, taught, and preached to my subjects, or those whose charge shall devolve on me in virtue of my office. So help me God, and these holy Gospels of God. — Judge S. A. Miller, Argument, etc., p. 167.

That the Inquisition has simply suspended its activities, but has not abandoned them finally, is well attested by the form of excommunication pronounced by a Roman Catholic Irish bishop against one Francis Freeman, who embraced the Protestant faith in 1765 :

Excommunication Pronounced by Philip Dunn
Against Francis Freeman, Who Embraced
the Protestant Faith in 1765, Found Among
That Prelate’s Papers in His House, Wicklow.

By the authority of God the Father Almighty, and the blessed Virgin Mary, and of Peter, and Paul, and all the Holy Saints, we excommunicate Francis Freeman, late of the County of Dublin, but now of Juckmill, in the County of Wicklow, that, in spite of God, and Peter, and in spite of all the Holy Saints, and in spite of our most Holy Father the Pope, God’s vicar on earth, and in spite of Philip Dunn, our diocesan and worshipful Canons, who serve God daily, hath apostatized to a most damnable religion, full of heresy, and blasphemy; excommunicated let him be, and delivered over to the devil, as a perpetual malefactor and schismatic ; accursed let him be in all cities, and all towns, in fields, in ways, in yards, in houses, and in all other places, whether lying or rising, walking or running, leaning or standing, waking or sleeping, eating or drinking, or whatsoever thing he does besides: we separate him from the threshold and all good prayers of the Church ; from the participation of the Holy Jesus ; from all sacraments, chapels, and altars; from the holy bread and holy water; from all the merit of God ‘s holy priests and religious men ; and from their cloisters, and all pardons, privileges, grants, and immunities which all the Holy Popes have granted them; and we give him over, utterly to the fiend; and let him quench his soul when dead in the pains of Hell fire, as this candle is quenched and put out; and let us pray to God, our Lady, Peter and Paul, that all the senses of his body may fail, as now the light of this candle is gone, except he come, on sight hereof, and openly confess his damnable heresy and blasphemy, and by repentance make amends, as much as in him lies, to God, our Lady, Peter, and the worshipful company of this Church ; and as the staff of this holy cross now falls down, so may he, except he recants and repents.
Philip Dunn.

Alexander MacDonell, first bishop of Upper Canada, 1820-1840, pronounced in a Toronto church a frightful form of excommunication against certain Catholics, who had become guilty of the atrocious crime of differing from the bishop’s politics, and, in so differing, followed the lead of Eev. Dr. ‘Grady, a clever, cultured Irish priest, whom MacDonell had, out of political rancor mainly, suspended from ecclesiastical ministrations, which ‘Grady’s talents and merits had honored.

One of MacDonell ‘s successors, James Vincent Cleary, bishop and archbishop of Kingston from 1880 till 1897, pronounced at Kemptville, Ontario, abominable curses and blasphemous anathemas on one McGovern, guilty of marrying a Protestant. McGovern ‘s marriage was legal, but Rome is above all civil law!

The laws of the United States say that civil marriage and marriage by any legalized authority are recognized by law and are wholly legal. The pope and the priests say such marriages are not legal. Thus is the Church of Rome denying and defying civil authority just as clearly as Mormon priests and people denied and defied such authority in polygamous marriages.

The New York Times recently printed this item:

There is to-day, unfortunately, a disposition on the part of Catholics to contract irreligious marriages, said the Rev. Msgr. Edward W. Mc- Carty, pastor of the St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, Brooklyn, during his Lenten sermon last night. Frequently they go before ministers of other denominations, before justices of the peace and aldermen, and have the ceremonies performed. In such a case there is no marriage whatever. It is impossible for a minister of any denomination other than a Catholic priest to bind a marriage tie between two Catholics. There is no public official, whatever his name, who can effect this union. Those who go before a minister or justice of the peace for this purpose show that they have a low estimate of the sacredness of the marriage state and of the fixity of the marriage tie.

For anarchy does Rome, in truth, stand here in America and in all civilized lands.

I now offer for my readers ‘ consideration the declaration or oath of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, read by Mr. Joe Devlin, Irish Nationalist, M. P., before the House of Commons of England:

I do declare and promise I will keep inviolable all the secrets of this Society of Brethren from all but those whom I know to be members in good standing and the Roman Catholic clergy, and that I will support the constitution and by-laws of the Ancient Order of Hibernians to the best of my ability; and I further promise that I will not divulge or allow to be divulged the password of the Order, not even to a member of my own division ; that I will be true and steadfast to the brethren of this Society dedicated to St. Patrick, the Holy Patron Saint of Ireland; and that I will duly conform myself to the dictates of my legally-elected officers in all things lawful, and not otherwise; that I will not provoke or quarrel with any of my brethren.

If a brother should be harshly spoken of, or otherwise treated unjustly, I will espouse his cause and give him the earliest possible information, aiding him with my sincere friendship when in distress.

I also promise that I will not propose or assist in admitting any person of a bad or suspicious character, and that I will at all times be zealous for the interest of this Society, and will not wrong a brother to my knowledge. I do not, and will not, while a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, belong to any Society condemned by the Holy Roman See.

All this I pledge my sacred word of honour to do and perform so long as I remain a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and having made this promise of my own free will and accord, may God assist me in my endeavour to fulfill the same, and may He protect our friendship, and grant us to live in this state of grace.

As to the restless activities of Romanism, in America alone, I present the following from a non-Catholic source:

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF CATHOLIC SOCIETIES.

The American Federation of Catholic Societies was founded in 1901. It is composed of 19 National organizations, many State and County federations and parishes. Total membership, about 3,000,000. Its objects are the cementing of the bonds of fraternal union among the Catholic laity and the fostering and protection of Catholic interests. The Federation has the approval and blessing of 80 archbishops and bishops, and of Pope Pius X. National headquarters is at Victoria Building, St. Louis, Mo. The officers are as follows:

President, Chas. I. Denechaud, New Orleans, La. First Vice-President, Thos. Flynn, Chicago, 111. Secretary, Anthony Matre, St. Louis, Mo. Treasurer, F. W. Heckenkamp, Jr.
—N. Y. World Almanac, 1913.

No Catholic society, be it Knights of Columbus, Ancient Order of Hibernians, or any other, may call itself Catholic unless it remain in closest touch with and absolute subserviency to bishops and priests of the Roman obedience. Now, here is the oath that every bishop of the Roman Church must, on taking possession of his see, pronounce and subscribe to most solemnly:

I, N. N., Bishop-elect of the See of N., do swear, that, from this time henceforth, I will be faithful and obedient to the blessed Apostle Peter, to the holy Church of Rome, and to our Lord the Pope, and his successors canonically appointed. I will to my utmost defend, increase, and advance, the rights, honors, privileges, and authority of the holy Roman Church of our Lord the Pope, and his successors aforesaid.—I will not join in any consultation, act or treaty, in which anything shall be plotted to the injury of the rights, honor, state and power of our Lord the Pope, or of the said Church. I will keep with all my might the rules of the holy Fathers (i. e., of the Council), the Apostolical (Papal) decrees, ordinances, disposals, reservations, provisions and mandates; and cause them to be observed by others. Heretics, Schismatics, and rebels to our said Lord the Pope and his successors aforesaid, I will to the utmost of my power persecute and destroy. — Sub. Jul. Hi. An. 1551.

Among the papal decrees that the bishops are by oath bound to carry out is the celebrated bull, “In Coena Domini,” An. 1638:

First Article. We excommunicate and anathematize, in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and by the authority of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and by our own, all Wickliffites, Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Hugonots, Anabaptists, and all other heretics, by whatsoever name they are called, and of whatsoever sects they may be ; and also all Schismatics, and those who withdraw themselves, or recede obstinately from the obedience of the Bishop of Rome; as also their Adherents, Receivers, Favorers, and generally any defenders of them:—together with all who, without the authority of the Apostolic See, shall knowingly read, keep^ or print, any of their Books which treat on Religion, or by or for any cause whatever, publicly or privately, on any pretence or color defend them.

What punishments were to be inflicted on Heretics, etc.?

If any Bishop be negligent (Cone. Benni. Tom. 11, p. 152) in purging his diocese of heretical pravity, he, by the 3rd Canon of the 4th Lateran Council, must be deprived of his episcopal dignity; and by the Council of Constance (Sess. 45, Tom. 7, p. 1122), and by the Canon Law (Decretal lib. 5. tit. 7, cap. IS), Bishops, by their above oath of consecration, are bound to do so. And the punishment to be inflicted on the heretics, must be excommunication, confiscation of goods, imprisonment, exile, or death, as the case may be. (Concil. Benii. Tom 8.)

mendacity
(mɛnˈdæsɪtɪ)
n, pl -ties
1. the tendency to be untruthful
2. a falsehood

When the Roman Catholics of the British Isles, long excluded from civil rights, not because they were Catholics, but because they were Bomanists first and British subjects after, sought in the beginning of the nineteenth century for legal relief from political disabilities, their prelatical leaders declared, openly and repeatedly, that Catholics were, in matters civil and temporal, under no obligation of obedience to the pope. Writing to Lord Liverpool in 1826, Bishop Doyle, the ablest of the Irish bishops, declared:

The Catholic Church is a thoroughly organized and well-managed business and political institution, probably the greatest on earth. It wields its influence to promote and advance the interests of its members in business and political affairs. Its members recognize this powerful influence, and, being ever ready to safeguard their selfish interests, they are obedient and servile. This obedience and servility increase the power of the Church and, through the united efforts of all of its members, the material benefits derived are manifold.

We are taunted with the proceedings of popes. What, my lord, have we Catholics to do with the proceedings of popes, or why should we be made accountable for them? — Essay on Catholic Claims, p. 111.

To a Committee of the House of Lords, in 1825, Bishop Doyle declared, in answer to the question :

In what, and how far, does the Roman Catholic profess to obey the pope?

He replied:

The Catholic professes to obey the pope in matters which regard his religious faith and in those matters of ecclesiastical discipline which have already been defined by the competent authorities.

To another important question:

Does that justify the objection that is made to Catholics that their allegiance is divided?

Bishop Doyle made emphatic reply :

I do not think it does in any way. “We are bound to obey the pope in those things that I have already mentioned. But our obedience to the law and the allegiance which we owe the Sovereign are complete and full and perfect and undivided, inasmuch as they extend to all political, legal, and civil rights of the King or of his subjects. I think the allegiance due to the King and the allegiance due to the pope are as distinct and as divided in their nature as any two things can possibly be.

The Vicars Apostolic, who with Episcopal authority governed the Roman Catholics of Great Britain, declared in 1826 :

The allegiance which Catholics hold to be due, and are bound to pay, to their Sovereign and to the civil authority of the State is perfect and undivided. . . .

They declare that neither the pope, nor any other prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Roman Catholic Church, . . . has any right to interfere, directly or indirectly, in the civil government, . . . nor to oppose in any manner the performance of the civil duties which are due to the King.

The Irish Bishops, addressing the Roman Catholic clergy and laity in a Pastoral, dated January 25, 1826, repeat :

It is a duty which they owe to themselves, as well as to their Protestant fellow-subjects, whose good opinion they value, to endeavor once more to remove the false imputations that have been frequently cast upon the faith and discipline of that Church which is entrusted to their care, that all may be enabled to know with accuracy their genuine principles.

Among these “genuine principles’ ‘ the Irish Bishops enumerate:

They declare on oath their belief that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are they thereby required to believe, that the pope is infallible.

Then, after various recitals, they set forth:

After this full, explicit, and sworn declaration, we are utterly at a loss to conceive on what possible ground we could be justly charged with bearing toward our Most Gracious Sovereign only a divided allegiance.

The Roman Church boasts that in matters of doctrine it is unchangeable. From 1826 till 1870 the period is not lengthy, as far as historical progress is concerned. Yet what vital changes in that brief time in Roman Catholic faith !

When, in fact, we speak of the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, we use a phrase, as Mr. Gladstone well points out, “which will not bear strict examination. The Canons of the Council of Trent were, at least, the real Canons of a real Council ;” the Vatican Council’s ” decrees’ ‘ were a simple approbatory acceptance of decrees formulated and promulgated by the pope alone.

Mr. Gladstone is very explicit; so very much so as to be unanswerable in defining the scope of Papal Infallibility:

Will it be said, finally, that the Infallibility touches only matter of faith and morals? Only matter of morals! Will any of the Roman casuists kindly acquaint us what are the departments and functions of human life which do not and can not fall within the domain of morals? If they will not tell us, we must look elsewhere. In his work entitled Literature and Dogma, Mr. Matthew Arnold quaintly informs us—as they tell us nowadays how many parts of our poor bodies are solid and how many aqueous—that about seventy-five per cent of all we do belongs to the department of ‘ ‘ conduct. ‘ ‘ Conduct and morals, we may suppose, are nearly co-extensive. Threefourths, then, of life are thus handed over. But who will guarantee to us the other fourth? Certainly not St. Paul, who says, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” And, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” No! Such a distinction would be the unworthy device of a shallow policy, vainly used to hide the daring of that wild ambition which at Rome, not from the throne, but from behind the throne, prompts the movements of the Vatican. I care not to ask if there be dregs or tatters of human life such as can escape from the description and boundary of morals. I submit that Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is co-extensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life. So, then, it is the supreme direction of us in respect to all Duty which the pontiff declares to belong to him sacro approbante concilio; and this declaration he makes, not as an otiose opinion of the schools, but cunctis fidelibus credendam et tenendam.—The Vatican Decrees, by Gladstone, pp. 27, 28.

Speaking of 1826, Mr. Gladstone states :

Papal infallibility was most solemnly declared to be a matter on which each man might think as he pleased; the pope’s power to claim obedience was strictly and narrowly limited: it was expressly denied that he had any title, direct or indirect, to interfere in civil government. Of the right of the pope to define the limits which divide the civil from the spiritual by his own authority, not one word is said by the prelates of either country [Great Britain or Ireland].

Since that time all these propositions have been reversed. The pope’s infallibility, when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals, has been declared, with the assent of the bishops of the Roman Church, to be an article of faith binding on the conscience of every Christian; his claim to the obedience of his spiritual subjects has been declared in like manner without any practical limit or reserve ; and his supremacy, without any reserve of civil rights, has been similarly affirmed to include everything which relates to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world. And these doctrines, we now know on the highest authority, it is of necessity for salvation to believe.

Independently, however, of the Vatican Decrees themselves, it is necessary for all who wish to understand what has been the amount of the wonderful change now consummated in the Constitution of the Latin Church, and what is the present degradation of its Episcopal order, to observe also the change, amounting to revolution, of form in the present as compared with other conciliatory decrees. Indeed, that spirit of centralization, the excesses of which are as fatal to vigorous life in the Church as in the State, seems now nearly to have reached the last and furthest point of possible advancement and exaltation. — The Vatican Decrees, by Gladstone, pp. 24, 25.

Accept must all Roman Catholics, as infallible judgments, the papal denunciations of the Masonic and other fraternal orders, so splendidly equipped and so noble in achievement for human betterment. The essential difference between Masonry and Papalism is well set forth by the Masonic Chonicler:

Masons often complain of the aggressive methods of members of the Catholic Church, and ask why Masons do not follow their example and thereby do more in the way of promoting each others welfare.

The answer is simple. The Catholic Church is a thoroughly organized and well-managed business and political institution, probably the greatest on earth. It wields its influence to promote and advance the interests of its members in business and political affairs. Its members recognize this powerful influence, and, being ever ready to safeguard their selfish interests, they are obedient and servile. This obedience and servility increase the power of the Church and, through the united efforts of all of its members, the material benefits derived are manifold.

On the other hand, the Masonic order is in no sense a business or political institution. It is strictly a fraternal organization, relying on Truth and Justice for its strength and support. It neither favors nor antagonizes religious beliefs, and refuses to be drawn into business or political controversies. It makes it clear to every member that he should aid and support his brother in his laudable undertakings, but such aid and support is purely voluntary, or solely within the member’s discretion. There is no law compelling a member to fulfill his obligation in this regard, nor any powerful influence exercised to induce him to do his duty. In other words, Masonry does not appeal to the selfishness of its members by holding out a reward for obeying some edict. It remains passive, relying on the honesty and devotion of its members.

Masonry can not nor will not stoop to the despicable methods of the Catholic Church in order to promote the interests of its members.

The sole offense of Masonry, in Romanist eyes, is its refusal, peremptory and perpetual, to accept Rome as mistress and mother. Let any society be as “secret” as it may; let any society be as destructive to human betterment as it can, Rome is, on its acceptance of the Roman collar of subserviency, prepared to receive it into full brotherhood and communion.

No such darksome and lethal record as the Jesuits has any organization known of civilized man; but the Jesuit is persona gratissima to pope and cardinals, because prepared to commit any abomination to further the interests of popery.

Since the re-establishment of the Jesuits, the Roman Church has fallen under the dominancy of Alphonsus de Liguori, a “Saint” of high degree, a “Doctor of the Church,” in the Roman Martyrology. De Liguori, born of a noble family, led in early life a worldly and, it is said, sinful career. He entered in due time upon the practice of law, but, called of God as his admirers and apologists put it, he determined to give himself entirely to religion. Close study of the man shows him to have been a monomaniac of so pronounced a degree that he may have been possessed of evil spirits. His so-called theological writings display a minute acquaintance, truly diabolical, with every detail of evil which hell alone could supply.

Friendly to the Jesuits, who had trained him, De Liguori used every influence to prevent their suppression. By diabolical or other agency he managed to make himself, so authentic writings disclose, appear in Pope Clement XIV’s private chamber while actually present at the same moment in his own home, many miles away. The Liguori in the pope’s chamber tried to dissuade the pontiff from suppressing the Jesuits. The other, or real Liguori, accepted the suppression, and upon the ruins of the Jesuits erected a new Religious Order, called the Redemptorists, who make it their special glory to call this demon possessed ” saint’ ‘ their founder.

Grateful to Liguori for his friendship to their Order in hours of darkest trouble, the Jesuits make his teaching the basis of all their moral ( 1) theological systems. The theology of Liguori, as far as its teaching of clean living and Christlike demeanor to men and women of the world is concerned, is a work of direct and darkest abominations.

When Hecker and his friends of the ” Brook Farm” left Protestantism to embrace the Roman creed, they first thought of attaching themselves to the Congregation of the Redemptorists. But the Redemptorists, for the most part a Belgian and German Order, soon shocked their sensibilities. They applied to Rome for the formation of a new Order, to be called the Paulists, intended especially to receive Protestant ministers desirous of qualifying themselves for duty as priestly missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hecker, being a man of blameless life, attracted some followers, but the Congregation of Paulists, approved at his instance by the pope, has demonstrated itself a failure as an instrument of religious upliftment. The Paulists are nowhere, in the few establishments they have founded, the power for good that Hecker intended them to be. Everywhere they have, on the contrary, fallen into evil ways and gainful occupations. They have descended to the level of the lascivious, greedy, secular priesthood, using the latter for unworthy purposes. See ‘ ‘ Romanism A Menace to the Nation,’ ‘ pp. 118-121.

The Paulists planned of Hecker and the Paulists of to-day are as different as auroral splendor from clouded night. The Paulists were founded for the purpose, express and exclusive, of Romanizing America — a purpose very close to the papal heart, as the following, from a leading Roman Catholic paper, demonstrates :

Make America Catholic.

During the Lenten season, now drawing to a close, devotion on the part of the Catholic people of this diocese has been remarkable. Thousands have approached the communion rail every day, many missions have been given, while the customary Lenten exercises have been taken advantage of by great crowds of devout people, who have stormed high heaven with their earnest petitions. God answers prayer. He will answer the supplications of those faithful thousands.

We hope our people are not selfish in their prayers. America must become Catholic, and it is only through the prayers of the people that this can be brought about. The Apostolic Mission House at Washington [operated by the Paulists] is doing wonderful work for the conversion of our country. It is the agency for the training of priests to work effectively among non-Catholics. It is a work which should be encouraged and helped by giving generously toward its support. What greater work, what nobler work can claim the attention and sympathy and charity of a true Catholic heart?

There are those who will say this is the old, old story of dollars and cents. It is, to a certain extent, for little can be done without funds. People should remember, however, that these missionaries realize that every cent raised is given for a sacred cause. It is given to enable the gospel message to be preached to those who are not of the fold, but many of whom will save their souls by membership in the Catholic Church through conversion.

In an urgent appeal, the missionaries say:

“Relying on your constant generosity, we have great hopes of sending into neglected districts especially well-trained missionaries who will do much work for God. A great deal is being accomplished now, but we have need of a more extended apostolate. We shall not be content until every State in the Union has its missionaries to non-Catholics. This larger field calls for greater funds, and we rely on you, dear friend, to help us.”

The Roman Church is busy with the Public School System of the country, either denouncing it, or manipulating it for its own forbidding purposes. The Catholic Telegraph, of Cincinnati, 0., under date May 15, 1913, states:

A. P. A. Teacher Dropped.

Found guilty of circulating the bogus K. of C. “oath” among her pupils, a public school teacher named Miss Koch, of Marcus, Iowa, was dismissed from her position. Credit for securing her expulsion is due to the Knights of Columbus of Marcus. In the forty years of the existence of the public schools in that city but one Catholic has ever been employed as teacher.

Catholic teachers all over the country circulate books assailing Protestantism, belying historical record and conclusion. They also in many places distribute Romanist Catechisms and controversial works among Protestant pupils; and, besides, give them medals, rosary beads, and other papistical trinkets blessed by pope, prelate, or priest.

The American people ought to dissociate everlastingly the Public School from all contact with Romanism. The Roman Church dignitaries denounce the public schools as godless, fomenters of crime, and nursing places of sedition. Let these dignitaries be, therefore, kept closely to the control of their own parochial system of education, which is now so prolific in raising a plethoric population to fill the jails and penitentiaries of this Republic, and, consequently, in urgent need of firm supervision.

Americans permit no clergymen of other denominations to assume controlling interest in public schools. Is it not time that a line be drawn against the Roman priest to make him keep hands off the people’s schools? We know very well, from his parochial school effort, to what a level of degradation he would reduce the public schools. Take another item from the same paper:

Caring for Italian Children.

After a visit to the two public schools within the confines of St. Anthony parish, New York City, Rev. Cherubino Viola, 0. F. M., obtained permission from the principals for the Catholic children, nearly all of whom are Italians, to attend special religious instructions. About one thousand boys and girls, some of whom had rarely been in a church before, attended the instructions for an hour on three successive days. As a result, four hundred are now preparing for their first communion and confirmation on May 25th.

Why should this priest be permitted to interfere with the regime of the public school on any pretext whatever?

Unfortunately, our public schools are controlled largely by ward politicians, of divers Church affiliations, who bow and cringe and fawn in the presence of a Romish priest. He can, they believe, make votes for the gangsters, who in turn are ready to sacrifice public schools, public moneys, and American patriotism itself on the altars of graft and gain, at which popish priests so gladly minister.

How subservient American non-Catholics are to Rome receives further confirmation in The Catholic Telegraph, May 15, 1913 :

Grand Army Presents Flags.

Confirmation services at St. Mary Industrial School, Baltimore, last week, were attended with unusual solemnity. The Most Rev. Archbishop Bonzano, Apostolic Delegate, administered the Sacrament, and the Grand Army of the Republic, through General John R. King, presented two flags to the school. Bishop Corrigan replied to General King, accepting the flags. Mayor Preston was also present.

There had been no Grand Army of the Republic if Rome could have prevented. When the organization was first started, it encountered bitter opposition from priests all over the country. Now leading Grand Army men hand over the American flag as a tribute to Papal Delegate Bonzano, who hates a Republican form of government. To take further grip of army and navy is the very evident purpose of Rome, as this statement from The Catholic Telegraph, May 15, 1913, very clearly demonstrates :

Army Chaplains Will Hold Congress.

A convention of the Catholic chaplains of the army and navy will be held next month in Washington, D. C. This is the first gathering of its kind in the country, and far-reaching results are expected from its deliberations. The plan of the convention is based largely on the suggestions offered by the Rev. George J. Waring, chaplain of the Eleventh Cavalry, in an essay entitled, “The Chaplain’s Duties,” which the War Departmen has published as an official document and has recommended as a sort of text-book for chaplains of every denomination.

One of the suggestions of Father Waring which will receive attention at the convention is the appointment by the hierarchy of a Bishop, who will have jurisdiction over Catholic chaplains in both branches of the service. This plan is followed in the British army, the Bishop at the same time governing his own diocese. The chaplains are subject to him only while in service, and from him they receive their faculties and powers. They are responsible to him for their conduct, and he is responsible for them to their respective Bishops. The plan has worked satisfactorily and to the benefit of religion, and it is held the same results would follow from its adoption in this country.

What next? Will President Wilson continue the practice of his predecessors and consult Gibbons, Farley, and O’Connell, Rome’s red princes in America, as to army and navy appointments? Will America’s army, papalized and foreignized, be so weakened and emasculated by Romanistic control as to make it easy prey for perfidious Jap? The soldiers of Spain were once justly reckoned brave and almost unconquerable. Romish control for centuries has reduced Spain to the level of a fourth or fifth-rate power. The control, the influence of Romanism, nay, its very contact, is deadly to every independent endeavor and to every achievement of bravery.

How active Romanism is in its endeavor to seize on and throttle America, the following, from the same issue of the Catholic Union and Times, March 13, 1913, establishes :

Mission Support in New York.

The ninth annual report of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in the archdiocese of New York has just been issued by the director, Very Rev. John J. Dunn. It shows a remarkable increase in Catholic interest in the mission cause. Through Msgr. Dunn’s efforts the sum of $163,- 457.25 was collected for the missions during 1912, an increase of more than $40,000 over the preceding year. The money expended in collecting this large sum amounted to $11,489.71, leaving the net contribution of New York to the missions, $151,967.54.

The report is gotten up in a businesslike manner. The various expenditures are classified and the amount received from various sources clearly indicated. A business man looking over the report will be impressed with the economic manner in which the office is run. The expenses amount to less than seven per cent of the sum collected. Over ninety-three per cent went to the missions. In the body of the report Msgr. Dunn thanks all who have co-operated with him, and acknowledges his indebtedness to the press, religious and secular, for the kindly spirit which its representatives have exhibited towards his work.

The Society for the Propagation of the Faith is growing very fast in the United States. Boston and Philadelphia are only a little behind New York, which leads the entire Catholic world in aid of the mission cause. Cardinal Farley is keenly interested in the work of the society which he established in New York, and views its growth with deep interest and satisfaction. The New York office is in communication with all parts of the mission field, and the report gives some indication of the vast field and the complex problems met with by the missionaries in carrying the gospel to the heathen.

So do the subjoined, from The Catholic Telegraph, March 30, 1913 :

Women Will Erect National Shrine.

A suitable church being badly needed to accommodate the body of professors and students of the Catholic University, Washington, D. C, and a reasonable number of visitors, the rector, Msgr. Shahan, is appealing to the Catholic women of the United States to undertake the work of raising funds for the purpose. The proposed new church will be dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

Splendid Collection for Seminary.

The annual report of the Diocesan Seminary of Philadelphia shows that the total collection during the past year was $67,402, or $5,000 in excess of the previous year. It was stated that thirty candidates were excluded for lack of room, and the rector suggests that a separate preparatory seminary be erected.

Here I may be permitted to remark that fully fifty per cent of the contributions to the Romanist development in America is given by non-Catholics ; very largely, indeed, by ardently professing Protestants. Some of the latter are out for Catholic business patronage, others for political advancement. Some conceal or have their contributions covered up under various devices; other Protestants, however, do not flinch from publicity, as for instance:

From Charlottetown, P. E. I., comes a story that bears repetition. A few weeks ago the magnificent new Cathedral of that city was burned, just as the Bishop was preparing to celebrate the paying of the last indebtedness on the property. The first to come forward with aid after the fire was a Methodist firm with a donation of $5,000, with which the Bishop purchased the old Zion Presbyterian Church as a temporary place of worship for the congregation. This was followed by a subscription of $6,000 from Frank R. Heartz, a Methodist, while another prominent Protestant gave $10,000.—The Catholic Telegraph, April 3, 1913.

While Catholics have no hesitation in asking Protestants to subscribe for the building and support of Romanist edifices, no Catholic is permitted, according to strict Catholic teaching, to give one cent towards the erection of any distinctively Protestant or professedly non-Catholic structure. So far does the prohibition of Catholics extending aid or countenance to “heresy” go, that a Catholic may not enter a Protestant church edifice to take part in the funeral services of a deceased friend, even if that friend were of closest kinship. The same prohibition extends to the attendance of Catholics at weddings, christenings, and other ceremonies in Protestant church edifices or elsewhere. Catholic young women serving as bridesmaids to Protestant young women friends are excommunicated. And the sinning excommunicated Catholics attending Protestant funerals, weddings, or christenings, are denied absolution until they have recourse to the Romanist Bishop of the diocese, who may live 200 miles away and whose mercy may have to be paid for very liberally.

This is in strict accordance with the theological teaching of the Church of Rome. However, in non-Catholic countries such grave misdemeanors are frequently tolerated, sometimes even encouraged by priests and prelates, in the hope of making those countries “dominantly Catholic”—”the end justifies the means.”

No doubt whatever that, since 1870, the Roman Catholic American citizen, the Roman Catholic British subject, or the Roman Catholic of any other country, owes first allegiance to the pope, a second and very subordinate one to the country whose protection he enjoys. Well says The Truth Seeker:

Every Roman Catholic is fighting under two flags; or rather, living under one and fighting under the other. And, strange as it may seem, he is fighting the flag under which he lives and which protects him. It can not be denied that the papal flag is one that every Roman Catholic must fight under when the order is given, and, until that order is given, he is working in secret against the Stars and Stripes. No papal flag should ever be hoisted above our soil.

Into many strange inconsistencies and extraordinary contradictions does the doctrine of papal infallibility lead Romanist apologists. The pope, who suppressed the Jesuits in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was, of course, according to modern Romanism, infallible. So also, of a truth, must be considered, according to the same System, the pope who, for reasons of as much weight to papalism as impelled Clement XIV to suppress them, restored the Jesuits, forty years later, as a Religious (?) Order of the very highest standing in the Church.

Pius X, raised to the papal throne on the death of Leo XIII, has repeatedly condemned what he terms “Modernism,” by which he means human betterment and social progress. Ask Pius X, I may without unseemly intrusiveness, whether the papalism of to-day, with its deification of Virgin Mary and of pope, is not a very “Modern” institution. Subservient enough were the spiritual subjects of the Vatican in the Middle Ages, but the pope could not, even then, have forced on the masses of so-called Christians acknowledging obedience to the Roman See, the dogma of Pius IX, dated 1854, making the Virgin Mary part of the Godhead, nor that of the same pontiff, dated 1870, giving the Roman pontiff divine attributes.

The Vatican, through influences open and occult at Washington, has succeeded in securing firm and profitable hold of the Philippine Islands. Did Americans wrest that magnificent archipelago from Spain to hand it over to the papacy? Present conditions do certainly point in that direction. A new Hierarchy, with a very thin American veneer, has replaced the older Spanish ecclesiastical machine; but scratch off a little of the Vatican’s veneer, manufactured expressly by Gibbons, Ireland & Co., for the “Holy Father’s” use, and yon will discover the selfsame deadlyequipment for human enslavement, so long and so lucratively used for the joint profit of inquisition- loving and people-crushing popery.

Paganism was the author of spiritual degradation, and fitting promoter, therefore, of material or manual bondage. The Christian message delivered by Paul of Tarsus, its ablest exponent, was a clear announcement of human deliverance from enslavement in its every form.

In his letter to the Galatians (4:1-7), Paul with admirable force and clearness, propounds the announcement of human upliftment:

Now I say, that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be loved of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

No anarchist, Paul the Apostle, who to the Romans wrote:

Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. — Romans 13: 8.

No such an institution as the papacy was dreamed of in the days of Paul. Had there been such an establishment as that, since termed by papalists the “one visible head of the Church on earth,’ ‘ the PVicar of Jesus Christ,’ ‘ the “Infallible Pontiff,” “Successor of Peter,” etc., etc., Paul had not assuredly failed to mention it, especially to the Christians in Rome, to whom and for whom he wrote. He preaches loyalty to the civil authorities of the Roman Empire, uttering not one word of allegiance to such a monstrous usurpation as the papal machine of today.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher [civil] powers. For there is no [civil] power but of God: the powers [civil] that be are ordained of God. . . . Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers [in things civil], attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.—Romans 13: 1-7.

Nothing known in Paul’s day of the Vatican market for the sale of indulgences; of matrimonial dispensations and annulments; of easy exits from purgatorial fires to front seats in glory. When these monstrous perversions of the Christian system made themselves most flagrantly and perniciously present, another Paul, in the person of Martin Luther, arose to call men back to the Pauline vigor and simplicity of the faith. Like unto Paul, Luther thundered forth in language that reached the very ends of the earth:

We beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. . . . For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.—1 Thess. 4: 1-7.

Not even Peter, first pope and bishop of Rome, according to Vaticanist apologists, knew anything of his own supremacy or infallibility. For in his first epistle he says not:

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of mine, as to commands of Christ’s Vicar on earth. I am pope and must be obeyed.

No impostor or usurper, the good Peter. Modestly, but authoritatively, he writes, not as a Hildebrand, or a Borgia, or a Pecci, or a Sarto:

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme ; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men : as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King.—1 Peter 2: 14-17.

Cold day, surely, for the papacy, when even the Apostle Peter adds not: ” Honor the pope, Christ’s Infallible Vicar on earth.’ ‘ The Modernists, anathematized by Pius X, may adopt Peter for patron saint! No pope, no monks or nuns in the early days of the Church. Not one word in apostolic letter or preaching of these later sinister and satanic developments of papal power. No mention, in the times of pristine purity of faith and discipline, of such an agency of enlightenment and humanity as the Inquisition.

At work to-day is the Inquisition in America. Leo XIII declared Torquemada, the infamous Spanish Inquisitor, a ‘ ‘ Saint! ‘ ‘ And there is yet a tribunal of cardinals in Rome, in every-day active service, called ‘ ‘ The Holy Office, ‘ or i ‘ The Sacred and Universal Inquisition. ‘ ‘

Give Rome control of the American Republic and you shall soon see the fires of Inquisitional fury burning and the blood of truth-lovers drenching our soil. And, in secret, the Inquisition is ever at work, even in America. The most fearful punishments are visited on nuns who reject the attentions of lecherous bishops and priests; the most damnable cruelties are visited on the very few self-respecting priests, secular and religious, who, by clean living and manful denunciation of sin in high places, incur the hostility of immoral hierarchs.

The following editorial from the North Carolina Christian Advocate of March 13, 1913, illustrates how the Protestant Church papers are awakening to the situation:

A note in these columns anent Mr. Wilson and the Roman Catholics in our issue of February 20th evidently got under the epidermis of one Roman Catholic. Usually they are very thick-skinned and do not let on, but this time one of them came back through the mails with the meanest letter we have received in many a day. Now, we published the little item as a matter of news, with some plain comment, and we are satisfied from the tone of the letter received, if we had no other evidence, that there is one man, either a Roman Catholic or a Roman Catholic sympathizer, who would love to kindle the fagots around our feet. Any one who thinks that the Roman Catholic Church is any more tolerant in spirit than it was in the days of the Inquisition should revise his notion. To be sure, the Roman Catholics have a right to their place as citizens in this Government, but their hobnobbing for special recognition, such as was given them under Mr. Taft’s administration, will not be regarded with complacency. They have made some bad history, which will continue to plague them as long as they maintain their attitude of bigoted assumption of a divine prerogative in civil matters. Until this attitude is changed and their bigoted claim is relinquished they have no right to expect that the public opinion of this Protestant country will regard them as above suspicion.

Romanism points and presses downward. Humanity is called by Gospel and other messages to look upward and to move in forward direction to the light and in the light. The System which holds in the most degrading White Slavery 150,000 nuns and candidates for nunnish servitude is on trial in America, and sure to be found wanting. Its record is, as I have shown elsewhere, one of darkest infamy.

The black or brown robed sisterhoods of the Romish Church have begging representatives constantly on the road. They visit office buildings, stores, hotels, private dwellings, saloons, and houses of prostitution, with hand out at all times for gifts to coffers bursting already with riches, but as deaf to cries of human suffering as the steel of which they are made.

Let some benefactor of the nunnish collectors meet with poverty and want and sickness ; let him then in his simplicity say unto himself: “Go will I to the Sisters ‘ hospital that I have, week in and week out, so long contributed to.” Let him, in the honesty of confiding faith, knock at the gate of the sisterhood’s “domicile for Christ’s poor,” and his ears will be stunned and heart chilled by the repulse: ‘ ‘ Go, we know you not. The city must take care of you. ‘ ‘

A word of warning right here to Protestant parents. Nunnish agents are everywhere, in the United States and other countries where non- Romanists are in a majority, striving to obtain Protestant-born children as pupils for convent schools. Devilish trick, most assuredly! The Protestant child in the convent school is made special object of lustful attentions from priests, prelates, and even from nuns (Spouses of Christ) ! She is, first of all, induced to take private instructions in religion from the Convent Chaplain, often a lecherous, drunken ruffian. He begins by giving her gilded doses of popishness, and, after a time, seduces her into base surrender of body and soul.

Convent schools have driven hundreds of Protestant, as well as Catholic, girls into houses of sin; forced them into the streets, and ultimately consigned them to prisons and the grave. Turn ye, Christian fathers and mothers, your children’s thoughts far from Rome and popery, but to the Lord God, who “will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him; He will also hear their cry, and will help them.”—Ps. 145:19.

One of the common priestly boasts is of the ease priests find in seducing Protestant girls attending convent schools. The lecherous priest sometimes fears attempts on Catholic girls or women, who might give him away to a jealous confessor, or denounce him to parents or guardians, but little or no fear has he in making attempts on Protestant girls in convent schools, or on other Protestant women, married or single. For, amongst other reasons, should a Protestant woman accuse a priest of wrongdoing, credulous Catholics would throw up their hands in horror and call it a Protestant plot to destroy the priest. A further result might be that the accusing Protestant woman and her family might be forced to leave the neighborhood.

The crafty priest who is a disciple of Venus, and nearly all priests are so, makes it a study to acquire dominating influence over Protestant women. Well knows he that these women know that he must keep lecherous tracks well covered ; and, further, knows he that they, for their own interests and protection, have to keep religiously sacred the story of any of their lapses with him. Hence does the wicked priest feel so noticeably free to give attention with evil intent to women not of his own creed. Protestant fathers and Protestant husbands have small idea indeed of the number of Protestant daughters and of Protestant wives seduced or liable to be seduced by Catholic priests.

No Catholic priest is safe guest for Protestant home. He goes there, not for good, but for evil darkest and most deadly. There was, some years ago, a priest named Nix, stationed in the county of Hastings, Ontario, Canada, who, having lived in open concubinage for some time with a Protestant doctor’s wife, fled, after exposure, to the United States, and there continued to exercise his priestly faculties. Another instance was that of “Father” Charles Ormond Reilly, of Detroit, whose scandalous escapades with women, Protestant and Catholic, aroused the indignation and disgust of all Michigan. Reilly was a Roman D. D., one of the most prominent pastors of the diocese of Detroit, and Treasurer of the Irish National League of America.

Still another example—that of the Rev. Dr. Stafford, of Washington, D. C, some of whose Protestant victims moved in the National Capitol’s highest social circles. And these are but few of the myriad of such incidents that from time to time startle and stupefy the American people.

Priests forbid Catholic men to marry Protestant women, but no prohibition is there in Roman System for priest to seduce Protestant daughter, sister, or wife. Priests succeeding in such efforts of beastliness boast of it, we repeat, in their post-prandial conversations, and to themselves glory in it as a triumph of Romanism over heresy.

Interesting truly is a papal conclave. “Con” and “clavis” are two Latin words signifying respectively “with” and “key;” liberally translated, “under lock and key.” For, while the cardinals are in meeting for the purpose of electing a pope, they are supposed to be locked in, absolutely, from the world, communing with the Holy Ghost and with a conscience enlightened of God only.

How very worldly and corrupt have been, however, many of the conclaves! To go no further back than the days of the infamous Borgia, who bought the papal tiara and called himself Alexander VI, we see venality, mendacity, immorality, and greed dominating a body sworn to act in the interests solely of the Christian religion.

Supposed to represent the apostles of Jesus Christ Himself, the humble and devoted fishermen, who, truly filled with the Holy Spirit and governed by its inspiration, undertook without shoe or scrip to convert a powerful, prejudiced, self-centered, and cruel world, the college of cardinals is indeed a very different body.

Appointed, for the most part, by intrigue, often by corruption, and as frequently through favoritism the most objectionable, the cardinals of the Roman Church are the most carnal-minded, venal, and selfish politicians on earth. So judging them, in his day, Wolsey, one of the most astute of modern statesmen, and typical churchman of his time, sought the papacy several times in succession. In his efforts to become ” Vicar of Christ,’ ‘ and wisely doubting the efficacy of the “Holy Ghost’ ‘ alone, he used very lavishly the gold and political influence of England, but Charles V of Spain and Germany, as well as other continental sovereigns, stood between him and the prize.

Men inferior to Wolsey in ability, and not superior to him in virtue, were the winners of an honor as absent from Christ-like character, surrounding, or suggestion as the very court of Satan.

Men of the Italian race have been, for several centuries, selected to fill the papal throne, to the exclusion of churchmen of almost all other nations. Why? Because the jealousies of greater peoples than the Italians have made pathway to the “chair of Peter” easy for sons of a blood and country not in the race for world-wide domination in temporals.

While, however, Italians have exclusive entree to the papacy, the government of other countries take lively interest in the selection of a pope friendly, or at all events not hostile, to their policies and purposes, Not a papal election but brings to Rome the most adroit and unscrupulous of worldly diplomatists. They fully understand the cardinals; and the cardinals understand the diplomatists just as thoroughly.

Every papal election since the days of Borgia, four hundred and more years ago—he was elected in 1492—has been, with exceptions that might be counted on the digits of one hand, a bargain and sale as flagrant as ever disgraced the rotten borough system of Britain before 1832, or has since defiled the ward elections of New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

A papal conclave is a gathering intent primarily, often exclusively, on doing that which will bring to the scarlet-clad few, given the right to vote, the most ready cash. There is always a strong candidate—sometimes two or more in evidence— a short time before the dead pope has gone to his last account. Each of these men knows that it is money which in such an election counts. He begs, borrows, or steals with the earnestness of a seeker for parliamentary, civic, or congressional honors.

The various governmental agencies also get busy. It can happen that no government is pleased with the aspirations of the avowed candidates. Each of these agents looks around for a satisfactory candidate, and if one is found, finds the cash necessary to move the “Holy Spirit” of the conclave to decide on his election.

The really strongest and really ablest candidates are often defeated for a weak and docile prelate, whom skillful managers of the Curia may manipulate without difficulty. For four centuries, if we except the forty years of their temporary suppression, 1773-1814, the Jesuits have played telling and frequently decisive part in the election of popes.

Stop at nothing to attain an end do these unscrupulous men. Says Hon. R. W. Thompson in his celebrated work, “The Footprints of the Jesuits,” Chapter XII, pp. 196, 197:

Wheresoever they [the Jesuits] were sent among heathen and unchristianized peoples, they gave trouble to the Church and inflicted serious injury upon the cause of Christianity. When they found a missionary field occupied by any of the monastic orders, they endeavored either to remove them or to destroy their influence by assailing their Christian integrity, so that they could have everything their own way. They accustomed themselves to obtain their ends by whatsoever means they found necessary, considering the latter as justified by the former. Not in Paraguay alone, but wheresoever else they obtained dominion over ignorant and credulous populations, it was mainly accomplished by persuading them to believe that conversion to Christianity consisted in the mere recital of formal words the professed converts did not understand, and in the ceremony of baptism without any intelligent conception of its character or of the example and teachings of Christ. The seeds of error they thus succeeded in scattering broadcast among the natives of India, China, and elsewhere, have grown into such poisonous fruits that all the intervening years have failed to provide an antidote, and it remains a lamentable fact that the descendants of these same professing converts have relapsed into idolatry and continued to shun Christianity as if all its influences were pestilential. They [the Jesuuits] became Brahmins in India, and, by practicing the idolatrous rites and ceremonies of that country, brought the cause of Christianity into degradation. Continuing steadily to follow the advice of Loyola, they everywhere became “all things to all men” by worshiping at the shrines of the lowest forms of heathen superstition, as if they were the holy altars of the Church.

Would such men, I ask, stop at anything to secure the election of a pope friendly to their deceit and treachery? There is a saying common enough in Rome:

Three popes have we, the white pope (the reigning pontiff), the red pope (the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda), and the black pope (the general of the Jesuits), greatest of all three. When rebuked for their temporizing with paganism, or rather surrendering to its superstitions, Mr. Thompson adds :

They [the Jesuits] justified themselves upon the ground that any form of vice, deception, and immorality became legitimated by Christianity when practiced in its name. In China they engaged with the natives in worshiping Confucius instead of Christ, and made offerings upon his altar without the slightest twinge of conscience. They omitted nothing, howsoever degrading, which they found necessary to successfully planting the Jesuit scepter among the Oriental populations, until at last, after a long and hard struggle, they were brought into partial obedience by the Church, whose authority they had defied, and whose precepts they contemptuously violated. . . . They shamelessly cast aside the profession of Christianity as if it were a thing of reproach, and performed with alacrity the most revolting Hindoo rites, seemingly as regardless of the obligation of obedience to the Church as of their own dignity and manliness of character.

Mr. Thompson does not mince words:

They substituted fraud, deceit, and hypocrisy for that open, frank, and courageous course of conduct which a sense of right never fails to suggest to ingenuous minds. They unchristianized themselves by becoming Brahmins and pariahs, crawling stealthily and insidiously into the highest places, and sinking with equal ease and skill into the lowest and most degrading.

Imagine men like these Jesuits prepared, for temporary gain, to paganize themselves in tireless activity during a papal election! Tammany politician the most corrupt, ward heeler the most conscienceless that American politics has ever known, could not hold candle to these adepts in mendacity and hypocrisy. We have heard of ballot- stuffing, of vote-buying in a thousand forms, we have heard of fraudulent counts and lying certificates of election, we have heard and known of assassinations to prevent lawfully-elected officers from taking their seats ; but at no crime less than those perpetrated by the worst of American politicians have Jesuits hesitated, in order to place pontiff of their choice on the papal throne.

Remember, let Americans in particular, that under the American flag Jesuitism flourishes as it does not seem to thrive elsewhere; save, perhaps, in Britain and the overseas dominions of that empire. The Jesuits under the Stars and Stripes are more powerful and wealthy than they were in the whole world before their suppression in 1773. There are in the United States proper several Jesuit provinces and missions. The headquarters of these provinces and missions are New York City; St. Louis, Mo.; San Francisco, Cal. ; El Paso, Tex.; New Orleans, La.; Spokane, Wash. ; and Buffalo, N. Y.

The Jesuits are particularly strong in the Philippine Islands. In the 1907 “Official Catholic DirectoryV statement for the Archdiocese of Manila we read :

The Jesuit Fathers.—Came to these Islands in 1581. In 1595 they founded the college of St. Ignacio, which was made university canonically approved by the pope and the king of Spain in 1621. Latin, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, canon and civil law were taught therein. At the same time they established the famous college of San Jose, which to-day is affiliated to the Santo Tomas University and is the hall for the medical department the colleges of San Felipe, Santa Cruz, and Cavite, and also a printing house. The Jesuit Fathers came back to the Philippines in 1859. Since then they have established the institutions above cited and opened great many missions in Mindanao. In the Ateneo there are 31 priests and 22 brothers. In the Normal School there are 19 priests and 13 brothers. Total, 50 priests and 35 brothers. Very Rev. Pio Pi, supr., 157 Arzobispo st.

From the “Official Catholic Directory,” 1913, P. J. Kennedy and Sons, Publishers, New York, pp. 814 and 871 :

JESUIT FATHERS IN ALL PROVINCES:

New York—Maryland 362
Missouri 384
New Mexico—Colorado 67
New Orleans 132
California 139
Philippines 57
Total 1,141

To which may be added for the Diocese of Dallas, Tex., 11 belonging to the Sicilian province, and for that of Havana, Cuba, 34; a grand total of 1,186.

Large sums of money are, by the Jesuits of the United States and Canada, sent to Rome regularly to help elect friendly popes and to keep the pope ‘ ‘ right ‘ ‘ after election. The present pontiff is a creature of the Jesuits. They aided freely and generously in his election: they dominate his councils and procure from his pontifical pen the most stupidly reactionary documents the Church has known for thirty years.

When the papacy stultifies itself, to the Jesuits it looks for defense. Pius X, knowing how he was elected, needs the skill and daring of such defenders as the sons of Loyola.

Pius X owes his election to the “veto” exercised by Austria against Rampolla’s proposed selection. Each of the four Catholic powers — Austria, France, Spain, and Portugal—had for three centuries exercised the right of vetoing the election of any pope not satisfactory to its government. On account of Cardinal Rampolla’s pro-Gallic tendencies and other reasons Kaiser Wilhelm induced Austria to veto his election to the papacy. To illustrate how completely the “Holy Ghost” dominates the election of a Roman pontiff, let it be borne in mind that to Cardinal Satolli, bastard son of Leo XIII, Rampolla was most odious. By Satolli ‘s agency Kaiser Wilhelm ‘s activities were set on foot during the conclave. It is, therefore, to Wilhelm, not to the “Holy Spirit,” that credit must be given for the selection of so reactionary and retrogressive a pope as Pius X.

The latter immediately after his enthronement showed his gratitude to the “Veto” by formally abolishing it forever. Talk of American politics! The most astute and adroit American boss ever known is mere pigmy in political management compared to the bosses of the Sacred ( ?) College of Cardinals. When the world wants to learn what real political activities are like, what deceit, mendacity, and venality in action really resemble, let it cast eye on the secret workings of a Roman conclave!

The public press in large part stultifies itself by treating these conclaves—these reunions of pious (?) and learned (?) men—as free agents firmly resolved on doing the right. Never yet has conclave, since conclaves were first invented, been free from a corruption, intimidation, dissimulation, and fraud that would put to shame any purely secular gathering of grafters and boodlers.

When Pius X dies, the hand of Jesuit, gilded and crafty, will control the conclave called to select his successor. The ” White Pope” dies, but the “Black Pope” (the general of the Jesuits) never ceases to operate.

No reason, however, this, that Christian people should lose hope or drop activity. The human heart longs for higher and better things than this life can ever afford or Romanism would permit. It leaps out into the future and grasps the hope of the better life for which Jerome of Prague died and Luther strove. It longs for immortality!! Man calls his highest imagination into requisition to find it. Freed from Romanist chains, he looks up into the very gate of heaven and asks, “Will man live again ? ‘ ‘ “Is there life beyond ? ” ” Will the longing desires of my nature be satisfied?” “Will I live forever?” Questions of the soul are these—questions that call forth the answer, “He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” The poet, hearing this answer, breathes to us in words of deepest tenderness the message that infidelity’s no hope is the dawning of hope for every Christian man. It is the dawning of the hope that —

“There’s a home in the skies where the weary will rest, A glorious home in the land of the blest; There tears will be wiped from the sorrowful eye, And the broken heart will forget to sigh.

No pestilence rides on the wings of the air, No wave of affliction or sorrow is there; In darkness that region shall never be furled, For the smile of the Lord is the light of that world.”

The papacy is certainly the enemy of the free press. That enmity began not yesterday, but started with the art of printing. See for example, Leo X, in the Council of Lateran, Session X, regarding the printing of books:

Lest that which has been wholesomely invented unto the glory of God, and the increase of the faith, and the propagation of the liberal arts, be converted to the contrary effect, and bring forth detriment to the salvation of the faithful of Christ, we deemed it right that our solicitude should be exercised concerning the printing of books, lest in future thorns grow up along with the good seed, or poisons be mixed up with medicines, wishing, therefore, to provide an opportune remedy for these, with the approbation of this sacred council, that the business of the printing of such books may succeed with the greater prosperity, in proportion as a more close search shall be employed with greater diligence and caution; we decree and ordain that henceforward in the time to come, no one shall presume to print, or cause to be printed, any book, or any writing soever, as well in our city as in all other cities and dioceses soever, unless such books or writings be first carefully examined in the city by our vicar and the master of the sacred palace, but in other States and dioceses by the bishop, or some other person to be deputed for that purpose by the same bishop, and by the inquisitor of heretical depravity, in the State or diocese in which the printing of such books might take place, and be approved by their subscription with their own hand, to be affixed in all cases, lest by taking an easy short cut a heavy loss be sustained, as an inscription ought legitimately to precede an accusation, so also ought a charitable admonition to precede a denunciation, and a clamorous insinuation an inquisition, such check being always employed, that, according to the form of the trial, the form of the sentence also to be worded. — Buckley, page 313.

No man connected with the press is free from interference by the Catholic prelacy. He is, if a Catholic, informed that his duty on the secular press is to cover and conceal all misdeeds of bishops and priests. He is, if editor of a Catholic (so-called) paper published by the bishop’s approval, obliged to write constantly or to receive and publish writings belauding the worst of bishops and the lewdest of clerics.

Catholic papers are maintained by episcopal authority solely. These papers are either owned by the bishops themselves or depend for circulation on the approval of bishops. One of the papers standing best in episcopal estimation is The Western Watchman, edited by that unclean priest, D. S. Phelan, of whom the St. Louis Globe- Democrat, August 20, 1892, published the following editorial, to which Phelan never dared make reply :

The ribald cleric who, “for some inscrutable purpose,” as Mr. Greeley once remarked, is permitted to edit a weekly “religious” newspaper in this city called The Western Watchman, takes me for a topic in answer to some editorial remarks in the Globe-Democrat on his criticism of the life and death of the late Judge Normile. I seem to have stirred him to his innermost depths in a very short paragraph calling attention to the brutal and unprovoked character of his assault upon the memory of a man who, whatever his faults—and they were many—deserved something better than the maledictions of a renegade priest, at his death. “Noble spirits war not with the dead,” says an old aphorism, but the ignoble spirit of Phelan is proof against all sayings, old and new, that are on the side of decency, humanity, or charity. His whole article in so far as it attempts to be a statement of fact is a tissue of falsehood. He says my arraignment of him was based on his criticism of the sin in Normile. He lies. What I reprobated in his infamous fulmination was that he took scarcely any notice of the supreme sin of suicide and spent all his curses upon the offense of Normile in “changing his belief on his way from the cradle to the grave” as I phrased it. Suicide is never justified, and least of all in a case like that of Normile, in which it was an unmanly surrender of one who was neither pursued nor besieged by a troublesome foe. But there was nothing in the life or death of Normile which justified his damnation in cold type; still less was there anything in the life or character of Phelan which justified in damning of anybody. The article bore the evidence of malicious personal spite all the way through. It was, on Phelan ‘s part, a gross abuse of his office as a priest, although he may claim that it was the editor, and not the priest, who did the base work. One of these days the devil will get the editor, and then where will the priest be? A cause is no better than its advocate, and to estimate correctly the righteousness of the Watchman’s maledictions, it can not be unfair to investigate the character and reputation of the man who uttered them.

The pen of Chas. Dickens painted the prototype of Phelan many years ago, when it wrote the immortal “Pickwick Papers” and gave to the world the Rev. Mr. Stiggins, who, for reasons kept entirely to himself, was known as the gentle shepherd. Mr. Stiggins had all the vices which Phelan has and which a clergyman should not have, including hypocrisy and bibulosity. He cultivated the latter weakness to such an extent that the elder Mr. Weller says of him that when he made a pastoral call on the family, he always brought a pint-and-a-half bottle with him, which he filled with pine apple rum, and that when he got through with that bottle there was nothing left in it but the cork and the smell. The parable between Stiggins and Phelan is perfect in many respects, and it is hard to believe that Dickens in creating Stiggins did not foresee Phelan. The chief physical characteristic of Stiggins was a red nose. Phelan has a nasal capacity an hundred candle-power greater than that given by Shakespeare to Bardolph. It is a cartilaginous temperance lecture, which he who runs may read. It was acquired by sponging at the sideboards of the impertinent rich while its owner was using his sacred office to denounce the small sins of the improvident poor. Then there is, as already remarked, the parallel of hypocrisy between the two. But Stiggins was a much more manly hypocrite than Phelan, in whom it is difficult to determine whether the liar or the hypocrite predominates, and who fails to add theft to his other accomplishments only because he lacks courage of his convictions. Mr. Phelan complains that in a former article I did nothing but call names—which is not argument. In this writing I am trying to do a little portrait painting, in the execution of which I trust a small amount of clumsiness will be excused for a great deal of truthfulness.

In learning and literature Phelan is a pretentious ass and impostor. He is a fool among scholars and a scholar among fools. He has contrived to pick up a little knowledge between his drunks, but it is fast disappearing under the fumes of alcohol, which have already rendered it nebulous and uncertain. He has not read a book in twenty years, but has lived during that period in a state of intellectual hibernation, drawing a sustenance from the scanty acquirements of his youth—like a bear in winter quarters sucking his paws to live on the flesh acquired during the summer. He is fond of quoting Latin, but rarely ventures beyond the familiar phrases of that language to be found at the butt end of a Webster dictionary. In his intellectual process he often mistakes delirium tremens for a divine inflatus, and thinks he is inspired when he is only tipsy. In his judgment of the product of other minds he is, like Cassio, nothing if not critical, but the standard of criticism which he applies to others would, if applied to him, make an indecent exposure of his rum-drenched brain, even to the ignorant few who still believe him to be a scholar because he is an ecclesiastic. Thus he can find nothing more pungent to say of the few editorial lines that provoked from him a column of maudlin malevolence than that they exhibit “a want of continuity of thought. ‘ ‘ In his salad days he heard the schoolmen say that “continuity of thought’ ‘ was an essential of good English composition, and finding that small remnant of his education still in the lumber-room of his memory, he brings it out, brushes the dust from it, and flourishes it as something new and hitherto unrevealed. He answers a quotation from ” Hamlet’ ‘ in which Ophelia rebukes the puffed and reckless libertine who “shows her the steep and thorny way to heaven,” by saying that Ophelia was crazy when she made the speech. Shade of the mighty William, did you craze Ophelia on the threshold of the play, in the very first act? Then we are told that the “ungracious pastors” whom Ophelia rebuked were “sixteenth-century performers.” Here we have the ignorance of the Watchman’s ecclesiastical sot exposed again, though under the disguise of a jest. The scenes in “Hamlet,” according to the best commentators, were laid at least five centuries before the advent of the “sixteenth-century performers.” Ophelia had in her mind’s eye the Phelans of her time. Since its earliest day the church has always had its Phelan, just as the vine has its louse and the rose its scaraboons. Shakespeare drew from types of men, and not from individuals. The “sixteenth-century performers ‘ ‘ doubtless had their Phelans ; but as reformers they were not sufficiently developed to be adequate to the purpose of the great master, who in his matchless creations looked before and after, and was “not for a day, but for all time”—who drew the Shylocks of to-day in the “Merchant of Venice” just as he drew the Phelans of to-day in “Hamlet”

In his original article of August 14th, the Reverend Phelan dwells especially on sins of the flesh, as calculated to drive from the sane the Spirit of God. How much of the Spirit of God, then, can there be left in the soul of a man—and that man a priest—who indecently addresses a virtuous woman on the street, “Where are you going, baby?” Is this (spoken by a man to a woman he had never seen before) the language of the flesh or an exhalation from the spirit? For this language, with the conduct accompanying it which suited the action to the word and the word to the action, D. S. Phelan, wearing the garb of his holy office, was marched to the station house, not long ago, by a policeman, at the instigation of the woman he had insulted. Two strongly opposed arguments—his cloth and one of those howling drunks in which the reverent gentleman is, to quote from his own favorite language, the Latin, facile princeps—united to secure leniency from the police, and instead of being thrown in a cell, like a common malefactor, he was sent home in a hack. One day this reverend father trod “the primrose path of dalliance” on Eleventh street, and the next day he resumed his pious occupation of teaching sinners “the steep and thorny path to heaven.” In the meantime, however, he had to plead hard with the police to keep him off the steep and rocky road to the workhouse, via the Black Maria. The case was one for a husband and a horsewhip rather than for a policeman and a station-house. The matter was kept out of the newspapers. I suppressed it in the Globe-Democrat because I gave the reverend accused benefit of a doubt as to the extent to which his condition rendered him irresponsible for his conduct. He is not merciful to me as I have been, and yet am, to him, for I still cover with the mantle of his booze his “sin of the flesh,’ ‘ while he arraigns me under a distinct charge of having received money for the silence of this newspaper on a certain occasion. Of course, he lies, and knows he lies, and he knows, too, that the apostle—he is very fond of quoting the apostle—condemns lying as almost as bad as insulting a virtuous woman on the street. Further than this I can not go in defense of myself against anything said by a deadbeat of the Phelan stripe, except to remark incidentally that if hell were dosed with tartar emetic, the last dregs of the last vomit would be a Phelan in full canonicals.—Mack [J. B. McCullagh].

Orestes A. Brownson, who joined the Catholic Church when Hecker and others submitted to the Roman yoke, established a Quarterly Review for the purpose of exposing and defending Romanist teachings. An American, Brownson used an American freedom of speech and soon incurred the hostility of the Church authorities. He had, mark you, sacrificed everything on going over to Rome. But Rome had no mercy for her convert. It drove him to poverty, and even misery. To Brownson, poor and even hungry, Rome refused bread: now she is building monuments to his memory, obtaining money even from Protestants for the purpose. Neglecting him living, they traffic on him dead. No charity, in truth, in the creed of the Roman Catholic Church!

We are, sometimes, told of the munificence of the monasteries of old. Of this Adam Smith in his ” Wealth of Nations’ ‘ states:

Over and above the rents of those estates the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe. The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, etc. The quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume ; and there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse hospitality and charity. The hospitality and charity of the clergy not only gave them command of a great temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly and almost all occasionally fed by them.

The monks, in other words, so oppressed the people by heavy levies upon their produce that the tillers of the soil, after being robbed of the result of their labor, were driven to the robbers to beg food enough to prevent starvation from a supply that must otherwise have gone to waste. The monks multiplied their adherents, because the people were thus made dependent. Nothing was there in their conduct which evinced a single element of the principle or law of charity, but on the contrary, they established by oppressive taxation the relation of slavery and despotism or tyranny.

What was true of the monks and nuns of the Middle Ages is true to-day. Orestes A. Brownson sought to defend the monastic greed of his time, half a century ago, but because he could not conscientiously do it as papalism desired, he was suffered (genius that he was!) to die a pauper. Henri des Houx, a gifted and amiable French writer, was, under the pontificate of Leo XIII, editor of Le Journal de Rome, a daily French paper considered generally as an official organ of the Vatican. M. des Houx, in close touch constantly with Vatican authorities, wrote under Vaticanistic inspiration. Happening on one occasion to write, under that very inspiration, an article which gave offense to a leading government of Europe, M. des Houx was called upon by the selfsame authority which had inspired it to disavow the article. Hesitating or refusing to do as commanded by the Vatican, his paper was condemned and its editor reduced to penury !

Woe betide the Catholic editor who does not write as bishop, the pope’s agent, commands. What the pope is in the Church universal, the bishop is in his own diocese.

The pope is their spiritual king ; and what they call their Church, that is, their bishops all over the world, is, one may say, their Spiritual Parliament. Now, as this parliament of bishops from all parts of the world can not meet without great difficulty, and as no one but the pope can call it together, it is the pope alone who in reality holds supreme authority over his spiritual subjects, the Roman Catholics. The way in which the pope governs his churches all over the world is this: He publishes a kind of proclamation, which they call a bull, and sends it round to all places where there are Roman Catholics. As every bishop by himself is a subject of the pope, who calls himself the Bishop of bishops, the bull must be obeyed by them. Every bishop commands all his priests to see that the orders of the pope be obeyed by all those who are under their charge. The priests preach the necessity of complying with the orders of the pope; and when people come to get absolution of their sins, by privately confessing them, they are told that they can not be forgiven unless they obey the bull from Rome. So, you see, that if all the world were true Roman Catholics, the pope would do what he pleased everywhere. Such, in fact, was the case for many centuries before the Reformation. The popes in those times boldly declared that they had authority from God to depose kings from their thrones, and many a fierce war has been made in consequence of the ambition of the popes, who wished all Christian kings to recognize their authority. King John of England was obliged by the pope to lay his crown at the feet of a priest who was sent to represent him. That king was, moreover, made to sign a public deed, by which he surrendered the kingdoms of England and Ireland to the pope, reserving to himself the government of the realms under the control of the bishops of Rome ; and finally, as a mark of subjection, bound himself to pay an annual tribute. The priest who represented the pope took away the crown and kept it five days from the king, to show that it was in the pope’s power to give it back or not, as he pleased.

So writes Dr. Blanco White, at one time chaplain of the King of Spain, and afterwards clergyman of the Church of England.

The Rev. “Father” Lambert, one of the ablest clergymen that the Church of Rome has ever had in America, incurred the displeasure of Bishop “Barney” McQuaid, of Rochester, N. Y. Mc- Quaid, a foundling as far as his origin is known, possibly the bastard son of a priest, advanced himself to distinction till he finally became Bishop of Rochester. No more despotic man ever filled an espiscopal see. He fell angrily upon Lambert, not because Lambert had written aught against the truth, but because, jealous of Lambert’s success as a defender of Christianity against Robert G. Ingersoll, he (McQuaid) desired to rob Lambert’s contributions to the press of their proper weight and authority.

Michael Augustine Corrigan, son of a Jersey saloon keeper, and himself very inferior in talent and acquirement, became, by one of the “accidents” peculiar to the Romish System, Archbishop of New York. Safely enthroned in the American metropolis, he fell upon Dr. McGlynn, who had written on the taxation problem favorably to the working and toiling classes generally. Corrigan had not brains enough himself to tell what a Christian ought to believe concerning taxation, but, having a personal grudge against Mc- Glynn, decided to destroy the latter on the ground that McGlynn advocated anti-Catholic doctrine in re taxation, and also home rule for Ireland. By papal bull McGlynn was suspended (?), and even excommunicated ( 1) . But Leo XIII, astute politician and opportunist, realizing after several years that Corrigan was unable to crush McGlynn, restored to him all faculties and prerogatives!

Patrick Boyle, editor of the Irish Canadian, of Toronto, Canada, was a noble son of Erin. In days that were dark for Irishmen in Canada, he was their gallant defender. A Catholic, he submitted, of course, to all reasonable demands of the Church. The Catholic Separate (Parochial) School System of Toronto, controlled by Archbishop John Joseph Lynch, became in time a reproach and a scandal to all citizens. There was a Separate School Board, carefully selected at St. Michael ‘s Palace, Lynch ‘s residence, whose main duty it was to manipulate the school taxes of Catholics to the benefit of Lynch.

The Separate schools falling into neglect and backwardness, Boyle felt, like other Irish Catholics, that inquiry should be made into the causes of failure. Slight investigation disclosed the source of the trouble. The archbishop stole from the school funds what was, of right, belonging to the Catholic children of Toronto.

Boyle exposed the outrage. He became at once the object of archiepiscopal fury. He and his paper were vigorously denounced. Lynch set up a new paper, The Tribune, to destroy the Irish Canadian, which had been for so many years his devoted organ. But The Tribune did not receive the popular support that Lynch desired. It failed, and Lynch submitted gracefully to grievous loss ; gracefully, because while his own paper suffered, he had the satisfaction of driving Patrick Boyle out of business and into poverty.

W. H. Nagle, of Ottawa, back in the seventies started a Catholic paper called The Herald, for the special purpose of defending the Catholic cause. Nagle was able, far-seeing, and disinterested. He was, however, an Irish Catholic, an unforgivable sin to J. T. Duhamel, the ignorant little French-Canadian Bishop of Ottawa at the time.

The latter bought, on a certain visit to Rome, a sack of bones, said to have been the remains of a “Saint Emilius,” supposed to be Christian martyr of the reign of Diocletian. Bringing back to Ottawa these bones, which might have been those of a dog or a cat deceased but ten years or less, Duhamel offended all sensible people—Catholics as well as others—by instituting a special devotion to “Saint Emilius” and placing his “remains” under a particular altar, located prominently in the Cathedral of Ottawa.

Nagle objected to the whole proceeding. Emilius had, according to Duhamel ‘s own story, died in the fourth century. “How,” asked Nagle, “had his bones been so long preserved f” ” Again,’ ‘ asked Nagle, “why should Catholics depend for salvation on mere bones, when the word of God was at their command?” Too much was this for the little ignorant French bishop to stand. He condemned The Herald and put it out of business. Nagle afterwards died in want.

L’Electeur, a French liberal paper of Quebec, incurred in 1896 the hostility of the hierarchy of that province. It opposed Romanist Separate Schools in Manitoba. Put out of business, at great loss to its owners and publishers, it reappeared under a new name, Le Soleil, and had then to walk the plank of ultramontanism very cautiously, indeed.

Another French paper published in Montreal was driven to ruin because it had the audacity to condemn a French priest, Ghuyot, guilty of seducing, through the confessional, the wife of a prominent French-Canadian lawyer. Such cases as that of Ghuyot occur every day. Ghuyot was discovered because of fool obscene letters written by him to the woman he had wronged. These letters, discovered accidentally by the outraged husband, led to public exposure of the infamy. So excited was all Canada over the Ghuyot infamy that the bishops of Quebec were forced to issue a pastoral letter explaining it away.

No such thing is there as freedom of the press for Catholic reader or editorial writer. Leading Catholic papers have had for editors notorious drunkards, such for instance, as “Reverend” Thomas E. Judge, D. D., LL. D. ; Dr. Judge, of The New World, Chicago, ex-professor of Philosophy in Maynooth Seminary, Ireland, whose whole record in America was one scarlet mark of infamy, from New York via St. Paul to Chicago, and rivaled his exploits of infamy in Ireland, England, and Rome itself.

The Rev. Thomas F. Cashman, rector, St. Jarlath’s parish, Chicago, writes of Priest-Editor Judge, in part, as follows:

This man Judge came into the Archdiocese of Chicago under the darkest kind of an ecclesiastical cloud. He is a man of considerable intellectual ability, but he is a moral pigmy. His normal state is to be under the influence of drink, and, being a constant transgressor against ecclesiastical codes and proprieties, he is the veriest sycophant in defending with his pen and eulogizing with his tongue Muldoon and the present regime. He (Judge) is, as I said before, a “sacerdos vagabundus” (tramp priest).

In the fall of 1902 the writer, together with the priests listed on page 54 of my book, “Romanism— A Menace to the Nation,” had printed and forwarded by registered mail to the pope and cardinals a book of 198 pages, containing an expose of the crimes of priests, prelates, and “princes of the Church.” From said expose, page 40, I quote the following in re Priest Judge :

You [Archbishop of Chicago] about a year ago appointed Rev. T. E. Judge to a city parish, while you knew that he was a periodical drunkard, a “sacerdos vagabundus” in the fullest and completest sense of that expression.

Soon thereafter Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago, appointed Priest Judge editor-in-chief of The New World, the papal organ of Chicago. And soon again thereafter that ” sacerdos vagabundns” was created a D. D. (Doctor of Divinity!) by Pope Pius X, as a reward for his diabolical and treasonable writings against Free Institutions at home and abroad.

Dr. Cronin, of Buffalo, N. Y., able and brilliant, incurring the dislike of misfit bishops like McQuaid of Rochester, Quigley of Buffalo (later of Chicago), and others, fell, too, by the wayside.

The press and the Roman Church can never work in harmony unless press subject itself absolutely and entirely to papalism. Romanism has not, since Pius IV, undergone the slightest change. It was that pope who declared:

The books of arch-heretics, as well of those who invented or excited heresies after the year above mentioned, as of those who are or were the heads or leaders of heretics, such as Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Balthazar, Pocimontanus, Swenchfeldius, and such like, of what name, title, or argument soever, are utterly prohibited. And the books of other heretics, such as professedly treat of religion, are altogether condemned. But such as do not treat of religion are permitted, after having been examined and approved by Catholic theologians, by order of the bishops and inquisitors. But Catholic books, written as well by those who after falling have returned to the bosom of the Church, being approved by the theological faculty of some Catholic university or by a general inquisition, may be permitted.

Catholic books only, approved by “a general inquisition” or some Catholic university, may be read. The Catholic paper in America is a mere apologist for papal misdeeds. We have one in Cincinnati, in close alliance with the liqnor traffic, as the cuts on pages 334, 339, and 341 will show.

Catholic papers in other cities stand out just as prominently for “Rum and Romanism.” The bishop owns the paper, or owns editor and publisher. No freedom whatever permitted in editorial page or any other. The Catholic paper, blessed by pope and authorized by bishop, is simply an apologist and supporter of Romanist White Slavery—a slave licking hand of slaveowner.

Appended is a typical wail of the Romanist press on the subject of divorce. Charity should, however, even with Romanist press agents, begin at home. Why does not The Catholic Telegraph begin by asking for the abandonment of divorcegranting or annulling of the matrimonial tie by Archbishop Moeller’s clerical matrimonial tribunal, which, in defiance of the State laws, severs the lawful marriage bonds of persons seeking its good offices secretly, but with plentiful cash supply for the necessary dispensations, etc.?

Matrimonial ” causes” yield to Romanish exchequers tributes most bounteous. And the Romanist agent knows well—taught as he is on the Liguorian plans of fraud and filthiness—how to work the game.

There is little or no respect for marriage in Latin Europe or in Latin America. Thousands of people live in the latter region in adulterous relations, continued for years, even for a lifetime, without slightest thought of a marriage ceremony. The priests themselves live in open concubinage. Marital infidelity is extremely common in France, whose civilization is product of centuries of papal training as well as priestly domination. A like statement is in order concerning Spain. Moral rottenness, everywhere Romanism prevails, is the sickening evidence of contemporaneous history.

DIVORCE EVIL
Denounced by Senator Ransdell, of Louisiana.
[Catholic Press Association.]

Washington, April 9.—United States Senator Ransdell, of Louisiana, who is a practical Catholic and a Knight of Columbus, in a lecture delivered on April 2d before the Law Club of the Catholic University denounced divorce.

At the last census period the divorce rate was higher with us than in any foreign country except Japan, there being 73 divorces for every 100,000 souls in the United States and 215 in Japan. The next highest was Switzerland, with 32, and Saxony, with 29. Austria permits divorce to its non-Catholic citizens, and denies it to the Catholics. Its ratio was one as compared with our 73. “The island of saints”—old Ireland—granted only one divorce per 100,000 in five years of the last period. Italy had none, as divorce with permission to remarry is prohibited there, though separation is permitted. Absolute divorce is also prohibited in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Cuba.

Divorce is growing rapidly in the United States. In the twenty-year period from 1887 to 1906 the number of marriages dissolved was 945,625, while from 1867 to 1886 it was 328,716, or a little more than one-third. Discussing these figures of 1886, Mr. Carroll D. Wright, an eminent non-Catholic official, said, “However great and growing be the number of divorces in the United States, it is an incontestible fact that it would be still greater were it not for the widespread influence of the Catholic Church.’ > In 1887 there were 483,069 marriages and 27,919 divorces, a little more than one divorce for every seventeen marriages. In 1906 marriages numbered 853,290 and divorces 72,069, or one divorce in every twelve marriages. This is a fearful rate of increase. If it continues in like proportion for the next forty years, the middle of the present century will see one marriage out of every five dissolved by divorce.

Senator Ransdell stated that he had never taken a divorce case and never intended to do so. He continued:

Every lawyer in the country should refuse to take divorce cases and do all in his power to have divorce laws repealed. If a large percentage of the lawyers of America were to frown upon divorce, oppose it in every honorable way, and refuse to represent litigants seeking divorce, the evil would rapidly decrease. — The Catholic Telegraph, April 10, 1913.

Senator Ransdell is, I presume, an honest man. Jesuitry keeps him in the dark as to his Church’s filthy connection with adultery, legalized and lawless; with divorce used freely to gather in gold to a ravenous treasure-box.

The Cincinnati Romanist divorce court is thus made up (see “The Official Catholic Directory,” 1913, p. 73) :

Ecclesiastical Court for Matrimonial Causes— Rev. , judge; Rev. George X. Schmidt, defensor matrimonii; Rev. J. T. Gallagher, secretary.

No decree of this or any other such court is valid until and unless approved by the archbishop or bishop. No decree ever granted till paid for!

Take, again, the Diocese of Rockford, 111., presided over by “Pete” Muldoon, of unhappy fame. There (see “The Official Catholic Directory,” 1913, p. 664) we find:

Curia for Matrimonial Causes (Judex appointed in each case)—Rev. D. J. McCaffrey, Defensor Matrimonii; Rev. J. J. Flanagan, Secretary.

Rev. D. J. McCaffrey, “defender of the matrimonial tie,” has a most unsavory record. For years he has been a habitual drunkard and has very frequently been locked up in Chicago police stations, escaping trial on every occasion, as do the vast majority of priests caught in similar delinquencies all over the country. McCaffrey is now pastor of the Sacred Heart Church, Marengo, 111. Notwithstanding his stupendously shameful record of lechery, drunkenness, saloon escapades, and other such like achievements, to the contrary notwithstanding, Bishop Muldoon deems him just the man to care for souls in Marengo, 111., and defend the sacredness of the matrimonial tie in the Diocese of Rockford. Immediately preceding his promotion by his chum (Muldoon), McCaffrey spent most of his time in a saloon at the corner of Twelfth and O’Neil Streets, Chicago.

Similar conditions might be disclosed by an examination of the Romanist divorce mills throughout the country.

At the marriage ceremony of Miss Louise Warfield to Count Ledochowski, of Poland, nephew of the late Cardinal Ledochowski, celebrated at Baltimore, May 8, 1913, Cardinal Gibbons said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer: The marriage contract is the most solemn and most sacred of all other [sic] contracts. Other contracts may be dissolved ; other treaties may be violated. The marriage contract can not be violated, can not be annulled. It can terminate only at death.

Nay, Sir Cardinal, and is it so ? Do you yourself believe that this is the correct Romanist teaching and practice?

Why, Sir Cardinal, looking over Kennedy’s “Catholic Directory for 1913,” I find (p. 17), the following, supplied from your own cardinalitial offices :

Curia (Court) for Matrimonial Causes—Rev. C. F. Thomas, D. D., Judge; Rev. P. A. Urique, S. S., D. D., defensor matrimonii (defender of the marriage tie) ; Rev. P. C. Gavan, S. T. L., secretarius (secretary).

You have, therefore, Sir Cardinal, in your own city and diocese of Baltimore, a divorce court always ready for action; ready, for pay, to annul any marriage that you may desire to have annulled. This divorce court of yours is not a mere ornamental institution. It is a big revenue-producer for your “works of piety.” It is a graftmaker par excellence.

Let any Boni de Castellane, with well-filled purse, come to foot of your princely “apostolic” throne seeking annulment of lawful marriage, and you, Sir Cardinal, with one eye fixed on golden treasure, the other upraised to heaven, will soon lift holy hand to untie the bond attaching the aforesaid Boni, and any such, to an heretical spouse, or even to a Catholic wife, without equal share of filthy lucre to maintain her rights in your venal court of divorce.

The Roman divorce system is so cunningly devised and so guiltily worked as to invite Catholics married to Protestants to put up money enough to secure a divorce decree. These courts are inducement to rich Protestant men to join Rome in order to get rid (religiously!) of wife, whether she be Protestant or Catholic. The most diabolical of all the infamous divorce machineries afflicting humanity is the divorce system of Rome. It is false, greedy, unscrupulous, and deadly ; and no man better knows it so to be than James Cardinal Gibbons. Scarcely a day of the year but Rome annuls lawful marriages, and annuls them for pay!

Still busy at his old stand, as if Savonarola had not died or Luther lived, is the pope; his Jesuitical agents not less so in the sale of indulgences and in other forms of grafting. Pope Pius X, instigated by impecunious Roman shopkeepers, by greedy cardinals and avaricious courtiers, has just proclaimed another “Universal Jubilee” of which we read in the Journal and Tribune, Knoxville, Tenn., March 30, 1913 :

PEACE OF CONSTANTINE

Marking Christianization of the Roman Government will be elaborately celebrated by the Vatican.
Celebration in Part Also Will be a Protest Against a Celebration by the Italian Government.

Rome, March 29th.—Thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the globe are assembled in this city to witness the opening of the series of celebrations which the Vatican has arranged to commemorate the sixteenth centennial of the proclamation of the edict of Milan, known as the Peace of Constantine, which marked the Christianization of the Roman Government. On the surface this celebration, which will extend over the whole year, is supposed merely to be a fitting remembrance of the adoption by the Emperor Constantine, following his victory over the pagan general, Maxentius, just outside of Rome, of Christianity as the official religion of the State. No secret, however, is made of the fact that back of the celebration are two other motives. In the first place, this commemoration is intended as a protest of the Vatican against the celebration by Italy two years ago of the fiftieth anniversary of its unification, a celebration which was highly offensive to the Vatican because it commemorated an event by which the Vatican was deprived of its temporal power.

To celebrate the anniversary of the unification of Italy the Government had arranged exhibitions on a magnificent scale at Rome and at Turin, but owing to the outbreak of the war with Turkey, the prevalence of a cholera epidemic and other unfortunate conditions the celebration proved a failure and attracted but few visitors to Italy. One of the motives in arranging the “Constantine Year” celebration by the Vatican was to prove to the world how much greater is the temporal power of the Vatican than that of the Italian Government. Judging from the number of pilgrims already assembled here and the many thousands who are either on their way to Rome or have made their plans to visit the city at some time during the celebration year, the Vatican bids fair to make a good showing. Although the commemorative celebrations planned will all be held in this city, some of the principal anniversaries will be observed by Roman Catholic Churches throughout the world.

The illness of the pope will probably prevent him from taking part in the services and ceremonies scheduled to take place within the precincts of the Vatican, but there will be enough pomp and spectacular display of a magnificent order to satisfy even the most exacting sightseeing visitors. Should the condition of the pontiff improve he may, by his presence, lend greater importance to the religious ceremonies in the Vatican, to be held in April. The traditions of the Church will, of course, exclude the pope from all celebrations held outside of the Vatican precincts.

The series of commemorative celebrations will begin to-morrow with a solemn eucharistic procession, passing from the catacombs of Saint Domitilla to those of Saint Callixtus and then to the church and catacombs of Saint Sebastian, where a Te Deum will be sung and the blessed sacrament administered to the pilgrims.

From April 6th to 13th, inclusive, a solemn Octave will be celebrated at the Church of Saint John Lateran, with exposition of the “Acheropita.” During the Octave the mornings will be set apart for the reception of pilgrims of Young Men’s Christian Associations, Arch Confraternities, congregations and religious orders; with a sermon every afternoon by a bishop and benediction by a cardinal, culminating in a pontifical high mass on April 13th, celebrated by a cardinal in the presence of the pontifical court, the diplomatic corps accredited to the holy see, and the high dignitaries of the Church in Rome.

On April 20th there will be a solemn commemoration at Saint Peter’s on the same scale of magnificence as the feast of the Prince of the Apostles, with the exposition of the relics of the passion of the Savior, which are kept at Saint Peter’s.

On April 27th there will be a celebration and pontifical mass at the patriarchal Basilica of Saint Paul, on the Ostian Way. May 2d, 3d, and 4th there will be pontifical masses in the Church of Saint Croce, in Gerusalemme, and on the night of May 4th an immense electric cross will be inaugurated on Monte Cavo, eighteen miles from Rome. In May, June, August, and December other commemorative celebrations of an impressive character will be held at the papal chapel at St. Peter’s, the Church of Saint Agnes, the Church of Saint Laurence, the parish church of Saints Peter and Marcellinus, the cathedral of Albano, and the Church of Saint Mary Major, where for three days the holy image of the Blessed Virgin, known as the “Borghenia,” will be exposed to the view of the visiting pilgrims. There will also be special services and celebrations at that same church on each of the three days, December 6th, 7th, and 8th, which will close the series of the celebrations.

Constantine was never a Christian. He was a great imperial statesman, who, seeing that the old Roman pagan systems, dating from Romulus and Remus, 750 years before Christ, had lost hold of the populace, re-paganized the new form of religion called Christian, and made it the official cult of the Roman Empire, for which he founded a new capital on the Bosphorus, bearing his own name—Constantinople. He, and not the pope of Rome—there was no such person or official then known—was the head of the Church. He established bishops or ” overseers’ ‘—there were no “bishops” before Constantine—to correspond to civil officers, known as ‘ ‘ exarchs. ‘ ‘ Both exarchs and bishops were appointed by Constantine alone. No pope or College of Cardinals then to distribute fat episcopal sees to Italian and other priests hungry for gold !

Constantine called the Council of Nice, and appointed the officers who presided there. The papacy as now known was unknown utterly to the Council of Nice, an almost exclusively Eastern gathering. The Bishop of Rome had a standing in Constantino’s religious system equal to that of the Bishops of Constantinople and Alexandria —that and nothing more. Nor would he have been for a moment allowed to assume any higher rank.

The papal figment that Constantine deeded temporal control in and over Rome to the bishop of that city has no historic ground whatever to support it. It is one of the many forgeries used, centuries after, to justify papal thefts of territory and papal usurpations of spiritual authority.

Jubilees are of enormous monetary value to the papacy and to papal agents. The railroads, traction lines, and maritime transportation agencies all over the world, especially in America, derive enormous profits from Jubilee or other pilgrimages. To St. Anne de Beaupre, near Quebec, hundreds of thousands of credulous people are every year brought by rail and by boat, yielding enormous profit to transportation companies. Jubilees, therefore, pay big premiums to non-Catholic capitalists, who must in turn “whack up” when the priest passes around the hat for a papal collection. How the scheme works locally The Catholic Telegraph, March 20, 1913, explains:

Universal Jubilee. The first pilgrimages in connection with the celebrations of the Constantinian Centenary will arrive in Rome immediately after Easter. The celebrations will begin on Sunday, March 30th, with solemn services in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus. Yesterday evening an apostolic letter, written by the Holy Father, proclaiming a universal jubilee in memory of the peace granted to the Church by the Emperor Constantine, was published. In it he refers to the great benefits that accrued to mankind in consequence of the victory, won under the fiery cross, and invites Catholics throughout the whole world to offer up prayer to God, to the Blessed Virgin, and to the apostles and saints, supplicating for the defeat of the nefarious efforts that are being put forth by the enemies of the Church to encompass her destruction so far as they can do so. To encourage the faithful to pray for the protection of the Church, which is being attacked by so many foes, Pope Pius grants a plenary indulgence in jubilee form to all who will come here between Sunday, March 30th, and the feast of the Immaculate Conception, on condition that they visit the Churches of St, John Lateran, St. Peter, and St. Mary Major, and there pray for the intentions of the pope, after having previously gone to confession and received Holy Communion and made an offering according to their means.

Those who are unable to come to Rope may gain the same indulgence on the condition that they visit six times during the period mentioned churches in their own countries designated by their bishops. Special concessions are granted to travelers, religious of both sexes, foreigners, and those who are sick or who are otherwise prevented from making the visits to the churches.

That the papalists of the United States scent the graft in this Jubilee is, by The Catholic Telegraph, March 20, 1913, proven:

To Celebrate Constantine Centenary. Philadelphia, March 17th.—Preparations are almost completed for a fitting participation by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in the world-wide celebration of the sixteenth centenary of the granting of freedom and peace to the Church in the Edict of Milan, proclaimed by Emperor Constantine in the year 313.

The committee in charge of the local celebration consists of Bishop McCort, Rt. Rev. Msgr. James T. Trainor, V. G. ; Rt. Rev. Msgr. Nevin F. Fisher (secretary) ; Rt. Rev. Msgr. Philip R. McDevitt, superintendent of parish schools; Very Rev. Henry T. Drumgoole, LL. D., rector of the Seminary, and Rev. William J. Higgins, S. T. L., rector of the Cathedral

The following program has been arranged:

Novena of thanksgiving in all the Churches, to end on the Feast of Pentecost, May 11th.

Pontifical Mass in the Cathedral on Thursday, May 8th.

Children’s celebration in the Cathedral, Friday, May 9th.

Solemn services in all the Churches on Pentecost Sunday; collection for the Holy Father.

Public celebration in the open air at the Seminary, Overbrook, Pentecost afternoon. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament by Archbishop Prendergast.

What a time of feasting for the “holy fathers” all over America and elsewhere this jubilee season! Every Church having its own celebration, there will be, in 1913, a period of clerical dining and wining the very anticipation of which gladdens heart and tickles stomach of voracious Roman cleric. How the liquor dealers will profit by the heavy orders for supplies needed to keep up the fires of priestly spiritual zeal!

How butcher and baker and every kind of caterer will flourish on profits yielded by clerical patrons during this busy papal season of “prayer and mortification” but more busy will be pot and pottle, rum and red-light activities.

What is an indulgence? No such word is found in the New Testament. Not Tertullian, nor Origen, nor Augustine ever speaks of such a doctrine as that of the Roman Church of today. Even Thomas Aquinas knew little of this doctrine of Indulgences as it developed in the era of Alexander VI, the coarse, licentious brute of the papacy (1492-1503), and Leo X, the cultured epicurean pontiff, reigning from 1513 till 1529.

What are, I ask again, Indulgences! No words of my own shall I employ. Let me present photographic copy of page 37 of the “Catechism of Christian Doctrine, prepared and enjoined by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore,” and published by ecclesiastical authority.

LESSON TWENTY-FIRST.

231. Remission, taking away.
232. License, permission to do some thing.
236. Applying, giving the benefit of.
236. Superabundant, mere than it wanted.
236. Treasury, a place for storing riches in.
237. Enjoined, ordered to be done.

ON INDULGENCES.

231. Q. What is an Indulgence?
A. An Indulgence is the remission in whole or in part of the temporal punishment due to sin.

232. Q, Is an Indulgence a pardon of sin, or a license to commit sin?
A. An Indulgence is not a pardon of sin, nor a license to commit sin. and one who is in a state of mortal sin cannot gain an Indulgence.

233. Q. How many kinds of Indulgences are there?
A. There are two kinds of Indulgences—Plenary and Partial.

234. Q, What is a Plenary Indulgence?
A. A Plenary Indulgence is the full remission of the temporal punishment due to sin.

235. Q. What is a Partial Indulgence?
A. A Partial Indulgence is the remission of a part of the temporal punishment due to sin.

236. Q. How does the Church by means of Indulgences remit the temporal punishment due to sin ?
A. The Church by means of Indulgences remits the temporal punishment due to sin by applying to us the merits of Jesus Christ, and the superabundant satisfactions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the saints; which merits and satisfactions are its spiritual treasury.

237 Q. What must we do to gain an Indulgence?
A. To gain an Indulgence we must be in the state of grace and perform the works enjoined.

Two principal kinds of “indulgences” are countenanced and approved by Romanism—both costly for the buyer. The first is in liquid form. Witness subjoined photographic copy from The Catholic Telegraph’s advertising columns. The Catholic Telegraph is Archbishop Henry Moeller’s confidential and official organ:

Th« other form of “indulgence” is, perhaps, of a less spirituous, but not more spiritual character. It is a sale of corner lots in papal “Kingdom come” to all desirous of being “faked” and bled. Here is part of a papal proclamation, published in the selfsame issue of The Catholic Telegraph, April 10, 1913, in which the “liquid” indulgences are also announced:

No one can gain papal “indulgence,” liquid or gaseous, without pay, strictly in advance. Pius X claims to be a successor of the Apostle Peter. We have in the New Testament some letters of that goodly old saint. But nothing did he know, according to these letters, of “Jubilees” or “Indulgences.” No grafter, the original Peter.

Equally innocent of all “Indulgence” lore and learning was the Apostle Paul. Paul was a minister of Jesus Christ—not a barterer in divine graces or peddler of heavenly mercies.

God is sole Judge of sin and its punishment. God neither promises nor grants ” indulgences.” From Genesis to Revelation not a word of God’s granting any such thing as an “Indulgence” to sin or to sinners. Could God tell the murderer — “Pay a Carmelite, or a Dominican, or a Jesuit so much, and I will pardon you the one or two or three or five or more years of temporal punishment due your sin?” Could God tell adulterer and home destroyer—”Pay my monks their price and all your temporal sufferings are remitted?”

The very thought of the papacy’s thus debasing God’s mercies for filthy lucre is truly abominable. God is just and merciful. But His mercies, above all His w^orks, are given without pay and without price, not through “Leagues” of “Sacred Heart” or “scapulars” or beads” or otherwise, but because of His acceptance of a contrite heart’s sincerity.

The “Religious (?) Orders” live by their traffic in “indulgences.”

The Jesuits have complete control of the League of the Sacred Heart and the heavenly measures [Indulgences] thereto appertaining. The Dominicans hold in fee simple the Rosary Society. The Scapular Confraternity is the prize of the Carmelites ; and to the Franciscans has been made over, after a bitter fight with the Capuchins, the privileges of the Stations of the Cross.

Were it to happen that the Benedictines, for example, presumed to take a hand in directing the operations and dividing the enormous profits of the League of the Sacred Heart; or that the Jesuits encroached on the domain of the Rosary priests—which, by the way, they actually attempted, but got a reproof for their audacity — the wheels would hum in Rome. The Roman Congregations and the Holy Father himself would be petitioned by the aggrieved monopolists, and reminded that Pope So-and-so, in rescript such and such, transferred to them exclusive rights over this particular province of the graces of God Almighty. So watchful are they against being overreached by one another that Rome has equivalently extended to all the great orders privileges which originally were conferred upon only one. Thus, if the Jesuits have Ignatius water, the Benedictines enjoy a miraculous medal —think of Benedict’s disciples descending so low! If innumerable indulgences may be gained by visiting a Franciscan church on a special day in the year, equal indulgences may be won by visiting a Benedictine church on another, or a Carmelite church on still another ; if the Carmelites promise you a stunning aggregate of indulgences for wearing the scapular, the Dominicans assure you of even more marvelous ones by carrying the beads in your pocket. — Letters to His Holiness, Pope Pius X, by a Modernist, pp. 77, 78.

That the followers of Pope Pius X in America are very much in need of “indulgences” of some kind, official statistics prove. The Roman Catholic population of the United States proper is, according to reliable—not to Romanist—statistics, one-seventh of the whole. Romanists, however, supply America with forty-two per cent of her criminal population. The “Forty-third Annual Report of the Allegheny Workhouse and Inebriate Asylum of Pennsylvania, for 1912,” shows Romanism the fountain-head of crime in this country, and that its school system, from pauper parochial school to aristocratic convent and Jesuitized university, is a failure as begetter and propagator of moral health and civic soundness. There were, according to this official report, 3,674 inmates in the institution during the year 1912. These were religiously divided:

Roman Catholics 2,016
Methodists 529
Baptists 408
Presbyterians 291
Episcopalians 60
Jews 29
Other denominations 78
No religion 83

Thus the Roman Catholics, in one typical institution of its kind, stand 2,016 against 1,658 of all other or no religions denominations, a clean majority for Pope Pins X of 358!

The latest figures before me of the criminal population of the United States are those of the Commissioner-General of Immigration for 1908, given in The World Almanac for 1913. The total number of persons then in penal establishments in the United States, exclusive of Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Eico, was 148,550, of whom 62,391 were Romanists, when their proportion should have been, according to population, 21,223 !

But there is another point of importance to consider. The Negro population of the United States—about 11 per cent (the exact figure for 1910 is 10.7)—contributes far more than a normal quota to American prison population. In the absence of more exact figures on this head, let us estimate (the estimate is modest) the Negro criminal population at 50 per cent of the non-Catholic prison population of 86,159. We have thus left a white non-Romanist body of criminals of 43,079 in round numbers, as against a total of 105,471 criminals, inheritors of either the curse of Romanism or that of inferior Ethiopian blood.

A distinguished priest once made a statement to a younger clergyman, who had asked him at a Convent Commencement for information as to what became of convent graduates—a statement that seemed, at first, surprising. The younger clergyman knew well that there were very few, if any, Catholic young men in that section of means adequate to give convent brides the luxurious homes that a convent “education” inspire these girls to look for. He knew that these convent girls would, after leaving school, disclaim all toil and bread-winning effort, however honorable. What, therefore, he asked of the older man, became of such women? “Why,” the older man made answer, “they may go, after a time, to the maisons de joie.” That convent graduates fill American houses of ill-repute and thence go in large numbers to prison, American police and criminal statistics most indubitably demonstrate.

For Rome’s contribution of forty-two per cent of all our criminals, and about sixty per cent of our white prisoners, Protestants are extremely generous. Read the following, taken from United Canada, Ottawa, March 8, 1913:

Archbishop Ireland Received $100,000.

The citizens of St. Paul, Minn., irrespective of religion or race, last week presented Archbishop Ireland with $100,000 gift for his new cathedral. The edifice will be finished by the end of 1914.

In tendering his thanks, in his own house, where the presentation was made, the aged churchman and statesman said in part:

“I would be hard-hearted indeed if I were not deeply affected by this beautiful testimonial. In accepting it, I want to say that the most pleasing part of it all is that it comes as a voluntary offering prompted by regard for me.

“I am an old citizen of St. Paul. I came here in 1852, and for more than half a century I have labored among you. My first thought, when the cathedral idea was broached, was that the new edifice should be worthy of the city of St. Paul.”

The energy of Romanism in giving America forty-two per cent of all its criminals and about sixty per cent of all its white prison population will inspire Romanist leaders to call on Protestants to interest themselves in the Catholic University extension, now proposed, the said university owing its very origin to Protestant money:

NEW STRUCTURES

For Catholic University at Washington Are authorized by trustees.

Special Dispatch to the Enquirer.
Washington, April 2d.—Washington was the temporary home to-day of the American Hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Assembled at the semi-annual meeting of the Trustees of the Catholic University were the three American Cardinals, Gibbons, Farley, and O’Connell. In addition there were present at the meeting Archbishops Prendergast, of Philadelphia; Messmer, of Milwaukee; Keane, of Dubuque, Iowa, and Riordan, of San Francisco, and Bishop Matthew Harkins, of Providence, R. I. The Trustees voted to authorize Msgr. Thomas J. Shahan to prepare plans and carry forward the building of new university structures. — The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 3, 1913.

Impossible to tell how much money Jesuit and other Romanist grafters reap every year from confiding “easy” Protestants and from superstition- worked Catholics. Here is just one of a thousand annual incidents:

Woman Builds Jesuit Church.

The largest gift to the Jesuit Fathers of New Orleans was made last week by Miss Kate Mc- Dermott, in the donation of $100,000 for the erection of a magnificent new church in memory of her brother, Thomas McDermott, who died about a year ago. It will enable the Jesuits to complete the handsome group of buildings at present contemplated for the University of New Orleans. The McDermott family came from Ireland and amassed a large fortune handling sugar and molasses. Miss McDermott is the last of the family, none of whom ever married.

What Romanism does for any country under its sway is being every day made clearer. The monks in the Philippines stood for three centuries for disease and death. Read the following:

Such communications as that on “Anti-Vaccination” in to-day’s Courier-Journal would be amusing if they were not pathetic. It is worse than idle to argue against the efficiency of vaccination in this age. Wherever vaccination has been enforced the plague of smallpox has been practically abolished. The latest instance of this is in the Philippines. Says the Medical Director:

“To-day in the six provinces which immediately surround Manila, where formerly there had been probably for centuries 6,000 deaths annually from smallpox, there was not a single death from that disease in the year following the completion of the vaccination, nor have there been any deaths since that time among persons who were vaccinated in those provinces. This work is still going on, and the net result is that there are now at least 30,000 fewer deaths annually than was the case before this work was begun.”

The plea of the anti-vaccinationists that compulsory vaccination is a violation of their personal rights is no plea at all. There is no such thing as a personal right to endanger the lives of others by disease, any more than there is a personal right to commit arson or murder. — The Courier-Journal, Louisville, March 27, 1913.

What the pope has done for Cuba, a dispatch from Havana to The Menace declares:

Romanism in Cuba.

In Cuba the pope has not been hampered by Bibles or by evangelical Christianity.

For 300 years he has been supreme in this beautiful, rich land. He has had a magnificent opportunity to show to the world what his religion and Church can do for a country.

Here is what it did. When the adulterous union between the Cuban State and the Roman Catholic Church was severed, two-thirds of her citizenship could neither read nor write, and half her population had been born out of wedlock.

Until evangelical Christianity began to thunder at her doors, the Romish Church had made no effort to educate the masses. Her priests charged such exorbitant prices for their marriage ceremonies that the poor people could not afford it. As a natural result a system of concubinage became general. When Roman Catholic Spain’s domination of Cuba ceased, so large a per cent of her population had been born out of wedlock that on every marriage document the contracting parties had to declare whether they were the legitimate offspring of their parents or not. Girls reared in gospel lands had to be insulted by answering this question before they could get married in the then Roman Catholic Cuba.

Since the separation of the adulterous union of the Cuban State from the Romish Church it has all changed. Public schools and also evangelical schools now dot the land over, and civil marriage has been instituted, hence the per cent of illiteracy and illegitimacy is very rapidly decreasing.

Cardinal Gibbons attributes liberty and virtue and nearly every other good thing in the United States to the Catholic Church. Suppose he attempt to tell the American people why the pope and his Church never did do for Cuba what he claims it did for the United States ! While he is at it, he might tell them about the shortcomings of his Church in rich, beautiful, big Brazil and Mexico. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Roman Catholic fruit in Roman Catholic countries is very bad. It could not be worse.

This being Jubilee year, the Knights of Columbus are exceedingly busy in legislative halls and otherwise. So tells the Catholic Union and Times, Buffalo, N. Y., March 13, 1913:

The Knights of Columbus are being forced into politics by the people who have been making a mighty noise as to the separation of Church and State. In Colorado a bill has been introduced in the Legislature which, if adopted, as it probably will be, will make unlawful “the writing, printing, publication, circulation, or distribution of any false statement, matter, or thing purporting to be the ritual, ceremonial, or ceremonies, or part thereof, of any Church, religious society, organization, or corporation, or of any fraternal, beneficial, or secret society, organization, or corporation; and making certain testimony in respect thereto competent; and making violation thereof a felony, and providing penalty therefor.’ ‘ A similar bill has been presented to the Missouri Legislature. These bills are the work of the knights.

“Forced into polities” —excellent term, in truth, for Knight of Columbus! The Knight of Columbus lives on politics. It is the very breath of his nostrils; the choice nutriment of Ms body and soul. He has representatives in every legislative body from the Congress of the United States to city council of humblest town in the land. The Knight of Columbus is the agent for priesthood and prelacy’s dirty work. But the Knight aforesaid gets, for his salacious services, good substantial ” rake-off.”

Imperative duty, it should be, of all true Americans to put not only Knights of Columbus, but their masters—pope, prelate, and priest—out of politics. The Knights, their chiefs and guides, are the bane and curse of the Nation’s life.

France has put political Romanism out of business. So also have Italy and Portugal. Spain and Ireland are soon to do likewise. How long shall non-Catholic America, England, and Germany tarry in giving heed to the call of patriotism and social duty?

The Catholic Union and Times, of Buffalo, N. Y., March 30, 1913, devotes more than half a column to tell how the “Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul” train the pupils of St. Vincent’s Technical School, Main and Eiley Streets, Buffalo. This school is devoted to the training of young girls deprived of their parents and obliged to find a trade for self-support. ” Every year there is,” we are told, “graduated a class of young girls who are adepts in either dress-making, fine white work, or millinery.” “All Buffalo” is this week viewing the springtime showing of “the school’s work in gowns, millinery, and white goods.”

Do the makers of this admirable “convent” work get any pecuniary compensation whatever from its sale? Not one cent. The receipts all go to the nun’s spacious coffers, from which prelate and priest get their “rake-off.” A fetching bridal costume, sure to bring the charitable nuns a big figure, is described at length. And other work brings in to nunnish treasury revenue in proportion.

Says the Catholic Union and Times, March 30, 1913, the writer, evidently, a master hand in describing women’s apparel:

The soft white meteor crepe train is richly embroidered, the work of the school, and the same exquisite needlework is shown in graceful effect, arranged diagonally, across the front of the skirt. The bridal figure seems to be holding a reception, and her guests wear equally handsome gowns in dainty colored fabrics. The school designs its gowns from New York and Paris models as shown in the books of these dress centers.

Perhaps the most unique figure is one wearing the famous “Mademoiselle Maggie’ ‘ gown. The French girl with the English name is a veritable “find” in the art world of Paris. She makes her designs in her studio, working out each gown as a picture, then paints her trailing roses or violets over the filmy fabrics. Above the mantel of the school’s show-room are two framed pictures showing Mademoiselle Maggie at work. St. Vincent’s clever workers have made a gown similar. It is garlanded with hand-painted roses both on tunic and bodice, and the distinctive touch of Paris is given in the bird of Paradise perched on shoulder and at the looping of the skirt. Birds and fruit have supplemented ribbon and flowers as a decoration this season.

A superb opera cloak of biscuit-colored broadcloth and lined with a coral-hued silk is a fit wrap for the exquisite gowns. On this wrap there is a touch of the Bulgarian colors in the rich velvet of many tones and colors which edges the deep collar at the back. Many of the gowns have the Bulgarian colors introduced with splendid effect, In this same room are shown dressy street and afternoon costumes and separate waists, artistically fashioned, for wearing with tailor suits.

Across the hall is the millinery department, where all the newest shapes nattily trimmed are displayed. And when these white-bonneted sisters, whose headgear never changes, winter or summer, year in and year out, holds in her hand one of the dainty bits of straw and descants on its smartness and style, the visitor must surely realize the meaning of ” being in the world yet not of it.”

Pretty wash gowns for little folk are shown in another apartment. The wee gowns are made in muslin, gingham, pique and distinctive mark of style and excellent workmanship. In this same room is a line of piece-gowns for schoolgirls and women. They are in pique and tub silks and various muslins, and all most attractive in design. Nor are the very little ones omitted, for the making of dainty white wear for babies has always been characteristic of St. Vincent’s School. Besides being the showroom of the children’s and grown-ups’ cotton gowns, it is the dry-goods’ counter for the house. Here are sold a choice assortment of laces, ribbons, and the various frivolous accessories which help to make feminine wear so attractive looking. On the glass showcase lie books of samples from which patrons may select exclusive fabrics to be purchased in New York or abroad.

The graduating class of the school are the fitters of the dressmaking department. Every year a large number receive diplomas, and it is left to individual choice whether a pupil will start for herself outside or remain with the school. If she prefers the latter, as many do, she receives the same rate per day as her skill would earn elsewhere. Trained under the careful and efficient eye of the sisters, the girls of St. Vincents Technical School are always in demand. But there is something more, for what convent-taught woman but bears upon her character the stamp of the gentle mentors who taught her the beauty of faith and strength of good morals.

The nuns, who own everything made^by these poor girls, having nothing to pay for labor, and little if anything for material, for they beg it of large dry-goods firms or of private persons, compete directly with sewing girls and with poor seamstresses all over Buffalo. Girls are forced to accept small pay everywhere because of nunnish competition. If, on account of poor and inadequate pay, they sometimes take to the street, responsibility rests on nuns, but, above all, their priestly and prelatic bosses. Enemies, systematic, studious, and tireless, of free white labor, organized or unorganized, are priests and nuns — in one word, the hellish Romish System.

The “professed” nuns, as a rule, do not work. They superintend, living like princesses, many having no faith whatever in the religious creed and practices they profess. Convent chaplains are often drunken, nearly always lascivious, priests. The poor detained white pauper or erring girl toils for the support in luxury of lazy nuns and lazier chaplains, as well as other spiritual guardians.

The nuns give at frequent intervals swell dinner parties to bishops and other Church dignitaries. At these Lucullus-like repasts wines, rarest and costliest, paid for by the sweat of white slaves, with viands of most delicate flavor turned out of cuisines the most modern and best appointed, are laid before clerical epicures.

Not a whisper of gratitude from brutish prelate or priest to poor girls laboring in season and out, just for clothing the most inferior and fare the commonest, that “holy fathers” may dine and wine to heart’s content! The visiting women to convent storerooms may admire the handiwork of these girls, but that brings no tangible results to laborers. As soon as any of these girls become incapacitated for work—by sickness or otherwise—she is turned adrift penniless. If she seeks admission to a Roman Catholic hospital, she is met at the door by greedy, voluptuous nun and told: “Nay, nay, we can’t receive you. You are fit subject for the city hospital.”

Nuns’ training schools are vestibules to the red light route.

Nunneries flourish wherever municipal government falls into the hands or under the political influence of Romanists. That the latter very frequently obtain control of flourishing American and Canadian municipalities, let the following testify :

Wednesday night, April 2d, will be Redberry Night at the Hotel Somerset.

This organization, which meets annually in the summer time at Old Orchard Beach, and the fame of which is world-wide, expects the reunion this year will be the greatest that it has ever had.

The committee of arrangements, headed by- Mayor Fitzgerald, has been at work for some weeks perfecting the program, and there is going to be something doing every minute of the time from 9 o’clock until 2. Talent from the various theaters have accepted invitations, and when the dancing in the hall is not going on the dancing and acting of the artists will be the diversion.

Some of the most prominent men in the politics of New England are connected with the club and expect to be present. Among them are Mayor

James O’Donnell, of Lowell; Mayor Scanlon, of Lawrence; Mayor Barry, of Cambridge; ex- Mayor O’Connell, of Worcester; ex-Mayor John P. Feeney, of Woburn ; ex-Mayor Guerin, of Montreal; the Hon. Richard Sullivan, the Hon. P. J. Kennedy, the Hon. W. F. McClellan, the Hon. M. J. Leary, the Hon. J. U. McNamara, and the Hon. A. T. Donovan.

James F. Barry, of Dorchester, is secretary of the committee, and judging from the reports received thus far the Somerset will be crowded to the limit. — Boston Republic, March 29, 1913.

All or nearly all of the above named mayors and ex-mayors are Romanists by profession: every one without an exception a Romanist by political practice.

Nunneries pay no taxes, but their properties are provided in almost every city of the land with gas or electric lamps; asphalt, granolithic, or board sidewalks; roadways surrounding the nunneries are constructed of the best material and maintained regardless of cost. “Nothing too good for the nuns,” motto and practice of the average American ward or city “boss.” Notable is it, however, that a nunnery property depreciates fearfully all surrounding houses and holdings!

Why do nunneries flourish? Because their political agents and allies are sleepless. The Michigan Catholic, March 30, 1913, tells of the expansiveness of one body of these co-workers with labor-degrading nuns and nunneries:

In a talk with a prominent local Knight of Columbus recently, we learned that there is an ever-increasing demand for membership into that worthy society. The local council is flourishing, the members take commendable pride in having one of the finest halls in the country, and councils have multiplied in number all over Michigan until the membership of each has become truly notable, and each council has devised original ways and means for promoting good works. We rejoice that the Knights are alive to their duty. Catholic literature has been widely circulated and Catholic lectures have been brought to the front through the energy of these ideal laymen. We suggested some time ago that the Knights take a stand against the foolish vaudeville, the socalled charity ball, and slot-machine appeals to the charitably-minded, and we have learned that our suggestions have met with the approval of several councils.

Why, again, do nunneries flourish? They are all the time taking in, never giving out money or property. A Montreal nunnish corporation, for instance:

The Grey Nuns of Montreal are building a new and complete establishment at the cost of about six million dollars.

It will contain an orphanage for girls, a school for boys, another for girls, and a home for old people. They will pay for this enlarged means of doing in the city of Montreal by the sale of some of their present property. — United Canada, April 5, 1913.

This nunnish “donation to charity” of six millions sounds well enough. But, first of all, where did the nuns get the millions, of which the six spoken of are small part indeed? Their original property in Montreal was the munificent grant of a popish French king, who devoted “the between times’ ‘ of busy relations with lewd women to atoning for his ‘ ‘ sins ‘ ‘ by making such grants to nuns and monks.

Then the British took Canada, but thought it to their interest to stand in well with the Papal Church, especially after “Uncle Sam” broke away from stupid King George III and his poorly forged claims of “taxation without representation.” Montreal has grown under British rule to be the first city of the Canadian Provinces. The Grey Nuns have done nothing to promote its growth, never paying a dollar of taxation for two hundred or more years. For every service rendered by the nuns to the sick or destitute they have exacted full pay from governments, provincial or municipal, or from the public direct, through the most improved and persistent forms of mendicancy.

They have been all along, and are to-day, the most deadly enemies of organized white labor. They use the labor of all their proteges who can work for direct corporate profit. Getting work out of hundreds of men and women, for nothing save their board, and that paid for by the public, the nuns undersell every competition in millinery goods, in tailored materials, in boots and shoes, and even in patent medicines.

The New York Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register tells, in its issue of March 29, 1913, of an infernally constructed system of nunnish White Slavery, which we may expect to see imported by Gibbons of Baltimore, or Prince “Billy” O’Connell of Boston, to the United States. The foreign Orders of nuns in the United States are almost past numbering. They are gatherers of gold for papal coffers and for cardinals’ private purses. They also provide for the sexual comforts of spiritual advisers.

So exacting and so porcine do some of the latter become that nuns in America are obliged to have “Cardinal Protectors” in Rome, to whom they can have recourse for protection against clerical lasciviousness going beyond bounds. “His Eminence” Cardinal Falconio, former Apostolic Delegate to America, is now drawing in the Eternal City heavy fees from various rich nunneries in this country for services as “Cardinal Protector.”

I invite civilized men of this twentieth century to read the following from the New York paper just referred to:

The “Buried Alive” Severest of Orders.

Reference has been made before (says the Catholic Herald) to the strange order of nuns which has its existence in the Old World, and which in Rome is called the “Sepolte Vive” (the Buried Alive). They are the Bernardines of Anglet, the Sisters of St. Bernard, and their Order is unquestionably the most rigorous Order for women in existence, closely resembling that of the Trappists. Far down in the southwest corner of France, on the borders of Spain, may be found the mother house, at the gate of which i$ a signboard praying all visitors to speak in a low tone.

The Order was founded in 1839 by the Abbe Cestac, of Bayonne, and though it has never received the entire approval of the pope on account of the severity of its discipline, he has never condemned it. The nuns of this little community actually build their own houses, workmen being only called in to put on the roof. At first they were mostly curious little huts made entirely of thatch. The floor was of sand, and the furniture consisted merely of a wooden chair and a bed made of branches, with a layer of straw or dried leaves. The buildings now are more substantial, as the thatched huts had to be abandoned on account of dampness.

They still, however, retain their thatched chapel, a quaint structure with sanded door and tiny windows, which let in a dim, religious light. When Queen Victoria visited Biarritz, in 1899, she visited the convent, and prayed in the little chapel. On the altar of the chapel stands a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, which was given to the convent by the exiled Abbess of a Spanish convent in thanksgiving for the removal of the bann of exile.

The nuns fast constantly, and when they do eat their food consists of vegetables, dry bread, and three times a week a very little meat. The refectory is a long, narrow, whitewashed room, with thatched roof and no artificial flooring, merely the deep sand of the dunes. Each nun has her earthenware pitcher of water and a little drawer in the rough deal table, where she keeps her wooden shoes, fork and platter.

Every hour of the day is carefully mapped out, for the rules of the Order insist that not a moment shall be wasted. Each time the big clock of the monastery chimes the hour, every nun falls on her knees and spends a few moments in prayer.

THE OXEN KNOW THE CHIMES.

Out in the field it is marvelous to see how well the oxen know those chimes. Directly they hear them they stop instinctively, starting on their way again the instant the sisters rise from their knees.

The garb of the nuns is white, of coarse flannel, with a long white veil arranged so as to almost conceal their faces. The veils are rendered the more striking by the great white cross affixed to the backs. Each nun wears rough wooden sabots, and round her neck a chain, to which is attached a huge cross. The Bernardines are famous for their exquisite sewing, and make a great many trousseaux, their work being in wide demand.

In the garden the silent nuns may be seen raking, hoeing, and weeding, never raising their eyes and never speaking. A rule of the Order is that all curiosity of these must be mortified. In connection with this it is related that when the Emperor of the French visited the convent in 1854 he asked to see the interior of a cell. The Abbe Cestac threw open the door of one, disclosing a nun seated on a wooden stool, at needlework, her back to the door. The Emperor asked to see her face.

“My child,” said the Abbe, “the Emperor and Empress are at the door and wish to see you.”

The nun turned at once toward them and threw back her hood, showing the most exquisite face of a young girl. A murmur escaped from every one. The Bernardine, however, remained absolutely unconcerned, with her hands crossed on her breast and her eyes on the ground.

Scattered about the garden are various shrines containing images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and on summer days the sisters come and sit near these with their needlework. Under a thatched shelter stands a beautiful group of Notre Dame de Pitie, which was presented by a lady who had lost every one she loved. Here the Bernardines often come to pray for the souls of the departed, while others saunter along the neighboring footpaths, wrapped in pious meditation and utterly oblivious of the great world outside.

SPEAK ONLY AT PRAYER.

The little thatched chapel serves as a place of worship for the Sceurs de Marie, another religious Order in the vicinity, as well as for the Bernardines themselves, who, faithful to their vow of solitude, have their portion divided off by a curtain, behind which they hear Mass. The only occasion on which the nuns open their lips to speak is at prayer. Even in their hour of recreation they are not allowed to speak or rest, but are always busy with their needles.

A long corridor, out of which opens their cells, is their only sitting-room, and a very cold one it must be in winter, for there are no fires whatsoever at Anglet. Around the walls there are a few pictures and statues, and everywhere one reads admonitory texts, such as, “If you remember your sins God will forget them ; if you forget them, He will remember them.”

The Bernardines have no fear of death. On the contrary, they long for it ; and it is said that none of them are long-lived. Altogether it is the strangest and most austere Order of nuns in the world.

Buried alive are these unfortunate nuns and others, save to lecherous priest and prelate, to whom doors of these living tombs are ever open, day and night.

Do Americans, believing in the right of all men and women to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, believe in any more “Buried Alive” Orders of nuns? Have they not too many such already? Will they not rise up like men, like men in France and in Latin America, to banish conventual White Slavery, “burying alive” institutions from a soil that ought to be sacred to freedom?

The independent citizenry of Pittsburgh is aroused, as the following resolutions of the Guardians of Liberty clearly demonstrate :

Whereas, The inquiry into the Pittsburgh, Pa., police department appropriations by city council developed the following facts at its meeting held January 31, 1913:

A—That girls are being committed by both city and county to sectarian institutions, irrespective of their personal religious preferences, and, as we believe, in direct conflict with law, which belief has later been confirmed by an opinion by the city attorney;

B—The city has been charged $5 per week for the keep of so-called offenders in said institutions, while the county is charged but $2.59 by the same institutions;

C—That, notwithstanding that the Home of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic institution, receives pay for keeping persons sent there, yet the investigation developed that some were confined therein without warrant of law for as long as one and one-half years, being employed in the laundry maintained by said institution, which does public laundry work for pay and uses the proceeds for the benefit of said Catholic Church,

Be it therefore resolved:

1—That General Warren Court, Guardians of Liberty, through its officers, commend the action of Councilman Robert Garland and others in making public these conditions.

2—We demand a more searching investigation, and if the above information be true, we demand as citizens that this method of commercializing religion and the amalgamation of Church and State shall immediately cease, and that city council and county officials take such action as is necessary.

3—We further demand that all church property used by any religious denomination for financial profit or gain, and especially the above named laundry, shall be required to pay taxes thereon.

4—We demand that all public or private reformatories, homes, houses of detention, or similar institutions shall be open to public inspection, and that the courts detail qualified officers to inspect same quarterly.

5—We demand that further commitments to sectarian institutions shall immediately cease, and request city council and county officials to take such action as will at once secure the release of any person or persons illegally detained therein.

Signed, Wm. S. Gkeene, Master Guardian.
H. L. Walker, Recorder.
[seal]

Bad, indescribably bad, as are conditions in the convents and prison houses of “Buried Alive’ ‘ nuns, they are heavenly compared with the satanic, sodomitic wickedness in many male monastic institutions, boys’ reformatories, protectories, and the like. I dare not defile my page with any detailed reference to the crimes against high heaven which make these institutions very outposts of hell, a blot on humanity, and a defiance of the Almighty.

Not surely of Americans anywhere should it be said, because of cowardly toleration of papal White Slavery:

Iron and rock are our slaves;
We are liege to marble and steel;
We go our ways through our purse-proud days,
Lifting our voices in loud self-praise,
Forgetting the God at the wheel.

We build our bulwarks of stone,
Skyscraper and culvert and tower;
Till the God of Flood, keen-nosed for blood,
Drags our monuments into the mud
In the space of a red-eyed hour.

Kings of the oceans are we,
With our liners of rocket speed;
Till the God of Ice, in mist filled trice,
Calls to us harshly to pay his price
As we sink to the deep-sea weed.

Muscle and brain are our slaves;
But who shall say, to-morrow, to-day,
We are liege, to iron and steel;
That we shall not halt on our onward way
To bow to the God at the wheel?

Turning their faces to the Temple of Liberty, the Ark of God, builded by Washington, Lafayette, and Jefferson, all Americans should raise in sweetest symphony the hymn which so well expresses America’s heartfelt Christian hope:

Behold the Ark of God,
Behold the open door;
Hasten to gain that dear abode,
And rave, my soul, no more.

There, safe thou shalt abide,
There, sweet shall be thy rest,
And every longing satisfied,
With full salvation blest.

And when the waves of ire
Again the earth shall fill,
The Ark shall ride the sea of fire,
Then rest on Zion’s hill.

Of Irish birth and blood myself—proud, too, of it—I desire to add a word for the special benefit of my brethren of that noble race.

The papacy has been the constant foe of Ireland. Adrian IV, an Englishman elected to the papacy in the early medieval period, sold Ireland bodily to King Henry II of England, on the latter’s payment of a heavy “Peter’s Pence” contribution, with the promise of more to follow.

No successor of Adrian ever revoked this infamous betrayal of a heroic Christian people. As late as Pius VII, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the papacy was willing to sell out to the British Government the right of appointing bishops to Irish Catholic sees. The loud, energetic, and unanimous protest of the Irish masses, led by the immortal ‘Connell, alone prevented consummation of this iniquitous deed. Rome, not Britain, nor Protestantism, is Ireland’s real foe.

Leo XIII condemned Parnell and Parnellism just at the most trying time of the Irish people ‘s struggle for ownership of their own soil and for the undeniable right of self-government. The uprising of the Irish race all over the world against Leo’s heartless ingratitude and despotism—portending an enormous decline in “Peter’s Pence” collections in America, the British Isles, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere—brought the lascivious Leo virtually to his knees before indignant sons of St. Patrick.

Now, Ireland and the Irish are worshiped hypocritically in Rome. In proof whereof is the following from The Catholic Telegraph, March 20, 1913:

GREEN IMMORTAL SHAMROCK
Much in Evidence on Monday in Eternal City.
[Catholic Press Association.]

Rome, March 18.—Bunches of Erin’s ” green, immortal shamrock,” large and small, were to be seen all over the Eternal City yesterday, the feast of St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland. Overflowing congregations attended the services in the church of the Irish Franciscans, historic St. Isidore. Archbishop Seton pontificated at the high mass in the morning, and the panegyric of the saint was preached by the Rev. Father Pope, the noted English Dominican. Cardinal Falconio officiated at bendiction of the most blessed sacrament in the afternoon.

In the National Church of St. Patrick in Rome the sermon was preached by Monsignor Benson, and Monsignor Zampini, the papal sacristan, was the celebrant of the high mass. The rector of the Irish College officiated at benediction.

The Irish are the backbone of genuine Roman Catholic strength everywhere the English language is spoken. Rome loves them not, but has to conciliate them through motives of fear and through love of gain.

St. Patrick was not a Romanist. He founded in Ireland a flourishing, independent National Christian church, which fell into desuetude only when papal control put it under merciless curse and into abject helplessness.

The sons of Erin have been, in all times and everywhere, daring. Not wind, nor wave, nor clouded sky; not narrow trail, nor darksome wood, and dim ; not crouching panther, nor ravening lion has ever daunted their advance to brother ‘s help and to mankind ‘s betterment. Nor shall any papal threat or menace now deter their gallant race ‘s onward move towards the obliteration of Romish tyranny. Hunter exultant and seaman triumphant does Bret Harte portray the adventure- loving Irishman:

The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,
The spray of the tempest is white in air;
The winds are out with the waves at play,
And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.

The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
The panther clings to the arching limb,
And the lion’s whelps are abroad at play,
And I shall not join the chase to-day.

But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
And the hunters came from the chase in glee,
And the town that was builded upon a rock
Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.

No people are more intensely devoted to intellectual emancipation and educational advancement of the masses than the Irish. They are so not because of, but in spite of, priests and bishops. The latter would keep their people ignorant; for the ignorant are invariably superstitious. They held Ireland for centuries in the chains of ignorance, till British Protestant public opinion, of which Irish Protestantism and liberalized Catholicism are no mean proportion, succeeded, in the early nineteenth century, in the inauguration of a National School System for Ireland.

With savage opposition did the Irish Hierarchy and priesthood first meet this system; but it has, in spite of all priestly efforts, won its way to success through hearty popular indorsement. Ireland has been, under its influence, transformed. The country has in large measure ceased to be priest-ridden.

To conciliate the bishops and priests of Ireland the government permitted the latter to become, in Catholic districts, managers of the National Schools. The priests had the appointment of teachers in their hands absolutely; to the priests were sent from Dublin checks for the payment of teachers’ salaries. The teachers could not, for a time, call their souls their own. Women teachers were, not infrequently, subjected to gross abuses from lascivious priestly school managers.

Teachers were compelled to teach catechism to the children, not only in the schools, but in the churches on Sundays. Male teachers had to attend mass on Sunday and serve the priest at the altar. Any one failing to do so was certain of dismissal.

The teachers, forced at length to combine permanently against priestly tyranny, greed, and lustfulness, did so with the full approval of the commissioners and inspectors of education, for the most part Protestants of independent thought and action, appointed directly by the government. The united teaching body of Ireland has finally put the priest in his place. Once the despotic ruler of Ireland’s school system, he is now nominal manager only in his own district.

The priesthood in certain parts of Canada enjoys to-day a supremacy over Separate [Parochial] Schools almost as despotic as that formerly enjoyed by the priests of Ireland over Irish National Schools and teachers. The priesthood of the United States of America, not satisfied with absolute domination over the parochial schools, is striving, by combination almost unholy, with the politicians to acquire control truly forbidding and, in American public opinion, most disastrous over the Public School System of this country.

The sturdy independence of so enlightened a body as the teachers of Ireland in regard to a tyrannous priesthood is token pleasing, indeed, of what is in store for the Irish priesthood when Ireland has a Home Eule government. The priest will then be dealt with there as he has been in France and other Catholic countries—made to attend his own business and keep his hands off the pure maidens of Ireland who devote themselves to the arduous and noble profession of teaching.

The Irish teachers had, under priestly rule, to bribe priests for appointment—the position going usually to highest bidder. The teachers were obliged even to furnish the priests’ houses. It was a case of bribery at the beginning and bribery throughout the teacher’s career. So flagrantly corrupt did this priestly control of Irish schools become that the teachers and people at last revolted, the bishops themselves took alarm, and the priest was driven out of his selfish, lustful place of domination of teachers and schools.

Dr. F. W. Merchant, who is one of the leading school authorities of Canada, holding high place in the Department of Education in Toronto, was recently commissioned by the Conservative government to pay an eight months’ visit to Europe for the purpose of investigating technical and industrial education in the Old World.

From The Toronto Globe, bitterly opposed to the Conservative Party, I quote in part :

Discussing his trip, Dr. Merchant said he visited schools in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzerland, and Germany. He classified the schools under four headings: (1) Ordinary or elementary schools, with a certain technical, industrial, or commercial bias; (2) technical high schools—schools that taught those entering industrial life just what the present high schools do for those choosing a professional career or are preparing for a university course; (3) trade schools pure and simple, where there is an attempt to teach a trade along with a certain amount of elementary education; (4) the polytechnic schools, which attempt to meet the individual needs of a host of people along a variety of lines. These schools work principally at night. — The Toronto Globe, May 15, 1913.

Here is what Dr. Merchant finds in the Ireland of to-day:

The Irish [said Dr. Merchant] have done more in the last ten years to organize trade schools in small municipalities than any other people I have visited. Splendid schools had been organized in places of from two to ten thousand inhabitants. Itinerant teachers are engaged. Agricultural training is not separated from technical training.

The priesthood, by a determined, enlightened Irish Catholicism, not so strong yet in numbers, perhaps, but overwhelmingly powerful in intellect and civic worth, has been compelled to keep hands off Ireland’s National School System. The agitation for political deliverance, led so ably by Charles Stewart Parnell, a noble Irish Protestant, whom the priests drove to a premature grave, gave marked impetus to the movement for Irish liberation from the priestly yoke, started in the days of O’Connell.

Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, have in recent years, by patriotic combination for the abolition of landlordism, firm ally of a corrupt priesthood, scored a success more permanent than even did, in like regard, the French Revolution. The Irish National teachers, a noble body of men and women, are organized in solid phalanx, free from priestly dominance, for the upliftment of their race and country. Statistics show that their success against obstacles of appalling magnitude, the priesthood principally, has been magnificent.

The Catholic teachers of Ireland fear not to tell the priests to “keep off the grass’ ‘ and to see that the once haughty clerics do keep off the shamrocked soil of a people ‘s educational system, worthy successor of that which, soon after Patrick had established his independent, non-Romanist Church in old Erin, attracted scholars and fmpils from all over Europe.

Come, let the day, under a Home Rule government, when all Ireland’s bitterness and dissensions, kept alive for its own evil, selfish purposes by Rome, may disappear ; when the grand old land of Patrick and Malachi, of Grattan, Swift, ‘Connelly and Parnell, may sit as an equal at the table of the world’s great peoples.

No real Home Rule can Ireland ever enjoy as long as she suffers from Rome rule. Home Rule is coming because Rome rule—thanks to High Heaven!—is fading away from Ireland forever! In The Washington Post of February 16, 1912, I read:

King George and Ieeland.

“A measure for the better government of Ireland will be submitted to you.”

In these simple but pregnant words George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland and the dominions beyond the seas, announced to his liege lords and his faithful commons the intention of his ministers to introduce and pass into law a bill for the restoration to Ireland of her native parliament.

One wonders if fate is at last going to be propitious to the aspirations and desires of the great majority of the Irish people. So often in the past has the cup been held to Ireland’s lips, and so often rudely dashed away, that the blind goddess of mischance seemed to be pursuing her with unrelenting hate. Generation after generation of patriots who sought freedom in various ways, by sword and pen, by speech and agitation, passed away sickened with the cruelty of hope deferred. But the sacred spirit of liberty died not. From sire to son the care of the cause was handed down, and the banner that fell from the dying grasp of an O’Connell or a Butt was taken up by a Duffy or a Parnell and passed along to their successors still floating bravely to the breeze.

In 1782 Grattan won a free Irish parliament, and closed his great speech on the occasion with the following magnificent peroration:

I found Ireland on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift: spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her; and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto Perpetua.

But eighteen years later, when his parliament was wiped out of existence, what a hollow mockery his prophecy seemed to be! Yet scarcely was the parliamentary union with England effected, than attempts began to be made for its repeal. Small and ineffectual at first, these attempts grew in volume and intensity with time until at last one of the great English parties was converted to the idea of home rule for Ireland. Gladstone’s two home-rule bills met an untoward fate: that of 1886 was killed in the commons by the defection of his own followers, that of 1893 was smothered in the lords by an overwhelming vote.

But all things come round to him who will but wait. The signs and portents are now favorable. It would really seem at last that in Ireland’s case the wheel has come full circle. There is a safe majority in the commons, and while the lords may delay the bill, their power to destroy it has been effectually removed by the amendments to the constitution adopted last year.

Still there is many a slip. There is a powerful and embittered opposition ; parliamentary time is short, and valued accordingly ; all is not supposed to be well in the inner circle of the king’s ministers. Many an anxious hour will be spent by the promoters and supporters of the bill before it is writ broad and large on the statute book. That it must be so written, sooner or later, seems now inevitable.

God bless the day when George V, successor of the kings who drove papal misrule out of Britain, shall open the first Irish Parliament! That day will be one not alone of civil but, above all, of religious emancipation, disenthralment, and liberation for the Irish race—the beginning of the end of papal, priest-ridden Ireland!
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

Surprised, perhaps, at the title of this book, the reader may have at the outset questioned the author’s ability to sustain the work’s main proposition. I charge the Pope of Rome with a heinous crime, indeed, a crime continuous and bloodthirsty against God and against humanity at large, a crime that covers centuries in its operation, and drenches both hemispheres with blood, in cruelty most appalling.

The Roman tiger is, always and everywhere, out for the blood of any man questioning the papacy’s blasphemous claim of sole ownership of earth, of purgatory, of hell, and of heaven; the pope’s repeated assertion of dominion, absolute and complete, over human soul, body, mind, and estate.

I am now in position to charge the pope with murder. What his bishops, priests, and sworn Knights of Columbus do, is done by the Chief of White Slavers, the High Priest of Intrigue, himself. He is the sovereign; they are his liegemen. The pope’s approved books of theology ( ?) all agree that to take life, in the service of “Holy Church,” or in defense of the “Holy Father’s” supreme lordship over mankind, is not only lawful but laudable.

Popery has, in Europe, written her story in fire and blood from the Danube to the Thames, and from the Baltic to the Adriatic. But European public opinion has, ever since the French Revolution, borne her claims with impatience, and, in recent years, cast off forever her civil and political mastery in several countries. In no European country, to-day, has the papacy the same dominating power in politics that it enjoys in the United States of America. To no European king, emperor, president, or parliament does popery offer dictation, like unto that which it deals out in cold blood, to American Presidents, Congresses, Governors, and Legislatures. No large urban community in Europe does the pope literally own, as he owns New York, metropolis of all three Americas. Other American cities fall into the same category of Romish ownership, but the case of New York is so conspicuously typical, that its mention here is sufficient to illustrate my argument.

Curbed, checked, humiliated, because reduced to impotence in Europe, popery works in America, with a shameless abandon and an inhuman greed, that refuses cover or excuse. America she claims as her very own, as if neither Cavalier, nor Puritan, nor Huguenot, had ever wrested the fairest and richest portions of the New World from savagery and darkness.

The man in America who dares question this monstrous claim, is marked for ruin and for death. He may remind popish apologists of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant, none of whom bent knee to the “infallible” despot of the seven-hilled city; and each of whom benefited mankind more than all the popes from the invention of popery till Pius X himself. He may point to the American Constitution, with its immortal guarantees of freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and human equality, but Roman apologist shakes Jesuitical head, and, by the tongue of its Phelans, et al. y shouts, in bacchanalian fury: ” To hell with America, to hell with the American flag, when Pope of Rome, “Christ’s vicar on earth,” so demands or commands!”

The American citizen, courageous enough to question popish supremacy over flag, Constitution, and country, is face to face with death, that may be, at any time, decreed by some secret junta of Romanist henchmen, whether belted knights or purpled prelates or boodling bosses, acting under advice of some wily Jesuit or selfish hierarch.

No Catholic bishop may take possession of his see, before swearing that he will make every effort to extirpate heretics and heresy. Extirpate is a very strong word. It means more than the mere killing of a man. It signifies the uprooting, the total blotting out of the man and the thing banned by the oath. The Inquisition of Spain burned its victims and consigned their ashes to the meanest and most repellent of refuse heaps. The Inquisition in America would murder its victims and consign their names to infamy, perpetual and overwhelming.

When free American citizens elect a Roman Catholic to a judicial office, they think very naturally that the man so honored will, first of all, seek to execute the laws of the State and Nation. Not so, however, may the Romanist judge think. The pope, through his Jesuitical emissaries and representatives, does the Catholic judge’s thinking. The American Catholic magistrate’s first duty is to enforce papal decrees and ordinances, and to administer all American statutes by the light of Jesuitical interpretation.

Rome has three cardinals, fourteen archbishops, and nearly one hundred bishops in the United States of America, headed by a Delegate Apostolic, who is direct representative of the pope himself. All of these cardinals, archbishops, and bishops are sworn to extirpate heretics and heresy. The more than fifteen thousand priests have sworn obedience, absolute and unquestioning, to their prelatical masters and despots. The millions of Catholic laity are bound to follow priest and prelate, or be refused the sacraments while living and Christian burial when dead!

To sum up: the prelate and priest-led millions of Catholics, in the American Republic, are leagued together to extirpate and utterly destroy the Baptists, the Methodists, the Disciples, the Presbyterians, and all others outside the popish pale, and to this work of destruction they give impetus by assassination of such men as myself.

Rome’s hands are crimsoned with blood. But neither the torrents of blood that she has already shed, nor the flames of persecution that she has so frequently kindled have stayed the world’s progress to light and liberty. The individual resister of Rome’s blasphemous claims and pretenses is of small account, indeed, compared with the cause he represents.

Paul rejoiced in whippings, in scourgings, in imprisonments, and in shipwrecks for the faith of Jesus Christ. For the sacred truth, to him confided, he finally gave up life itself. Animated with the spirit of Paul, Luther faced repeated danger, and finally, worn by labor and trial for the truth of Christ, as against Romish despotism and idolatry, sank in manhood’s r>rime into a premature grave.

Singularly favored, in truth, is any Christian, sought out, as was Luther, for Romish aggression and persecution. “Not to us, Lord, not to us,” may I be permitted to cry out with the Psalmist, “but to Thy name give glory.” I entered the arena against Rome well knowing the risks I faced, the dangers I incurred, the murderous assaults I invited. Whether I live or die, the seed I have sown, having already taken firm root, and begun to yield rich harvests of conscientious deliverance, shall soon present products an hundredfold greater than any we now dream of.

No concealment has Rome made of fixed purpose to remove me from the ranks of living men. Warnings frequent have I received, by letter and by word of mouth, of bloodthirsty desire to eliminate me from all the activities of life.

The letters I have received are in many cases, of blood-curdling ferocity. The postal laws forbid, under severest penalty, the misuse of the mails. Yet vile, bloodthirsty Romish agents are permitted to make free use thereof, to threaten me with violent death. Insulted by postal employees, when I go to postoffices to deposit my mail, subjected to the most atrocious menaces by letters handled by United States postal officials who seem to have a particular care that every such inquisition-stamped letter duly reaches me, my lot, as an American citizen, is more trying than that of American citizens in Mexico. My life is in more jeopardy than is that of any American to-day in Latin America’s most lawless section.

When bloodthirsty men feel that it is safe to use the Nation’s mails to threaten murder, their very next step is usually, to apply knife, or gun, or bludgeon to selected victim.

The bloody attack on me at Oelwein follows logically the Hurney brutal verbal assault on me in Cincinnati ‘s general postoffice, and bears direct relation to the sanguinary missives, which I receive from day to day, from popish agents, as merciless as those who took the life of Abraham Lincoln, or William McKinley.

The murderous assault on me at Oehreim Iowa, June 12, 1913, is, let me repeat, in exact line with the threats that have for years caught my eye and ear. Familiar with Kome’s history of merciless repressiveness from the cruel Dominick, the heartless Torquemada, and the lascivious Louis XIV to present times, I can not be surprised at any deadly attempt made either on myself or on others, engaged in the glorious work of America’s emancipation from popish darkness and cruelty. But the Government of my country owes me protection!

The Oelwein murderous assault shows, in every one of its details, in the preparations evidently made by Romanist principals and agents to take my life ; in the formation and the generalship of the mob of assassins ; in the language and threats, the falseness and the lies of the fomenters and guides of the whole bloodthirsty movement, a carefully studied attempt to remove, by lawless un-American and un-Christian methods, a free-spoken opponent of the most gigantic lie that has ever cursed this earth.

I was invited by the Guardians of Liberty, an organization of patriotic Americans, to deliver two lectures in Oelwein. The Guardians had a legal right to invite me: I had an equally legal right to accept the invitation* I did not, as Romanist apologists of thuggery declare, thrust myself on the people of Oelwein. Having received an invitation, in proper form, to lecture, I wired acceptance.

The Guardians then wrote me: “We are delighted at the prospect of your coming. . . . The Opera House will seat about eight hundred. The front doors may be thrown open and large numbers can hear from the street. We are going ahead with the advertising. . . . Father O’Connor has been holding special Masses to counteract what is coming.”

“Father” Pat’s brother, “Judge Eugene” O’Connor, of the Superior Court, was of course, early in the play for violent suppression of freedom of speech and assassination, if it could be had, of my humble self. “Judge Eugene” is, by grace of his brother Pat’s influence over the Romanist voters, a political boss in Northeast Iowa, a Knight of Columbus, and ready doer of all dirty work called for in that section by popish interests. Several days before my arrival in Oelwein, young Catholic girls were heard about town saying: “We can kill him and not be hurt,” ” ‘Gene says we can kill him,” etc., etc.

Here it may be remarked that about fifteen years ago, “Father Pat” met in Chicago a tramp-relative from Ireland, in other words the present “Judge Eugene,” whom he was desirous of clothing decently and bringing to Iowa. “Rev. Pat” appealed to me for a loan of fifty dollars to enable him to carry out this philanthropic design. Poor as I was at the time, I cheerfully handed over the fifty, which “Father Pat” soon forgot. I was obliged, in order to secure its return, to employ some very plain language to the pope’s present-day representative in Oelwein.

“Father Pat” and his knightly brother “Gene” had recourse, just before my arrival in Iowa, to a characteristic Jesuit trick to keep me from coming. They and their agents induced one Morris Loeb, a Jewish merchant of Oelwein, to hawk about a petition among non-Catholics, asking that “undesirable citizen Crowley” be kept out of Oelwein. Loeb met, on all sides, with repulse. He was told by Oelwein ‘s patriotic American citizens to go back to his store, and leave the keeping of Oelwein ‘s peace and good name to people who knew how to preserve both.

The Loeb effort to keep me out of Oelwein failing ludicrously, it was then attempted to close the Opera House against the Guardians of Liberty and myself. Mr. G. H. Phillips, owner of the Opera House, a sterling American patriot, refused submission to Romish threat. The Romanists hissed their anger in the cowardly menace: “We’ll burn your Opera House!” To which, Phillips, a man of means, influence, and independence, replied: ” If you burn my Opera House, I have money enough to build another.”

Unable to prevent the meeting, Rome took another tack. The very title of my proposed lecture, “Rome’s Real Attitude Toward the Public School,” called forth into fullest activity all the latent hatred of “Father Pat,” “Judge ‘Gene,” and the Knights of Columbus for the most American of all American institutions, the Public School.

The designs of Rome upon America’s Public School are very clear to the observant. The Papal System first insists on the establishment, everywhere it may be done, of parochial schools to counteract the “poison” of American patriotism, inculated by the Public School, and to provide means of support for thousands of nuns, slaves in mind and body to the priest, who is in every parish the principal of the parochial school. Not content with its own system of parochial schools, the Roman machine foists Romanist teachers upon the public schools in every city of any size all over the country.

May it not be asked, in view of priestly and prelatic hostility to public schools, if many of the Catholic teachers must not be at heart hostile, in work alien to, and even inimical to the spirit of the institution, and, therefore, unfit to instruct pupils in the American Public School?

The Romanistic game is to build up nunneries and monkeries by means of parochial school funds ; to destroy the public schools by employing teachers, sworn as Knights of Columbus, or members of other orders of Catholic men, or as members of various women’s church leagues to obey “Holy Church” first, last, and all the time; ready, like Priest Editor Phelan, to say: “To hell with the flag,” when papal interests demand its assignment to hot quarters.

Not content with seizing, wherever they may, on the Public Schools’ teaching equipment, the Romanist leaders try everywhere there is a Public library to control its influence for enlightenment. The shelves of the library are, by Romish agents, filled with trashy, lying, popish works, and Protestant books of highest literary and historical value, cast into the discard. Some of Rome’s most willing and most efficient agents, in the work of muzzling public school and neutralizing public library, are professing Protestants, timid preachers for instance, greedy ward politicians and id omne genus.

The papal grip on Public Libraries is illustrated forcibly in the case of my work, ” Romanism— A Menace to the Nation.” For instance, the Cincinnati Public Library. Seven or eight copies of the work were purchased for circulation through the Public Library here.

Yet, when a prominent citizen recently called for the book at the Public Library, not a copy of it could be found. No sooner had the book been purchased for the library and deposited there, than it should have been entered, with the name of the author, in the index. But neither book nor name of author so appears.

One of the library officials, notwithstanding, admitted to the caller in one of his several visits to the library, seeking for my book: “Yes, that book is in the restricted department, and we have had a great many calls for it within the past few weeks. It seems that a great many people want to read the book, and there are requests on file weeks ahead. Do you wish to leave a request?”

Seeing no prospect of getting the book in that way for several months to come, the gentleman went to the office of the Chief Librarian. He was turned over to an assistant, who finally admitted that the book was not even in the restricted department , but had disappeared altogether from the library.

The librarian’s assistant, referring to the statement that the book had been placed in the restricted department, finally confessed: “Yes, that is what we have been instructed to tell the people, but to tell the truth we do not know what has become of the book. For some reason, it has disappeared from our shelves altogether, and we have no way of tracing it.”

The visitor thereupon said: “Do you mean to say that some one has deliberately removed that book from the shelves of the library with the view of stopping its circulation ?” The reply was: “We don’t know, but it looks that way.”

Similar treatment has been, in other Public Libraries throughout the country, accorded my book by agents of the Papal System, busy, like those of Cincinnati, in holding back the light from people’s heart, mind, and conscience.

Is the Inquisition dead? No, in truth, as such incidents powerfully prove. When it dares destroy books, it will not hestitate to destroy, in due course, authors of books obnoxious to the System!

There are thousands of professing Catholics, who believe in a truly American system of public schools, who believe also in free public libraries, free from all sectarian trammels. With these, of course, no man like myself, opposed to the Roman machine as a machine, social, educational, and political, odious in every form of operation, may have any quarrel. I admire the honest Roman Catholic, struggling helplessly but hopefully against the machine. To him, I say merely one word: “Get out of the System. It is irreformable from within.”

Going to Oelwein with the best of good wishes for the Catholic people, I had not the remotest intention or purpose of setting denomination against denomination, or to incite a Protestant majority to assail a Catholic minority. My motives and purposes were to set forth dispassionately and clearly the merits of America’s Public School System, to warn my hearers of the dangers threatening it, and to point out, as moderately as it might be, the design of one particular foreign politico-religious System, un-American and anti-American, in its origin, purposes and activities, to destroy it, as soon and as completely as possible.

Catholic prelates, priests, and papers are, every day, denouncing the public schools, lyingly stating that these schools are ” godless,” “immoral,” “breeders of crime,” etc., but no Protestant or Public School supporter of any denomination thinks of invoking mob law or assassination to controvert these offensive statements. Rome can not bear to be discussed in any one of its many unpatriotic and indefensible attitudes to American institutions, without flaming into anger and calling for the critic ‘s blood.

Feeling that I have a right to so declare anywhere, I declared at Oelwein my belief in the American Public School, my conviction that it is the palladium of our liberties, and my persuasion that with it are identified the future greatness and glory of our Nation. Had I not right undeniable to declare, at Oelwein, or anywhere else, that the American people should set themselves like wall of granite against even the shadow of sectarian interference with the bulwark of their liberties, the Public School? Had I not right unquestionable to advise that they should treat as public foe any sect attempting to undermine the Public School, or seeking to obtain public funds for the support of a rival system of education, whose success means the death of the American Public School?

Who will deny me the right of saying, plainly and inoffensively, that I disbelieve in the Roman Catholic parochial school? Catholic prelate, priest, and publicist, every day denounce the Public School as ” godless,’ 9 and a menace to sound, clean national life. Have I not equal right to state, as I did at Oelwein, that the parochial school is, to my mind, a menace to our free institutions, a black shadow on our future greatness and glory?

No sooner, however, did I so affirm at Oelwein, than an organized band of disturbers in the Opera House started a season of confusion. Their interruptions, frequent and brutal, were by me met with coolness and firmness, as the press reports very clearly demonstrate. These reports show that I held “interested hearers spellbound, and succeeded in keeping the opposition in abeyance until the close of the address.”

It was, however, during my address made very clear to myself, as well as to other observers, that trouble had been organized and might assume serious form as soon as the lecture ended. The meeting having closed, friendly greetings were exchanged. The law-abiding element moved towards home, but the organized hoodlums of the papacy refused to think of home till they had immersed hands in the blood of the lecturer.

This lawless gang, numbering several hundred men and women, boys and girls, filled the street in front of the Opera House and lined the sidewalk to the hotel of which I was guest, just one block away. With a small party of friends, I took the middle of the street, the sidewalks leading to the hotel being packed with shouting hoodlums, armed with bricks, two large stacks of which had been placed at a convenient point “to smash Crowley.” No sooner had I appeared on the street than the mob grew furious. When the misguided people began to close in, I remonstrated kindly but firmly, telling them not to be led into lawlessness by the advice of “Pat and his brother the Judge.”

The policeman escorting myself and party to the hotel was powerless before several hundred Romish hyenas. The mob soon lost every semblance of humanity, thirsting for my blood and the blood of Public School supporters.

The ferocity of that mob is simply indescribable. Women, losing every sense of dignity and even decency, cried out: “Kill him!” “Cut out his heart!” “Send a dagger through him!” etc. When my party had gotten within a few feet of the hotel, the frantic crowd closed in for a final attack. The yelling and hooting became diabolically furious. My hat was, first knocked off, that my head might be easy mark for the assailants’ weapons. My bare head was, indeed, conspicuously so, because of my tallness.

One notorious tough, at one time a Protestant, who very properly forsook even the empty profession of Protestant Christianity for Militant Romanism when he decided to devote his life’s energies to the high calling of a bartender, struck a fierce blow at my face, blackening one of my eyes. So ferocious and brutal this blow, that had I not removed my glasses before leaving the Opera House, I were to-day a blind man! Surrounded in such manner that movement was, for a time, completely prevented and my friends made powerless to help, blows, from all sides, rained in upon me.

Mr. George W. Weaver, the considerate proprietor of the Hotel Mealey, watching the mob from his door, thought that there might be a possibility of my reaching the doorway alive, and had the screen door set back, but before I could reach the threshold I was stricken over the head with an instrument, supposed to be a heavy clock weight, or something of the sort, in the hands of one of the leaders of the mob. Severe, as was the blow, I kept my feet, getting into the hotel, covered with blood.

After I was ushered to my room, the Romish hoodlums, angered beyond measure, that their plan of murder had failed, became frantic. They surrounded Mr. Weaver, demanding savagely that I be put out of the hotel, threatening: “If you will not turn him out, we will drag him out.” To which Mr. Weaver, true son of Iowa, made noble answer: “If you do it, it will be over my corpse.”

No sooner had I reached my room in the Hotel Mealey, than physicians were summoned. Dr. D. W. Ward, assisted by his father, a prominent physician of another city, after dressing the wound, issued the following professional statement of the injury: “Contusion of scalp, lacerated incised wound about one inch in length, slightly to left of vertex of skull. Incision extends down to the periosteum. Three stitches applied, to be removed in about ten days. D. W. Ward, M. D., Oelwein, Iowa.”

A little later, at Aurora, Missouri, the following professional certificate was issued:

“Aurora, Missouri,
“June 19, 1913.
“This is to certify that I, W. F. Ament, M. D., dressed a scalp wound on the scalp of Jeremiah J. Crowley, June 16, 1913, and on June 19, 1913, I removed from the same two stitches, there having been three stitches originally, one of which pulled out. And again I dressed the same wound. On the first occasion he (Crowley) was suffering from a blackened eye, the tissues about the eye were much bruised, and June 19, 1913, the eye was still blackened. W. F. Ament, M. D.”

In the face of these well attested facts, The Western Catholic, a typical Romanist paper, published at Quincy, Illinois, has the hardihood to say: “Now if the flames of fanaticism were fanned to a fury, it was done by the Guardians of Liberty, and their sympathizers, and their doughty champion Crowley, as I proceed to show. In fact it is now evident to a large percentage of the people of this city that riot and disorder was their avowed purpose.’ ‘ The Western Catholic claims this prize paragraph as the work of a special correspondent at Oelwein.

Not to be outdone by a papal organ, “Father Pat” O’Connor himself rises to remark: “The arms we use are Truth, as taught by the Son of God, justice and right as enumerated by Him. These we don’t conceal in church basements, but in obedience to our Master, we let them shine before the world, and the prayers that we utt t are the crystallized wisdom of ages, the voice <f Holy Mother Church, and not in a defiant attitude either, but in that reverend posture and supplicating voice taught us by our gentle Savior, and our cheeks are not blanched with fear, nor do our footsteps falter, for there is a determination painted on our countenance like the Christian gladiators of old, and our step is firm and onward to the goal of certain victory—'the victory which overcometh the world—our faith." "Father Pat" is evidently qualifying either for episcopal honors, or for retirement into a Jesuit monastery, in either of which positions respect for truth is at a big discount. The claims of The Western Catholic and of "Father Pat" that no rioting disgraced Oelwein on the occasion of my visit, is disposed of very effectually by the special correspondent of the Times-Journal, of Dubuque, Iowa, whose dispatch dated June 12th, was printed June 13, 1913: ' ' Jeremiah J. Crowley, of Cincinnati, Ohio, ex-priest, was mobbed and barely escaped lynching by a furious mob of about three hundred Catholics after he had addressed a large audience at the Opera House. . . . The police and a number of citizens went to his rescue, and it was after a hard effort that they succeeded in getting him to a hotel. He is now under police protection." Expressions of emphatic protest from people, press, and pulpit place Oelwein and Iowa on record against the brutality of Rome: Fred S. Robiuson, editor, Oelwein Daily Register, declares: "I believe in free speech, a free press, and a free America. Mr. Crowley had a right to come here; had a right to speak, and a right to be protected. I believe tbe agitation lie represents is necessary." Mr. E. T. Baroody, Editor Oelwein Independent, states: "Such an outrage should not have occurred in this country of free speech." Rev. A. H. Nickell, pastor of the First Baptist Church, adds: "The riot of Thursday night was a disgrace to the city, and an outrage against good citizenship." Rev. C. L. McKim, pastor of the Oelwein Christian Church, says of the riot: "It is a blot on Roman Catholics that will take years to efface." Rev. J. P. Van Horn, pastor of Grace Methodist Church of Oelwein, calls the riotous manifestation there "a shame to the community, and a disgrace to those who were responsible for it." Mr. E. C. Belt, banker of Oelwein, does not hesitate to declare: "I think that those who took part in the assault on Crowley should be ashamed of themselves." B. S. Knapp, wholesale and retail coal dealer, affirms: "I consider the mobbing of Mr. Crowley an outrage against free speech, and I regard it as a disgrace and a blot on the Roman Catholic Church." W. A. Thompson, largest dealer in agricultural machinery in Oelwein, exclaims: "0 Lord, words fail me when I try to express my feelings concerning the assault committed on that good man, the Rev. J. J. Crowley. It is a blot on the Roman Catholic Church that is ineffaceable. Every man and woman who took an active part in the attack ought to be sent to jail." Suffering severely from the injuries done me on the Thursday night of the riot, I determined to lecture, for a second time in Oelwein on Friday evening. The subject of the second lecture was, "Savonarola Sacrificed to Papal Greed and Lust." As I was entering the Opera House Friday evening, a female popish tough, Mrs. Henehan, made furious attacks on me. Smashing me in the face with her fist, this benighted creature knocked off my glasses, but inflicted no serious injury. I pitied the unfortunate woman's sad plight, spiritual, personal, and civic. She is one of the many object lessons, offered everywhere, of Romanism's teachings as to how women should live. Seized upon by the deputy sheriffs, this infuriated popish fanatic fought like a demon, biting and kicking like a mad bull, even biting off one of the officer's stars. The officers contented themselves with ejecting this sexless creature from the building. Apart from this manifestation of feline ferocity, the proceedings on Friday bore a very different character from those of the night before. The good citizens of Oelwein had armed themselves to repress hoodlumism if it dared show its hand on Friday night; the sheriff of Fayette County had been forced to swear in one hundred deputies, among them some of the most prominent citizens, giving each an officer's star, with power to make arrests. This was more than the Molly Maguires, and Knights of Columbus, the cohorts of the two O'Connors, "Pat" and "Gene," could stand. They melted accordingly into temporary quietude and seclusion. My appearance on Friday night was greeted with heartiest applause. The lecture ended, I felt it a duty to say: "I shall be delighted to return to Oelwein on a future occasion, when I hope to deliver an address on the ' Immortal Martin Luther, the Emancipator of Humanity, ' and when I come, I assure you I will not come under the protection of the pope of Rome or the pope of Oelwein, but under the protection of the Stars and Stripes." The Knights of Columbus are agents of the Romish Hierarchy. The connection of the Knights of Columbus, acting directly under orders from their priestly and prelatical superiors, with the assault on me is well set forth by The Menace: Since the Knights of Columbus are so busy explaining their piety and patriotism, let them explain the action of Olie Larson, secretary of the Knights of Columbus, of Oelwein, Iowa, one of the leaders of the mob which attempted to take the life of Mr. Crowley. He not only engaged in the mob after Mr. Crowley's lecture Thursday night, June 12th, but even followed him to the train Saturday morning, in company with one Burns, a would-be pugilist, evidently intending to follow Mr. Crowley had he not been accompanied by a few of the patriotic citizens of Oelwein, by some of them as far as Waterloo, and others almost as far as Des Moines. Not only that, but the Knights of Columbus from neighboring towns were on hand at the first lecture and at the riot. What object did Knights of Columbus have in attending this lecture, unless it was to start trouble and help their brother Knights, Pat and the "judge," et al? What Iowa and the country at large demand, is that the law of Iowa concerning riots and rioters be enforced to the letter on those who, at Rome's dictation, attempted my murder. That law declares that any person engaged in riot can be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for twenty years, and, in case of the death of the person attacked, all engaged in that mob may be indicted for murder in the first degree. Well does The Menace, that great champion of Truth and of Liberty, call upon the authorities of Iowa to do their duty: "To permit this highhanded assault upon free speech and personal liberty to go unpunished will be a crime against God and country, and a license to Rome to continue the Inquisition and kill Crowley, or any one brave enough to oppose this vile incubus of treason, corruption/' and organized disloyalty— the Papal System. Justice moves tardily in certain parts of Iowa; but in spite of all denials by "Father Pat" O'Connor and his satellites that there was no attempt to murder me, on June 12, 1913, the Daily Courier, of Waterloo, Iowa, announces, in a dispatch from Oelwein, dated July 25, 1913, that Edward Murray, Hy Manning, and Eugene Underwood, charged with riotous conduct on the evening of June 12th, have been bound over to appear before the Grand Jury. Ten other men, charged with rioting, pleaded guilty. Nine were condemned to a fine each of $50, and the tenth, Olie Larson, secretary of the Knights of Columbus, paid a fine of $25. The force of public opinion has alone compelled this tardy and incomplete vindication of justice. Shall justice be fully vindicated? Let Iowa's freemen see to it. In the face of the holding over of three men for rioting, and the fining of ten more, under a similar charge, what becomes of "Father Pat's" denial that there was no rioting on June 12th, and The Western Catholic's wicked corroboration of that infamous lie? About The Western Catholic, another word. It is published in the Diocese of Alton, Illinois, of which "The Right Reverend" James Ryan is bishop. It is to me surprising, indeed, that Bishop Ryan should permit and approve the publication of such a mendacious sheet in his diocese. Bishop Ryan was not always a patron of lying and wrongdoing He was conspicuous among the prelates who lent counsel and assistance to the Chicago priests, of whom I was the open leader, in our fight against infamous, ecclesiastical conditions. It was he, in fact, who in 1902 dispatched a letter to Rome, covering among other documents an affidavit of Rev. Daniel Croke, then rector of St. Mary's parish, Freeport, Illinois, afterwards promoted to St. Cecilia's parish, Chicago, charging Bishop Muldoon, now of Rockford, Illinois, with having had shameful intercourse, with a Chicago young woman. "Father" Croke received his information concerning Muldoon's immorality, from a nun teaching in his ( Croke 's) parochial school, who was confidante of the unfortunate young woman. This is the woman referred to in "Father" Cashman's lampoon on the Hierarchy. (See "Romanism—A Menace to the Nation," pp. 43, 44.) Bishop Ryan received the affidavit against Muldoon and the other documents charging various Chicago priests with immorality from "The Rev." Thomas F. Galligan, late permanent rector of St. Patrick's parish, Chicago, acting for a representative body of protesting priests, including myself. Bishop Ryan, who in 1902, was so vitally interested in priestly and prelatical morality as to communicate directly to the pope the affidavits and documents in question, and request personally that action be taken thereon promptly and effectively, now, strange to say, permits a lying sheet in his diocese, to scatter broadcast the most mendacious statements. tempora, mores! My blood was not shed in vain at Oelwein, on June 12, 19113. For on July 21, I began a series of lectures at Pittsburgh, Pa., covering an entire week, and was not once subjected to brutal insult or assault. The Pittsburgh Romanist hierarchs and priests took their lesson wisely from the Oelwein outburst. The overwhelming triumph of free speech at Pittsburgh is due directly to the Oelwein assault. That triumph is testified to forcibly and ably by The Pittsburgh Dispatch, July 28, 1913:

CROWLEY CLOSES HIS LECTURES.
Eight Sessions at Nixon Theater Attract
30,000 People in Aggregate.
Two Meetings Sunday.

The series of lectures delivered by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah J. Crowley, a former Catholic priest, at the Nixon Theater, closed yesterday afternoon with two monster sessions. People began gathering in Sixth Avenue in front of the theater as early as 11 o’clock in the morning, although the doors did not open until 1.30 in the afternoon. Lines were formed from the front and side entrances of the theater, which extended to Grant and Smithfield Streets. By 1 o’clock, it was estimated, 10,000 persons were waiting to enter the theater.

The committee of arrangements decided finally to hold two sessions. The theater was filled to its capacity, which, with standing room and the stage, is about 3,500, and at 2.15 the first session opened. Rev. Dr. Wallace Tharp of the Central Christian Church, Northside, Attorney R. H. Jackson, Rev. Dr. E. E. Clark, and others made short talks. The audience sang several selections, and Walter Cummings, aged 12, played a violin solo. The meetings were for men only. The enthusiasm of his auditors was so great at times that his lecture was interrupted often for several minutes.

At 3.45 the first audience was dismissed by the side exits. All the time the first meeting was in session the waiting lines on the outside were kept intact, and when the front doors of the theater opened for the second session, more than 2,000 persons swarmed in. Many who had been denied admission to the first meeting had gone away. The second audience, however, although not so large as the first, was just as enthusiastic. At both meetings he urged voters to support principles and not men at the elections.

It is estimated that 30,000 persons in the aggregate attended the eight lectures delivered by Dr. Crowley in the Nixon Theater. His auditors were not alone from Pittsburgh. They came from Wheeling, Steubenville, Beaver, Butler, Tarentum, and more distant points, a number being from Morgantown, W. Va. — The Pittsburgh Dispatch, Monday, July 28, 1913.

America must not be Rome ruled. Its Executives, National and State, must not be dominated by foreign-ruled bodies, such as the Roman Hierarchy, and the Knights of Columbus. The one avowed purpose of the latter organization is to transform the United States of America into a papal satrapy. This papal Order is busy in self-aggrandizement. In one year it has added 19,326 to its membership, and forty-seven new councils to its jurisdictions. It has now fifty-two States and three Territorial jurisdictions, with 1,630 subordinate councils.

Its activity in politics, everywhere, is very noticeable. It dictates to all political leaders, Democrat, Republican, and Progressive. Its aim—the Romanization of America—is blessed by “Holy Father,’ ‘ promoted by all the “Holy Father’s” hierarchs, and helped on by time-serving politicians, both Catholic and Protestant. The Knights of Columbus and the Roman mischief- makers generally would Mexicanize the United States. What the American Nation wants is not Romanist anarchy, but the Christian brotherhood of the open Bible, and of the loving Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

Deeply impressed with these convictions, I addressed, August 14, 1913, the following letter to Governor Clarke, of Iowa:

To His Excellency the Honorable Geo. W. Clarke, Governor of Iowa:

Sir,—
You were elected Chief Magistrate of a State, holding front rank in the Nation for devotion to decency, respect for law, reverence for authority, veneration for the American Constitution, and worship of American citizenship. Iowa has been, at all times, conspicuous for aversion to lawlessness, repugnance for violence, and antipathy to mob law in every form.

Iowa had never risen to its present prominence and prosperity, but for these splendid characteristics of genuine American citizenship. The Iowa citizen could, till recently, walk with head erect, both at home and abroad, proudly conscious that lie belonged to a State whose citizenry were, throughout the length and breadth of the foremost Nation on earth, known and respected for high ideals of clean individual living, Christian good neighborhood, and true American civic endeavor.

A recent outbreak of cowardly violence, at Oelwein, a city of unvarying good repute, till that unfortunate manifestation of lawlessness, planned and promoted by an anarchical foreign Church, its priesthood, and followers, has, however, cast shadow, profound and repellent, on Iowa’s once proud name and stainless fame.

Any crime, befouling the escutcheon of an American State is offense, signal and unpardonable, against the Nation itself. Impossible to inflict grievous wound on one member of the body without all the other members thereof suffering from that injury. The higher any State stands in public estimation, for rigid enforcement of law and unswerving protection of citizens within its gates, the deeper the injury inflicted on State itself and on Nation, especially if the lawless endeavor be either condoned or promoted by lawfully constituted authority.

You are, sir, Governor of all the people of Iowa. You are an American Governor. You are, in conscience bound, to maintain Iowa’s good name ; to suffer no stain to affix itself on America’s good name. You owe no allegiance whatever to a foreign, anti-American Church organization, whose teachings and practices are diametrically opposed to American organic law and civic standards. Romanism is essentially hostile to Americanism. It is sworn foe of liberty, civil and religious. It places foreign pope above native American President.

That pope claims the right, to him divinely ( ?) given, to dethrone kings, unseat presidents, annul laws passed by parliaments and congresses. Romanism is anarchical, anti-American, and destructive of civilization itself.

Its priestly celibacy, whereby its clergy become deadly menace to womanhood everywhere; its Confessional, dire promoter of White Slavery ; its divorce system, endangering the peace and permanency of thousands of homes, are all active instruments of its war upon civilization, particularly the civilization, like that of America and Britain, resting on popular education, the open Bible, and,, the free ballot. Romanism’s bases are ignorance, the closed Bible, and the despotism of one man, impiously claiming ” infallibility.”

You are not, sir, Governor of Iowa’s Romanists only. You are not Governor, by the grace of Pope Pius X, or Cardinal Merry del Val. You are Governor by virtue of an enlightened non- Romanist community’s free choice at the polls. You had never been Governor of Iowa, could Rome have prevented your election. Your election over a Knight of Columbus the papacy had, indeed, prevented through its well organized political agencies, had not The Menace, peerless organ of American liberty, civil and religious, aroused its five million readers to the conditions that Romanist machinations were seeking to impose on Iowa. Papalism did not want you, Sir, elevated to the Governorship of Iowa, for it feared that Iowa would, in you, have a Chief Magistrate to hold up the Flag, which Romish priests curse, and defame; to maintain Iowa in permanent high place as a law-respecting and lawenforcing State; to repress sectionalism and promote united civic effort.

Amazed, then, are the tens of thousands of honest, patriotic Iowans who, against Rome’s fixed purposes and well-laid plans, voted you into the Governorship of their State, to see you stand idly by and suffer the fair name of Iowa to be blotted and besoiled by the Romanist originators and promoters of, actors and participators, in the Oelwein attempt to assassinate me.

That foul, inhuman attempt at assassination was a Romanist plot, blessed by Hierarchy, fostered by priest, executed by Knights of Columbus and other devoted agents of the Papal System of blood and brutality.

All Iowa, nay more, all of free America had heartily applauded your assertion of gubernatorial dignity; your maintenance of Iowa’s proud distinction among America’s Commonwealths, had you, in the Oelwein case, shown the courage befitting a real American Governor. What an enduringly noble place in American history have, for example, the fearless War Governors of Lincoln’s day! What honor upon States and Nation have not conferred such Governors, as Cleveland and Morton, of New York; Johnson, of Tennessee; Allen, of Ohio; McClellan, of New Jersey; Hogg, of Texas; Johnson, of Minnesota!

No American Chief Magistrate may suffer lawlessness to triumph, and expect to hand down to family, to State, and to country a name, spotless and undefiled. The name of any Governor, unequal to the discharge of duty, unwilling to defy all lawless elements and organizations, must, on the contrary, go down to history, blackened and dishonored.

Nor can the State itself, which he misgoverns, escape the censure of the Nation at large, for having elected a creature so pusillanimous to highest office in its gift. The permanent disgrace of one individual is lamentable enough, the permanent disgrace of a State is truly deplorable. When that disgrace arises from alliance between the Governor of the State and a foreign-ruled, anarchic, and murderous Church organization, whose merciless hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Waldensian martyrs in Italy, with hosts of Inquisitional victims in Spain, and legions of Huguenots in France, time, indeed, is it, for Americans to protest, earnestly and emphatically, against a Governor, guilty of such malfeasance, and demand his summary impeachment and removal.

When subordinate officials know that their State is in the hands of a pusillanimous Chief Magistrate; when they have reason to believe that that Chief Magistrate is himself in the hands of agents of a foreign, despotic Church body, they, too, find it convenient to imitate their Governor’s timidity, and contract profitable alliance with the conscienceless prelacy and priesthood of Rome, always promising to pay with ballots for service rendered their cause, by weak-kneed Protestant American officials.

The conduct of Prosecuting Attorney Hughes, and of Sheriff Clark, of Fayette County, Iowa, on the occasion of the Oelwein outrage, shows indubitably that there was collusion between these officials and the agents of Rome’s band of assassins in Oelwein. A cursory examination of the facts connected with the attempted murder of me, at Oelwein, discloses, beyond contradiction, that the local officials knew, several days before my arrival there, that plans were under formation for my assassination; that several hundred men and boys had banded together to murder me; that the proposed outrage was talked of publicly on the streets of Oelwein, the would-be assassins and their abettors attempting no concealment of their conviction that Judge Eugene O’Connor, the Romanist brother of the Romanist priest of Oelwein, had pledged immunity to those who might take my life.

The sheriff, Edward F. Clark, in fact, told me after the riot, in my own apartment in the hotel, in the presence of several witnesses, that he knew for several days of the planned and purposed riot. And yet he remained studiously away at his home, seventeen miles from Oelwein, during all the time of the disturbance.

Is it not reasonable, sir, to suppose that the county authorities of Fayette felt safe in contracting alliance, offensive and defensive, with Judge O’Connor and Priest O’Connor, with the Knights of Columbus and their satellites, because some assurance was given that the Governor of Iowa would keep ” hands off” in xhe matter of my proposed murder?

Why did they feel safe in neglecting preparations for the suppression of an outbreak, which they well knew was certain to occur? Did they not, perhaps, consult you as to having troops in readiness for the maintenance of peace and order, and find you, unwilling to do your part in protecting life and upholding law? They certainly did act, throughout, as if aware of a definite alliance between yourself and the paper agents, particularly, your friends ‘?) the Knights of Columbus.

Did not the latter promise a safe delivery of the Romanist vote of Iowa to you. Sir, if you and your Fayette County officials delivered Crowley into the hands of the assassins? The Guardians of Liberty are not an organization, carrying about the votes of their members in breeches pockets, ready for delivery to the highest bidder : the Knights of Columbus, the very priesthood of Rome, profess to deal precisely, in that nefarious way, with the votes of followers and dupes!

Catholics, whether Knights of Columbus or not, are nowhere distinguished for bravery. The servitude, spiritual and intellectual, imposed by the Church, robs men of manfulness. Brave only are Romanists, when they feel that, in any proposed lawless effort, they have back of them the machinery of law and Government.

So convinced were people in Oelwein of administrative connivance at their proposed murder of me, that Catholic school girls went about the streets openly boasting that ” Judge Eugene’ ‘ would stand by and safeguard any one undertaking to kill me.

Would Judge Eugene O’Connor have dared promise any such protection, without first fixing his forces at the Executive Mansion in Des Moines, and at Payette’s County Court House?

Not till I had, at Pittsburgh, called the attention of all the American people to Iowa’s failure, through you and your subordinates, to assert the supremacy of the law, was anything, in so far as I know, done to bring the Oelwein malefactors to justice. I said, sir, before the thousands gathered to hear me in Pittsburgh: “If I am murdered in the future, I want the patriotic American people to hold the civil authorities of the State of Iowa, especially the Governor, responsible for my murder, for their criminal negligence, so far as I know, in refusing to prosecute to the full extent of the law the members of the mob which attempted to take my life in Oelwein on June 12th. And furthermore, if I am murdered in any part of this country, I shall expect the American people to hold the Federal authorities, including Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, responsible. I am an American citizen and have a right to demand that the State and Federal authorities furnish me protection.”

The whole Nation is aroused at the disgrace you have permitted to be inflicted on Iowa. I am in receipt of protests against the Oelwein outrage from all over the Union. Let me cite the following from amongst many. I begin, sir, with your own State

RESOLUTIONS

Adopted by Fearless Court, Guardians of Liberty, Oelwein, Iowa, August 8, 1913.

“Whereas, Fearless Court, No. 11, of Oelwein, Iowa, extended to the Eev. J. J. Crowley an invitation to deliver two lectures in the city of Oelwein, Iowa, June 12, 13, 1913, and that, after filling the first night of the engagement, Mr. Crowley was set upon and cruelly mobbed by a large number of Roman Catholics ; and,

“Whereas, The officials have moved in the matter of prosecuting those engaged in the riot of June 12, yet we are not satisfied with the progress made looking to the punishment of the guilty parties; therefore, be it

“Resolved, That we condemn in the strongest terms the effort made by the enemies of good government to prevent by intimidation and violence the said Eev. J. J. Crowley from delivering his lectures according to arrangement. We brand this assault as an insult to the Constitution of the United States and a menace to the right of free speech. Be it further resolved, that we urge the constituted authorities to seek out and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all who engaged in the above mentioned riot.

“Resolved, That this Court is highly pleased with the most able lectures delivered by Mr. Crowley, resulting as they have in the awakening of the Protestants of this and other communities to a sense of the danger that threatens their liberties. We wish to commend him to the Patriots everywhere as an example of the highest type of American citizen, fearless in his denunciation of Romish aggression, logical in his presentation of the principles of good government, and worthy the confidence of all good men. We bespeak for him an attentive hearing in all parts of our beloved country.
“(Signed) C. J. Wegner,
“V. W. Potter,
“A. H. Nickell,
“Committee”

That the great State of Illinois is profoundly moved at the Oelwein manifestation of Romanistic lawlessness and official unfitness, the following from the flourishing city of Elgin demonstrates :

“Copy of Resolutions.
“Elgin, 111., June 18, 1913.
“Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
“Cincinnati, Ohio.

“Dear Sir,—Elgin Court, No. 21, Guardians of Liberty, in regular meeting, June 17, 1913, instructed its Committee on Resolutions to extend to you our sympathy in the recent attack made upon you in Oelwein, Iowa, by Romanist thugs. Further, that we protest against such unwarranted attacks as opposed to the principles of free speech in this country. Respectfully yours,
“(Signed) Heney Shellgeove,
“Geoege D. Bull,
“Committee on Resolutions.”

Ohio, the State of my residence, one of the leading Commonwealths of this great Nation, is not less profoundly affected than Illinois. See what Cincinnati declares :

“Copy of Resolutions.
“Cincinnati, Ohio, July 1, 1913,
“Rev. Jeeemiah J. Ceowley,
“Cincinnati, Ohio.

“Dear Sir and Brother,—We, your fellowcitizens and members of the several Courts, Guardians of Liberty, in regular meetings, instructed our Committee on Resolutions, to extend to you our earnest sympathy in the recent attack made upon you in Oelwein, Iowa, by Romanist thugs, and assure you of our confidence and support as a leader in this grand, patriotic crusade.

“Further, That we vigorously protest against such unwarranted attacks as opposed to the principles of free speech in this country. “That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the Honorable George W. Clarke, Governor of Iowa; The Menace, Aurora, Mo.; The American Citizen, East Orange, N. J., and that a copy be spread on the minutes of the several Courts.
“Menace Court, No. 16, W. W. Bybee, M. G.;
“Union Court, No. 8, Edw. Schmidt, M. G.;
“Armory Court, No. 23, Wm. Schroeder, M. G.;
“Harmonv Court, No. 11, Findly Stewart;
“Armory Court, No. 23, J. C. Bellman, M. G.;
“Lincoln Court, No. 20, C. Owens;
” Anthony Wayne Court, No. 12, Chas. Solger, M. G.;
“Fairmount Court, No. 31, Frank Theil, M. G.;
“Eureka Court, No. 4, Chas. Giesenberg, M. G.”

You can not, Sir, plead ignorance of the real conditions at Oelwein, induced by the disgraceful riot of June 12, 1913. The Menace, the paper which helped so materially to elect you; a paper having a reading constituency of five millions, has thousands of subscribers in Iowa, many hundreds of whom reside in Des Moines, your own present place of residence. The Menace of June 13, 1913, published the following, which could not have escaped your eye:

EXTRA BY TELEGRAPH TO THE MENACE EXTRA

“Oelwein, Iowa, June 13, 1913.
“The Menace, Aurora, Mo.

“Jeremiah J. Crowley, of Cincinnati, spoke here last evening to packed house of leading citizens on the public school question, and was mobbed by Roman Catholics on his way to the hotel after the lecture. Doctors state that injuries are severe ; but, characteristic of his usual nerve and courage, Mr. Crowley will speak this evening as previously arranged.
“Fearless Court, No. 11,
“Guardians of Liberty.” ‘ “The above telegram was received just as The Menace went to press with this edition. “We hope to be able to give details next week. This assault upon FREE SPEECH is doubtless part of the National conspiracy against free institutions by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The threat of the Catholic Federated Societies of Philadelphia is answered by this papal mob in Iowa.

“We meet the challenge of brutal Rome, and declare with renewed emphasis that the sacrifice upon the altar of liberty is not in vain, and this Nation must and shall be free! ‘ ‘

A distinguished and cultured lady visiting in Oelwein wrote you, sir, and the Attorney-General, without delay:
“Oelwein, Iowa, June 23, 1913.

“To His Excellency Governor Clarke and Hon. George Cosson, Attorney-General, State or Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa:

Sirs,—A great crime against the people of the State of Iowa, and against the Constitution of the United States was committed in Oelwein, Iowa, on the evening of June 12th, when an attempt was made to murder, at the entrance to the Mealey Hotel, one Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley, a resident of Cincinnati, who, exercising his rights as an American citizen, gave a patriotic lecture on the value of the public school.

“After the lecture was over he was attacked by a gang of Roman Catholic ruffians, who attempted to murder him. One hoodlum in particular, by the name of Edward Murray, of 18 Frederick Street, Oelwein, struck the Rev. Crowley over the head with a heavy iron instrument, inflicting a serious injury. The names of the other thugs are known also.

“As the local authorities seem unable to bring the criminals to justice, will you not use your good offices, in the interest of law and order, and see that this matter is probed by properly constituted authority and the guilty parties punished! i ‘ (Signed) ” Yours truly, “Mrs. Elizabeth Armstrong.”

A leading minister of the Gospel wrote :
” Guthrie Centre, Iowa, June 27, 1913. “To the Honorable George W. Clarke,
“Governor of Iowa :

“My Dear Sir,—I greet you this morning of the 27th day of June, 1913, as first of all a patriotic American citizen of this United States of America and of the State of Iowa, and as a regularly ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’ I assure you, Honored Sir, that it is not with a trivial or inconsiderable feeling that I would dare to address you, one whose time and energy is supposed to be employed with matters of the deepest concern and well-being of our beloved State and people, but on the contrary, I believe and feel that what I am to say in this message to you is of very vital and profound interest. I feel that you would in every case regard as perilous and alarming every concerted attempt at the threatening of our State and National liberties, and believing steadfastly in your unswerving attitude toward any and all such encroachments, I would, as a citizen, remonstrate and give you an account of my feelings in this respect and call to your attention, if it has not already been, and even if it has, would add these words, citing you to the mob violence resorted to by a bloodthirsty gang of Roman Catholics upon an honored citizen of this Republic, at Oelwein, Iowa, Thursday evening, June 12, 1913—the Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley, author, lecturer, and public servant of liberty and freedom of speech, press, and educative institutions. This honored citizen and son of liberty was maltreated and cruelly beaten for maintaining our liberties in this beloved State, and as an honest, sympathetic servant of the public good, I ask that you immediately investigate this matter and as a wise judiciary cause to be made such arrest and conviction of said participants in this bold and unpatriotic and inhuman assault, for I feel that this should be dealt strenuously with, as a wise and advance precaution against further criminal patronage. I should be very glad to have a short note of reply.

” Thanking you in advance for the same, and believing in your sincerity, honesty, and loyalty, I remain, “Yours respectfully,
“John F. Hiner,
“Pastor Wesleyan Methodist Church,
Guthrie Center, Iowa.”

I charge you, sir, with gross malfeasance in office.

I charge you with complicity, after the fact at least, in a foul, cowardly attempt to murder an American citizen. I charge you with alliance, unquestionable, with papalism and its agents in America.

I charge you with the violating of your oath of office to execute the laws of Iowa.

I charge you with bringing discredit and dishonor on a Commonwealth, whose name, till you had discredited it, was synonymous with American civilization’s highest and best effort.

I charge you with submitting to foreign Romeruled organizations, by hesitating to rebuke assault on American freedom of speech.

I charge you with grave unfitness for the high office of Governor of the great State of Iowa, which will have no alliance, direct or indirect, with papalistic perversity.

Iowa’s manifest duty is to remove you, Sir, by impeachment from the office your presence tarnishes and disgraces.
I am, sir, Very truly yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

The Roman scheme for the suppression of free speech, embraces not alone incitements to murder, plots involving physical violence with destruction of life and property ; it includes not only the muzzling of Federal, State, and County officials, it lays criminal hand on the telegraph and postal equipments of American civilization.

On the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1913, I received an important letter from Pittsburgh, asking for immediate information of great value to the Committee, in charge of my proposed series of lectures in their city.

Soon after I had read the letter of the Chairman of the Lecture Committee, Rev. Wilson G. Cole, I went personally to the main office of the Western Union Telegraph Company, in Cincinnati, and wrote a telegram, covering the main points in the letter of the Committee. Handing it to the receiving clerk in the presence of Mr. R. C. Bliss, manager of the Cincinnati office, I requested that it be stamped “Rush,” and sent immediately to Pittsburgh.

That message, duly prepaid, and stamped, “Rush,” was dispatched from the Cincinnati office, as the records show, six minutes after my handing it in. It should have gotten to Pittsburgh early that same afternoon.

The Pittsburgh Committee awaiting my telegram anxiously, had to wait in vain. The telegram was held back for twenty-five hours ! The Rev. Wilson G. Cole, a prominent clergyman of the locality, is my authority for the statement that the message was, through some one’s neglect, held up for five and twenty hours. Rev. Mr. Cole had, in fact, received a special delivery letter, which I had addressed to him, six hours after sending the telegram, before that telegram was presented to him. Having, from the special delivery letter, obtained the information, which should have reached him, by wire, the day before, Mr. Cole very properly refused to accept the belated telegram.

Going to the head office of the Western Union in Cincinnati, after I had heard of my telegram’s ” hold-up ” in Pittsburgh, I demanded an explanation. Mr. R. C. Bliss, the courteous manager of the Cincinnati main office, wired the Pittsburgh manager, who refused him an answer. A second wire from Mr. Bliss to the Pittsburgh manager, met with like fate.

Mr. Bliss, in the temporary absence of Superintendent Miller, wired the Pittsburgh Superintendent, Mr. A. C. Terry. No reply. Mr. Bliss then, in due course, placed the whole matter in the hands of Mr. I. N, Miller, the Cincinnati Superintendent, who communicated with Terry in Pittsburgh. Terry’s explanation was, however, of such a character, that Mr. Miller sent it back to Pittsburgh for repairs, without suffering me to see it.

Arrived in Pittsburgh, I called attention in my first lecture, July 21, 1913, to the detention of my telegraphic message.

Holding up my book, ” Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” at page 67, 1 drew the attention of the vast and representative audience before me to the photographic copy of a cablegram stolen from the files of the Western Union Telegraph Company in Chicago.

I recalled to my audience the fact that this cablegram sent to Rome, June 6, 1901, addressed to Cardinal Ledochowski, Prefect of Propaganda, had been, by a Romish agent, stolen, soon after it had been filed with the Western Union, and given to the Roman Hierarchy. The cablegram, bearing my own and the signature of another protesting priest, sent, however, at the instance and expense of a large committee of Chicago protesting priests, was, once in the hands of the enemy, photographed and used to the injury of myself and friends, and to the furtherance of corrupt Hierarchical interests and misrule. The Romish agent, who perpetrated the theft of that Chicago cablegram, defied a fine of $1,000 and a seven year term in penitentiary. The Pittsburgh Romanist agent, backed by the plethoric treasure of Roman prelacy and priesthood, was evidently just as temerarious.

Is the Western Union—I may, surely, ask, after such a barefaced theft—really honeycombed with Romanists, or Jesuitized Protestants, all ready to render service to the old whore of Babylon, by feloniously invading private and individual right?

Having failed from the early days of July to obtain any satisfactory explanation, the Cincinnati main office of the Western Union sent, on August 10, 1913, all the papers in the case to Superintendent Terry of Pittsburgh, insisting on an explanation. On August 12 wire was sent Pittsburgh, at my request, asking for copy of my original telegram. It took three urgent telegrams to Superintendent Terry, of Pittsburgh, to secure copy of that original message. Here it is:

Cincinnati, Ohio,
June 28, 1913.
Rev. W. G. Cole,
Spencer Methodist Episcopal Church,
118 Stewart Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Your letter received this morning. God willing, I will be with you and patriotic people of Pittsburgh July 20 to 26. My sixth subject is Esoteric Romanism. Letter follows. God save the World and Humanity from Rome and things Roman!
Jeremiah J. Cbowley.

Does it not look as if this message was held up, for the purpose of putting the Committee and myself at cross purposes? It may have been hoped, in this way, to prevent, at all events for a time, my series of lectures in Pittsburgh. No trick that Rome is not equal to in the suppression of free speech !

Told in New York City that Bishop Muldoon, of Rockford, Illinois, and his Hierarchical associates had planned to prevent the publication of my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ p then in a publisher’s hands, I called on that prelate at his Rockford home, October 7, 1911, on a Sherlock Holmes mission of inquiry, as to the schemes of, and the means and methods to be invoked by Muldoon and his Hierarchical associates to corral my publisher. I got all the light I wanted. I started Muldoon talking; the rest was easy. I wanted to draw him out. No great difficulty in getting him started. The mere mention of his deadly clerical foes, “His Grace,’ ‘ Ireland of St. Paul, “Father” Cashman, of Chicago, et at., gave him a brainstorm. He stated to me openly, among many other things, that he knew who stole our cablegram to Rome in 1901. Of course he did; for Muldoon was head and front of the machine that cablegram had so forcibly hit. He added that he also knew its present whereabouts. Of course he does.

From the information previously received, and from the whole tenor of my conversation with “Bishop Muldoon,” I realized that there was a fixed and definite design to prevent the publication of my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation.” I, then and there, resolved, in consequence, to become my own publisher, and within a week had completed arrangements in Cincinnati to carry out that purpose.

I may here mention that, to discredit myself and my anti-Romanist campaign, it has been insinuated that I went to Rockford secretly to “sell out” to Muldoon. This insinuation was not even whispered till one year after my visit to Rockford, and six months after the publication of my book, in which I stated specifically that I had called on Muldoon, October 7, 1911. (See “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,’ ‘ p. 677.) My visit to Rockford was not secret. I registered in my own name, without slightest attempt at concealment, at hotels both in Chicago and Rockford.

If my visit to Rockford was one of blackmailing, would Muldoon have hesitated to place me at once under arrest?

Muldoon has not money enough, nor has all the Hierarchy of Rome, to buy me into silence. Muldoon, on the occasion referred to, denounced archbishops, bishops, and priests, at one time associated with me, as criminals of deepest dye, fit only to be jailed, shot or hanged. These criminals are now, however, his ecclesiastical bedfellows, but they are not, thank heaven, mine! None such shall ever be!

Shortly after Archbishop Quigley’s arrival in Chicago in 1903, I called on him, March 13, 1903, at his own urgent invitation, at his “palace” in Chicago. Born, like other children of poor folk in a log cabin of very modest dimensions, near Oshawa, in Canada, Quigley’s rise in favor with the popes of Rome has, in a few years, made him denizen of semi-regal ” palaces.’ ‘

When I made mention to “His Grace’ * Quigley of my suit against the Western Union Telegraph Company, in re the stolen cablegram, he protested vigorously against such a course, exclaiming: “We can not, for the Church’s sake, permit that action to go on. Such an action would at once confirm the public mind in the belief, now all too general, that Rome is ready to rob not only the files of the telegraph companies, and other corporations, but even government offices, to carry out any of its cherished schemes. Why, we are now even accused of getting hold of Presidential messages before they are given to Congress or the public!” [Quite easy now, would be the purloining by Rome of Presidential documents.] “No! No! the Church is under shadow, deep and dark enough, without putting on her before the American public the garb of a telegraph thief. That suit must be dropped and the question of damages for you otherwise dealt with. To damages you are entitled; but the Church must be spared the ignominy of exposure.”

In other words, the individual, in the Papal System, is nothing, the machine everything. To this policy, cruel and unfeeling, the prelacy and priesthood of Rome live up, with the utmost fidelity.

Pope Adrian IV sold Ireland to King Henry II of England, for a guarantee of “Peter’s Pence.’ ‘ Every pope, since Adrian’s time, has sacrificed men in scores, several in hundreds, and many more in thousands, to save or to strengthen the infamous Papal System. Men’s lives have been, throughout the ages, bartered by the Vatican for filthy lucre. The individual Christian is, I repeat, nothing, the blood-stained machine everything.

It is, apropos of Rome’s conscienceless disregard of individual right and defiance of law, my duty to state that on Thursday morning, August 14, 1913, I received at the Cincinnati Postoffice, a registered letter from a prominent, patriotic citizen of Oelwein, Iowa. The letter was in bad order, as certified to by Postoffice clerks, Charles Keck, and Leon Pangburn. The letter had been opened before it reached Cincinnati. Where was it opened? Was it opened at Oelwein? Has Rome an agent in the Postoffice there? Is the Postmaster or Assistant Postmaster such agent? Is either a Romanist or Knight of Columbus ?

This latest postoffice outrage on me was perpetrated that the name of my correspondent and the names of other prominent Oelwein men might be handed to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, Knights of Columbus, and other Romanist agencies, which shall surely visit their anger on my correspondent, and on the gentlemen named in his enclosure. They will be, not only, denied what business patronage Rome may control ; their persons, property, and their very lives are jeopardized. They are surely men, marked out for Romanist vengeance.

My correspondent writes, in part :

I regret the dilatory manner in which the authorities [civil] have gone about the prosecution of the offenders of June 12. It is true that thirteen have been called to account, but there are others against whom there is the best evidence that have not been arrested. The woman who struck you the second night ought to be taught a lesson, whether she should get full extent of the law or not. Your statement made in Pittsburgh that, in the event that you are murdered in the future, you would hold the Iowa officials responsible, is all right. It is a terrific fact for the authorities to face. I trust they will feel the weight of it.

I congratulate you on the great meetings in Pittsburgh. The country is slowly arising to a sense of the danger. The day of final conflict is postponed. But how shall we keep the people awake? If I can be of service to you and the cause at any future time I am at your service. May the Lord keep and use you in this mighty conflict !
Most sincerely yours,

Profoundly moved and aroused to indignation, by the latest postoffice infamy visited on me, fitting sequel to the utterly unprecedented iniquities, Federal, State, and Municipal, I denounced recently at Pittsburgh, Pa., before representative and enlightened American audiences, I dispatched, on August 14, 1913, telegrams to Washington, which exactly expressing my feelings, as an American citizen, determined that his rights should be respected, I cheerfully submit to my readers :

The Honorable Albert S. Burleson,
Postmaster General,
Washington, D. C.

Postoffice outrages on me still continuing. Received to-day very important registered letter from Oelwein, Iowa. Letter was broken open shamefully, and contents rifled. Crime evidently perpetrated in the interest of my would-be murderers at Oelwein, Iowa, June 12, 1913. What is your Department going to do about it?
Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Author, Lecturer, and Publicist,
619 Johnston Building,
Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.
The American Postoffice system has been and is used to my grievous injury. Letters threatening my murder received for ten years, also scurrilous letters. Registered and other letters broken open. Grossly insulted personally by postoffice employees. Murderously assaulted recently in Iowa. What is your administration going to do to protect my life and rights against the Mexican methods of Rome and Romanism here in the United States?
Jeremiah J. Crowley,
Author, Lecturer, and Publicist,
619 Johnston Building,
Cincinnati, Ohio.

To these messages, which my American citizenship entitled me to forward, no acknowledgment or reply has been vouchsafed. Is Washington prepared to ignore, at Rome’s dictation, robbery of mails, and murderous assaults? Are we in Naples, Mexico, or the United States?

With the Postoffice system of the United States so largely under Roman dictation and the Western Union Telegraph Company paying the Vatican beast ready homage, what rights have individuals, distasteful to the papacy, that postal or telegraph officials shall respect?

Americans must take action, or neither the Postoffice, nor the telegraph office, nor any other agency or equipment of society or business in this country, shall be safe from Romanist rapacity, greed and lust!

Are we, I repeat, in free America? Or, are we in an America, Romanized and enslaved by the Inquisition’s hierarchs? Torrents of blood were, in the war between the States, poured out freely to efface negro slavery from American soil. But there is in fullest activity, at tins moment, a slavery fouler and more sanguinary, darkening and debasing all this land from Atlantic to Pacific. It mobs the individual citizen claiming freedom of speech: it robs the Postoffice and pillages telegraphic files. It holds thousands of women in the most atrocious White Slavery; it keeps youth and age in ignorance, and by its Confessional, and its vow of counterfeit clerical celibacy, makes itself menace, most appalling, to pure home life.

From the foregoing pages, evident it is and incontrovertible:

1. That no professing Roman Catholic, believing in the doctrines of papal supremacy and infallibility, can be loyal to any form of government but the papal only.

2. That the pope is the arch-enemy of humanity, the foe of free conscience, free speech, free printing-presses, free school, free Church in a free State.

3. That the inquisition is not dead anywhere; sleeping in some places it is, like the Jesuits, dead as an order from 1773 till 1814, ready at papal call to get busy again all over the world.

4. That the papacy is foe inexorable of Christian marriage and of pure home living.

5. That bishops swear solemnly, to this very day, that they will extirpate “heretics,” etc. ; that is, uproot and obliterate all non-Romanists.

6. That the doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception,* deifying the “Virgin Mary,” is an act of idolatry.

7. That the doctrine of papal infallibility, transforming a poor, frail, corrupt old mortal into a very God is blasphemy most dreadful.

8. That Romanism with its Confessional, its nunneries and kindred agencies, stands for White Slavery in the latter ‘s most vile and repugnant forms.

9. That the priests of Rome are deliberately and systematically trained to become perverters and demoralizers of Christian boys and girls the world over. They are sworn enemies of Protestant womanhood’s virtue, boasting of their lecherous triumphs over Protestant mothers, wives, and daughters.

10. That where Romanism prevails, licentiousness and illegitimacy are given encouragement and obtain prevalence.

11. That the Roman Catholic schools are so conducted as to endanger the morality of all pupils, but especially Protestants.

12. That Romanism rejoices with exceeding great joy on finding Protestants ready to fight her battles, and profits enormously from such assistance.

13. That popes are elected, not by the Holy Ghost, but by Jesuitical funds and frauds, especially so for the last four centuries.

14. That papal conclaves are scenes and centers of a political and partisan activity, before which the worst of secular political endeavors pale into insignificance.

15. That the Jesuitized Roman Church of to-day is ready to repaganize that portion of the Christian world subject to its control.

16. That the pontiff of to-day, Pius X, is the mere figurehead of Jesuit domination and absolutism.

17. That the Roman Church is the deadly, inveterate enemy not only of the free press, but of writers independent enough to defy its authority; that it has crushed into poverty and early graves able men daring to expose its malignant and inhuman endeavors.

18. That the so-called Catholic press is an abject slave of the Romish System, covering up the crimes of hierarchs, the monstrosities of convents and monasteries, and assailing the Masonic as well as other orders devoted to the betterment of humanity by the teaching and practicing of brotherhood.

19. That the whole tenor and policy of the Romish System is, in the words of Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago, “to intimidate the so-called Protestant religious press and to muzzle the secular press”.

20. That the pope is now just as busily engaged in the sale of “indulgences” as his predecessors were in the days of Martin Luther, and that this bartering is as disgraceful, un-Scriptural, and un-Christian as that which shocked and convulsed all Europe four centuries ago.

21. That the ” jubilees’ ‘ so frequently proclaimed by popes are simply means to an end—the getting of moneys to glut the coffers of Roman shop-keepers; to fill the purses of priests, bishops, and cardinals ; and to gorge the papal treasure-box with gold from the four corners of the earth.

22. That pilgrimages to the so-called sacred shrines of Romanism, where cures are promised lavishly to the credulous willing to pay therefor, are criminal devices of a crafty, lucre-seeking priesthood, devotees of rum and red-light-ism.

23. That the white prison population of the United States is, in overwhelming majority, of Romanist blood, birth, and training, the product of diabolical parochial or convent school.

24. That papal schools supply a heavy percentage of recruits to houses of ill-repute, and also to America ‘s prison population.

25. That Protestants—as for instance in St. Paul, Minn., and Washington, D. C.—are bled freely to build up Roman bulwarks of superstition and false learning.

26. That Jesuits and other papal agents draw enormous contributions from bed-ridden, benighted Catholic men and women.

27. That disease, decimation, and death are certain concomitants of Romish rule wherever it prevails.

28. That the Knights of Columbus are in politics everywhere in America, busy striving to pass legislation in favor of Romanism’s growth and perpetuity.

29. That one of the purposes closest to papal heart is to spread over all America such agencies as the Quebec school system, synonymous for moral darkness and mental dwarfdom.

30. That the coffers of nunneries are plenteously filled from sale of goods made by unpaid white slave labor, which competes directly with, and reduces to a minimum the wages of, free toilers striving to support aged and youthful dependents.

31. That Ireland can never enjoy Home Rule till Rome Rule disappears from that country, and that Home Rule means the ruin of Rome Rule.

32. That Rome is so opposed to liberty of thought and speech in America as to incite henchmen to murder outspoken opponent.

33. That the Knights of Columbus, are, as proven by the Oelwein incident, thoroughly devoted to the suppression of free speech, even to the shedding of blood.

34. That the neglect and refusal of the Postoffice authorities to keep Rome out of the American postoffice is giving such encouragement to papal agents that they still openly seize on and rifle my mail: and that when privileged postal and telegraphic matter is subjected to seizure by Roman banditti, the persons, property, and lives of American citizens are all placed in jeopardy.

35. That the whole System of Jesuitry and Romanism is diabolical and destructive.

36. That the Papacy is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelations.

COMMENDATORY LETTERS.

Rev. J. J. Crowley.
Dear Sir and Christian Brother:
I have read your intensely interesting book—”The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation. ‘ ‘ After fourteen years of residence in Rome, I am not surprised by what you have published. You have not overstated the case in the least degree. Your book is a terrible arraignment of the hierarchy in Rome and in the United States, but it is absolutely true. It is terrible because it is true. What you have said corresponds exactly to what I have known and seen in Rome. The half has not yet been told. It is time that the American people should know the facts. Every loyal American, Catholic or Protestant, should read this book, brim full of facts. May God give you a great wisdom, patience, and courage for your great work!
Rev. William Burt, D. D.,
Bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church.

I have read with deepest interest Father Jeremiah J. Crowley’s Book on the “Parochial School question.” I am persuaded that God has raised him up at this time to give this wonderful testimony and to sound a note of alarm which thoughtful Americans would do well to heed. I have taken particular pains to inquire concerning Father Crowley himself and I count it a privilege to say that I believe him to be worthy of the confidence and esteem of all who have the best interests of America at heart, and of all who desire to see the best interests of the Kingdom of God advanced. Without any qualification whatever I commend his book and may God bless him in his great mission!
Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman, D. D.,
The Evangelistic Leader of the Presbyterian Church.

Rev. J. J. Crowley.
Dear Sir:
I have been much impressed when hearing your several addresses, but your published volume discloses things that are scarcely thinkable. If a tithe of your accusations are true, it is time that a prophet like to yourself is raised up to sound the note of warning. I hope your book will be still more widely read, and may it have a circulation in those places where it will drive abomination out of the religious courts! May it be a rod in the hand of Him whose kingdom in earth we wait and labor for!
Sincerely yours,
Rev. Cornelius Woelfkin, D. D.

God has His leaders for every great crisis. Now when a concerted attack upon our Public School system is being made by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, a knightly champion appears in our defense in the person of a Catholic priest, Father Jeremiah J. Crowley. His book, “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation,” ought to be in the hands of every citizen of this Republic, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. There are thousands of Catholics who are loyal to the Public Schools. This book is not an attack upon the Church, but it is an appeal for the purity and reformation of its priesthood. Let edition after edition come from the press. Let Protestants and Catholics unite to promote its circulation. A modern Savonarola has appeared upon the scene. Let us rally to his help and defense from ocean to ocean!
Rev. Charles C. McCabe, D. D.,
Bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church.

One of the most important books now before the public is “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation.” It should be read by every American citizen, both Protestant and Catholic, who cares to understand existing conditions, and who seeks to preserve our Public School system as a bulwark of intelligence and liberty. My personal acquaintance with Father Crowley has resulted in much admiration for his genial, strong, and courageous manhood, and has left me without doubt as to his moral integrity, spiritual devotion and honesty of effort to Avin his Church back to purity and to Christ. Rev. Robert McWatty Russell, D. D., President,
Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa., and Late Pastor
Sixth United Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Catholic University at Washington, D. C, was founded by two American ladies, who are sisters, the Marquise des Monstiers- Meronville and the Baroness von Zedtwitz. Their maiden name was Caldwell, and they were born and reared in the Catholic faith. They gave about half a million dollars to found the University.

In November, 1904, the world was startled by the abjuration of the Roman Catholic Church by the Marquise des Monstiers- Meronville. The following is taken from the Associated Press Report in the Chicago Tribune of November 16, 1904:

“New York, Nov. 15.—The Associated Press has received the following. Before giving it publication its authenticity has been fully verified by cable from Rome.”

“Rome, Oct. 30.—Editor of the Associated Press: You have my full permission to print the enclosed and give it as wide a publication as possible. — Marquise des Monstiers-Meronville.”

“It may interest some of your readers to know that the Marquise des Monstiers-Meronville, formerly Miss M. G. Caldwell, who, it will be remembered, founded the Roman Catholic University at Washington some years ago, has repudiated entirely her former creed. In an interview with me the other day she said:

“Yes it is true that I have left the Roman Catholic Church. Since I have been living in Europe my eyes have been opened to what that Church really is, and to its anything but sanctity. But the trouble goes much farther back than this.

“Being naturally religious, my imagination was caught early by the idea of doing something to lift the Church from the lowly position which it occupied in America, so I thought of a university or higher school where its clergy could be educated, and, if possible, refined. Of course in this I was greatly influenced by Bishop Spalding, of Peoria, who represented it to me as one of the greatest works of the day.

“When I was twenty-one I turned over to them one-third of my fortune for that purpose. But for years I have been trying to rid myself of the subtle yet overwhelming influence of a church which pretends not only to the privilege of being ‘the only true church/ but of being alone able to open the gates of heaven to a sorrowful, sinful world. At last my honest Protestant blood has asserted itself, and I now forever repudiate and cast off the ‘yoke of Rome.’ The Marquise, you notice, uses the words “my honest Protestant blood,”—the lady refers in these words to the fact that some of her ancestors were Protestants.

The Baroness von Zedtwitz left the Church in 1901. The following are copies of letters which explain themselves:

The Rev. J. J. Crowley. New York, December 13, 1905.
Dear Sir:
I am instructed by the Baroness von Zedtwitz to acknowledge the receipt of your book entitled “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation,” and to thank you for the same. The Baroness further requests me to say that she will read it with interest and attention, as the facts therein contained coincide only too well with the actual situation of the Church, from which she has severed all connection.

The Catholic priesthood, as a class, is the enemy of the social order, and the spirit which governs it is opposed to patriotism.

Esoteric Catholicism, as known to the initiated few, is the most abominable system of religious domination which has ever been known. Its direct object is the subjugation of the individual to the unmoral interests of the organization. Ethical principles are subservient to the spirit of lust and greed which pervades the whole system. There can be no purging out of the disease, which is at its core. The whole organization is decayed, and despite the brave efforts which you and others before you have made to reform it, the system flourishes and grows. There is not, and can never be, ‘ ‘ Modern Catholicism ; ‘ ‘ and should ever the political necessity arise for purifying all religion, Catholicity would then and there be wiped off the face of the earth.

The Baroness will be pleased to make your acquaintance if you can find it convenient to call to-morrow (Thursday) toward 2 P. M. I am, dear Sir, yours truly,
For the Baroness von Zedtwitz. Lillian King, Secretary.

New York, December 15, 1905.
The Bev. J. J. Crowley.
Dear Sir:
I beg to return you herewith the two books you left for me to read, and at the same time enclose you a cheque to aid you in the work which you have sketched out to me, viz.: A Crusade in the name of righteousness and clean living to cleanse the Catholic Church from the reign of unworthy and immoral prelates. Having this aim in view, I wish you every success, and remain, Very truly yours,
C. Baroness von Zedtwitz.

The very Rev. J. R. Slattery was recently Rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary for Colored Missions, Baltimore, Maryland; he was chosen by Cardinal Satolli to edit his Volume of Sermons and Addresses — “Loyalty to Church and State”—and he has been referred to by Cardinal Gibbons as “well-known throughout the United States for his zeal in the cause of the Negro Missions—the work to which this noble-hearted priest has devoted his life.”

Paris, [France], April 14, 1906.
The Bev. Jeremiah J. Crowley.
My Dear Crowley:
Very many thanks for the five copies—specially the autograph one—you sent me. I have distributed them. * * *

As to your aim,—viz., to reform the Church from within,— I agree with Baroness von Zidtwitz that it is out of all question. The system, root and branch, is built upon the very things you complain of — v. g. in your letter to Pius X. you write that no regard was given to the charges against Muldoon. Not only is that true, but really such men, as Cibbons and Magnien, worked for Muldoon ‘s mitre. Furthermore his name was on the list, as a nominee to the Archbishopric of Chicago. All this, too, after the charges were made. If you turn to the pages of church history, you will find the same story ad nauseam. There is no hope of reforming the Catholic Church. Propria mole cadet [It will fall by its own rottenness].

Of course, for men of Irish blood, like ourselves, the crushing weight of Catholicism is appalling. Little do our race know that the early Irish missionaries were nearly all Arian, and that Ireland only became Roman in the eighth or ninth century. After the Irish defeated the Danes at Contarf to the greater peace of the British Isles and at a moment when England and Ireland were at peace, Pope Adrian IV,—the one English Pope—sold Ireland to England for the Peter-pence from the Irish households. War and ruin followed and we Irish are to-day a stunted race because of it. At the door of the Catholic Church may be laid the death of the Irish language and the decay of the race. It is too long a subject to take up in a letter. But it is one which deserves the study of every man of Irish blood. * * *

Muldoon and the long list of clerical offenders whom you name in your book, give Kome no worry. Had the charges against Muldoon been that he had spoken against the Temporal Power of the Pope, or had laughed at the Jesuits for carrying on Colleges as a means to break in their scholastics and for using in them textbooks written by professors of Universities which they decry as godless, Muldoon would never have worn the mitre. To illustrate this:

Just now in France, a number of books have appeared on the La Rochelle case. Some years ago, a priest of that diocese upon his death-bed provided through the hands of a confidential friend a Canon of the diocese—for the creation of a prebendary. The duties are daily attendance at Mass and Vespers—quiet a sinecure. This official was duly installed. All went well till Le Camus became bishop. Soon, it was learned, foundation and income were all gone. The simple Canon, like my friend Crowley, appealed to Eome which decided in favor of the bishop, as in Muldoon ‘s case. Thereupon the case was brought into the Civil Court of La Rochelle, the Episcopal city. It mulcted promptly the bishop to the tune of 40,000 francs ($8,000.00). Was Bishop Le Camus suspended or sent on retreat? Did Rome reverse its sentence? Not at all. Since his sentence, this bishop has received two flattering letters from Pius X., praising not indeed his embezzlement, but his orthodox exegetics. He is the author of a life of Christ ; was one of the first in the field against Loisy’s “Gospel and Church;” visits Rome many times yearly. We need never be surprised to see him Archbishop and even Cardinal.

I may here also add the history of the Nunciature in Paris. About the time the good priest died in La Rochelle diocese, one of the old French nobility also died and in his will left to the Pope his property on Place de la Concorde, Paris, for a home for the Nuncio to France. The old Royalist was scarcely cold in his tomb, when the family sued to have the will set aside and engaged Waldeck- Rousseau as counsel. The plea was that an old law of France, still on the statutes, forbids the Pope to be an heir within the country. Leo XIII. made a defense and was worsted. To-day that property is the home of the Automobile Club of France. Now this family are Royalists and Ultramontanes of the straightest, yet they used a Gallican law to beat the Pope, who, in turn, in another and subsequent law suit, employed their counsel—Waldeck-Rosseau. Who is he? He was the Prime-Minister, who in co-operation with Combes started in to drive out the Religious Orders from France’s colleges and schools. Such is what you are up against.

I enclose you a cheque to help on the Crusade, fruitless though it be as far as clerical reform goes, but fruitful, let us hope, in opening the eyes of the Irish, at home and abroad, to what Rome and things Roman mean. Yours sincerely,
(Very Rev.) J. R. Slatteby.

PRESS COMMENTS.

The Parochial School lays bare clerical immorality in the United States in a way to rival the story of the Church in Latin countries or in Germany before Luther’s day. — The Independent, New York.

This book sounds a mighty warning to the American people to stand by the public schools without flinching. Every American citizen, from the President down, whatever his creed or party, should read this book, and learn what sort of schools they are for the support of which the priesthood is demanding a part of the public money. Father Crowley’s propaganda is worthy of the support of all lovers of liberty and purity, and should receive it. —The Examiner, Neiv York.

A modern Savonarola! Such a title may without hesitation be applied to the author of this book. The revelations made in this book are astounding and go beyond the worst description of the horrors practiced by the Roman Catholic Church we have ever read. He has erected an impregnable fortress and challenges the entire hierarchy to throw it down. The Baltimore Methodist.

Every American—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jew, or those of no faith—should read this book. — Northwestern Christian Advocate, Chicago.

Every friend of our public schools, every lover of purity, of honesty, ought to read this book. — The Standard, Chicago.

It is a forcible and trenchant volume. — New York Observer.

It seems to us destined to do a great work. — Journal and Messenger, Cincinnati, 0.

It is the most terrific arraignment of the Catholic hierarchy that has ever been produced. — Christian Standard, Cincinnati, 0.

We can cordially commend this book. Read it and hand it to your Roman Catholic neighbor. — California Christian Advocate.

It is a strenuous arraignment of the parochial school. — The Detroit Tribune.

The book is a brave one, and can only be regarded as sincere in its position and purpose. — The Nashville Daily News.

It should be read by both Protestants and sincere, honest Catholics. Every school director in our cities should read it. — The United Brethren Review, Dayton, 0.

We do not know where to find in the English language a more forcible and startling expose of the conditions of certain Catholic parochial schools than this volume affords. — Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, 0.

The entire book is a strong appeal to the laymen of the Catholic Church to free themselves from the bondage imposed by the clergy. — Union Gospel News, Cleveland, 0.

If this book gets into the hands of any considerable number of Roman Catholic laymen it will be enough to create a revolution. —The Lutheran Observer, Lancaster, Pa.

This book is surely destined to move thousands of Catholics and Protestants. — The Canadian Baptist, Toronto, Canada.

This is one of the most forceful and sensible books which has come under our notice in a long time. — St. Louis Christian Advocate.

The denunciation of the abuses of his church and of the conduct and character of many of its clergy, is tremendous. The Christian Guardian, Toronto, Canada.

The plea made by Father Crowley for our public schools has not been surpassed by any American advocate of that institution whose writings have come under our eye. — Pittsburgh Christian Advocate.

His blows are well directed and well timed. We welcome the present volume. It is full of authenticated facts. The wonder is that he is alive. We wish the book a large circulation. — Evangelical Messenger, Cleveland, 0.

We commend Father Crowley ‘s book to the American public. — The King’s Herald, Louisville, Ky.

Will doubtless receive a wide reading. — Boston Globe.

A remarkable book. — The Barn’s Horn, Chicago.

The book from any point of view is a notable one. — The Los Angeles Times.

We believe that Father Crowley is worthy of a hearing. The Churchman, New York.

It is a serious indictment and should call forth an answer clear and unmistakable. This priest should be prosecuted or reinstated and rewarded. The day is past when any church may safely be indifferent to the character of its clergy. — The Congregational and Christian World, Boston.

The book uncovers and exposes a state of affairs in the Roman Catholic Church which will shock the moral sensibilities of the American people and should arouse alike Catholics and Protestants to a sense of the danger that menaces not only the public schools, but every interest of the Nation. The book is a bombshell exploded in the Roman Catholic camp. — World Wide Missions, New York.

It is a forcible and trenchant volume, which can not fail to make a deep impression. — Zion ‘s Herald, Boston.

The information contained in this volume ought to be in possession of the American people His efforts in exposing these abuses in the Roman Church, especially as they relate to our public school system and free government, should receive the sympathy and aid of all good American citizens, regardless of creed or party. — Christian-Evangelist, St. Louis.

It is an up-to-date arraignment of that part of the Catholic Church which is medieval in view and spirit and action, and that too by one who is a Catholic, who loves his church and expects to die within its pale. — The Michigan Christian Advocate.

It should have a tremendous effect in awakening the patriotic citizens of this land to a sense of the dangers to which our institutions are exposed by means of Romanism. — Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati.

This book is an arraignment of the parochial school, and contains an array of startling facts never before made public, about its officers, teachers, curriculum, methods, and aims. — The Advance, Chicago.

This book was written by a Roman Catholic priest, and primarily for Roman Catholics. It is to be feared that too few of those for whom it was written will ever read it. If read, however, by many outside of the Romish Church, it may serve to open the eyes of some who are seemingly blind to the real aim and object of the Romish hierarchy. — United Presbyterian, Pittsburgh.

The Parochial School, by Father Crowley, is a lurid exhibition of facts which seem past belief. Some answer should be made to the indictment. One thing is demonstrated beyond controversy, and that is that American Institutions have in the school under priestly control not a friend, but a foe. Father Crowley’s book aids one to understand the bitterness felt by French republicans against all forms of Clericalism. This startling book by a Catholic priest on the prevailing corruption of the Catholic priesthood, has now passed to its third edition, and is selling widely among both Protestants and the Catholic laity. The fierce anger of the men accused, coupled with their utter failure to defend themselves by either civil or ecclesiastical process against the author, continues to testify to the substantial ground for Father Crowley’s crusade.—The Interior, Chicago.

The series of lectures delivered by Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, attracted immense audiences. Father Crowley, as is well known, is the author of a striking book entitled “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation. ” He is a Roman Catholic priest, but represents the progressive element in that church. His lectures were a defense of the public schools from the charge made by Roman Catholic prelates that they were godless in character, and an exposure of the efforts to discredit them and destroy the faith of the American people in them. His concluding lecture on ‘ ‘ Esoteric Romanism’ ‘ was an expose of the corruptions which have crept into the church. The subjects which Father Crowley discussed are important to every American citizen, and his lectures should be heard by all Americans—Roman Catholics, Protestants, and citizens of no religious affiliations. — Northwestern Christian Advocate, Chicago.

RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY THE MINISTERIAL ASSOCIATION OF AURORA, ILLINOIS, U. S. A.

Whereas, Father Jeremiah J. Crowley, a patriotic American citizen and a priest in good standing canonically in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, believes that God has raised him up to defend the American Public School against the encroachments of Jesuitism and to enlighten the minds of the Roman Catholics of American concerning the abuses that largely prevail among their clergy, which threaten the purity and power of the Church; and

Whereas, In pursuance of this mission, he has visited the city of Aurora and delivered his popular lectures in spite of powerful efforts to deprive him of a place in which to speak; and

Whereas, He has been denied that degree of publicity which properly belongs to a man of his rank and patriotism, and which should be given to a message like his fraught with so great importance to every American community; therefore, be it

Resolved, By the Ministers’ Association of Aurora, Illinois, that:

1. We hereby express our conviction that Father Crowley is called of God to do a work of reform within the domain of his Church analogous to that which is now being done in the realm of commerce and politics.

2. That, after listening to his message and having come to know the man behind the message, we believe with Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman that ” Father Crowley is worthy of the confidence and esteem of all who have the best interests of America at heart, and of all who desire to see the best interests of the kingdom of God advanced.”

3. We believe, in the language of “The Churchman,” of New York, that ‘ ‘ Father Crowley is worthy of a hearing, ‘ ‘ and we call upon both the religious and the patriotic press of America to give to this man and to his message the recognition they deserve; and we call upon the churches of America, irrespective of sect or creed, to open their doors to this modern Savonarola, and we commend to all lovers of the truth the reading of Father Crowley’s timely book, entitled “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation. ”

4. We regret and deplore the un-American spirit which sought to deprive this man of the use of our public halls on equal terms with his fellow-citizens, and we feel humiliated as citizens of Aurora that this un-American spirit should have gone to the extent of repudiating written contracts in order that freedom of speech, the priceless birthright of every American citizen, might be denied to this law-abiding citizen and man of God.

5. Copies of these resolutions be given to the local press for publication and to Father Crowley for his future use.

6. We bid Father Crowley “Godspeed” in his great undertaking, and that we pledge him the moral and patriotic support of this Association. Signed by Committee:
Wm. A. Matthews,
M. A. Travis,
C. F. Kennison,
Wilbur A. Atchison.

PRESS AND PULPIT COMMENTS ON PITTSBURGH LECTURES

The series of lectures delivered by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah J. Crowley, a former Catholic priest, at the Nixon Theater, closed yesterday afternoon with two monster sessions. People began gathering in Sixth Avenue in front of the theater as early as 11 o’clock in the morning, although the doors did not open until 1.30 in the afternoon. Lines were formed from the front and side entrances of the theater, which extended to Grant and Smithfield Streets. By 1 o ‘clock, it was estimated, 10,000 persons were waiting to enter the theater.

It is estimated that 30,000 persons in the aggregate attended the eight lectures delivered by Dr. Crowley in the Nixon Theater. His auditors were not alone from Pittsburgh. They came from Wheeling, Steubenville, Beaver, Butler, Tarentum, and more distant points, a number being from Morgantown, W. Va. — The Pittsburgh Dispatch, July 28, 1913.

The Nixon was crowded to its utmost seating capacity on the occasion of each lecture, and it was estimated that at least 30,000 people heard Father Crowley on what he knows about Romanism and its attitude toward American institutions. — Pittsburgh Christian Advocate.

His (Crowley’s) pictures of Rome’s corruption and assumptions were enough to rouse the most indifferent. When asked if he was a Protestant he said that he was something better—he was a pro-test’-ant. What America needs to-day is more ” protesting Protestants.” — Christian Instructor, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Denver, July 29, 1913.

” Father” Jeremiah J. Crowley, who has been called the “John Huss,” the “John Wycliffe,” the “Savonarola,” and the “Martin Luther” of the present day, delivered a series of lectures in the Nixon Theater in Pittsburgh every night of the previous week.

No brief report can give any adequate conception of the strength of Mr. Crowley’s lecture on ” Rome’s Attitude Toward the Public School.”

It is high time for all who love America and American institutions to arouse themselves from their deadly indifference.— The Christian Union Herald, Pittsburgh, July 31, 1913.

In formally introducing Jeremiah J. Crowley to the audience, the Chairman, Rev. Wilson G. Cole, of Pittsburgh, said in part:

“Men and women, the time has come for a new Reformation, and I have heard the messenger sounding his clarion call, ‘Behold the light!’ and that messenger is Jeremiah J. Crowley.

“When I think of his unrelenting attack on the baseless designs of Romanism, I call him the modem Martin Luther.

“When I think of his heroic willingness to suffer every privation, every persecution—even to bodily injury at the hands of an infuriated, bigoted Romish mob in Oelwein, Iowa—I call him the modem John Huss.

“When I think of the impregnable force of his logical and intellectual attack of a foreign power, I call him the modern John Wycliffe. ‘ ‘ Savonarola, Martin Luther, John Huss, and John Wycliffe will never be dead while Jeremiah J. Crowley lives—the herald of truth—who dared, when alone, to defy the decrees of councils, the anathemas of popes; who stands like a stone wall against any enemy of the public school, giving his life for the perpetuation of the light.

“Therefore, I consider it an honor to be privileged to present to the people of Allegheny County, Jeremiah J. Crowley, the morning star of the new Reformation.”




Is the Rapture a Rescue from Persecution? The History Behind the Rapture Doctrine

Is the Rapture a Rescue from Persecution? The History Behind the Rapture Doctrine

It seems to me the first thing that pops up into a Christian’s mind today when he or she hears the word “rapture,” is a rescue from persecution and tribulation from the Antichrist. I see no such promise in the entire Bible. The scriptures tell me otherwise.

2 Timothy 3:12  Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

Daniel 7:21  I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;

Revelation 13:7  And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

I don’t know any evangelical today who calls himself a futurist who would disagree that Daniel 7:21 and Revelation 13:7 are talking about the Antichrist. This baffles me because nearly all futurists claim the saints will be taken to Heaven just before the rise of the Antichrist!

A view that is very widespread in the church today holds that Jesus will come back to rapture the church out of the world, after which the great tribulation will then occur, and after that, Jesus will return again. There is no scripture in the Bible that says that. An honest Bible student who holds such a view must admit it is something they heard as a little child in Sunday school, and not from the Bible.

Not only that, but many have the mistaken belief it will be a secret rapture!

“There are many Christians who believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ will be in two phases. First, He will come for believers, both living and dead, in the “rapture” (read 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). In this view, the rapture—which is the transformation and catching up of all Christians, dead or alive, to meet Christ in the air—will be secret, for it will be unknown to the world of unbelievers at the time of its happening.”

The above quote is from https://billygraham.org/answer/what-is-the-rapture/ It’s no surprise Billy Graham and his associates would teach that. He got it from the Scofield reference Bible and Scofield got it from John Nelson Darby’s false doctrines known as Dispensationalism. Notice there are no Scriptures given to back up the idea that the rapture will be in secret and unknown to the world of unbelievers.

The history behind the current popular but false Rapture doctrine

The following are quotes from https://www.demonbuster.com/rapture.html.

Three Jesuit Priests reinterpreted Daniel’s 70 weeks of prophecy; the Book of Revelation; and Ezekiel for the purpose of taking the heat of the Protestant Reformation away from the papacy. At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, all the reformers looked at the Pope as the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible! The three Jesuits were:

  1. Francisco Ribera (1537-1591) of Salamanca – futurism/rapturists
  2. Luis de Alcazar (1554-1621) of Seville – praeterism
  3. Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine (1542-1621) – followed Ribera’s school of thought.

The futurists rapture doctrine originated and was submitted by Francisco Ribera in 1585. His Apocalyptic Commentary was on the grand points of Babylon and Anti-Christ which we now call the futurists or rapture doctrine. Ribera’s published work was called “In Sacram Beati Ionnis Apostoli ” Evangelistate Apocoalypsin Commentari (Lugduni 1593). You can still find these writings in the Bodleian Library in Oxford England.

Ribera’s futurist interpretation rocked not only the Protestant church but also the Catholic church, so the Pope ordered it buried in the archives out of sight. Unfortunately, over 200 years later a librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the name of S. R. Maitland (1792-1866) was appointed to be the Keeper of the Manuscripts at Lambeth Palace, in London, England. In his duties, Dr. Maitland came across Francisco Ribera’s futurist/rapture teaching and he had it republished for the sake of interest in early 1826 with follow-ups in 1829 and 1830. This was spurred along with the Oxford Tracts that were published in 1833 to try and de-protestantize the Church of England.

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) (A Leader of the Plymouth Brethren) became a follower of S.R. Maitland’s prophetic endeavors and was persuaded. Darby’s influence in the seminaries of Europe combined with 7 tours of the United States changed the eschatological view of the ministers which had a trickle-down effect into the churches. Darby’s/Ribera’s teachings were embraced radically by Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921). Scofield adopted Darby’s/Ribera’s school of prophetic thought into the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 which was heralded as the “book of books”.

Another contributor to the rapturist’s chaotic prophetic line of thought came through Emmanuel Lacunza (1731-1801), a Jesuit priest from Chile. Lacunza wrote the “Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty” around 1791. It was later published in London in 1827. The book was attributed to a fictitious author named Rabbi Juan Josafat BenEzra. Reverend Edward Irving (1792-1834) contended that it was the work of a converted Jew and proved that even the Jewish scholars embraced a pre-tribulation rapture line of thought. It wasn’t long until he had persuaded others to follow his line of thought which gave birth to the Irvingites (per your reference to Margaret McDonald).

In March 1830, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, 15-year-old Margaret McDonald made claim of her visions. Robert Norton published Margaret’s visions and prophecies in a book entitled, “The Restoration of Apostles and Prophets in the Catholic Apostolic Church” (London, 1861). Although the modern-day view of every believer being taken away in a rapture is different from all of the thoughts that came before it, there is little doubt about its error.

Lacunza asserted that only those believers who partake of the sacrament of the Eucharist would be raptured; while Margaret McDonald said the rapture would only take those who were filled with the Holy Spirit; and Norton claimed that only those who had been sealed with the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands would be raptured. Definitely, confusion ensued. John Darby, an ordained deacon in the Church of England, was acquainted with Edward Irving and had visited Margaret McDonald during the time of her visions. Combined with the knowledge he had gained from S.R. Maitland/Ribera’s teachings and the new push from Irving/McDonald/Lucunza’s teachings, Darby used the rapture theory to bring a clean break from the lethargic Church of England.

Ribera and Lucunza’s teachings find a meeting point in John Nelson Darby. The effects of this purported lie against the truth are still dominant today in Christian churches worldwide .

(End of quotes from https://www.demonbuster.com/rapture.html)

There were no chapter divisions in the original text of the Bible. The first Bible to have chapter divisions was the Wycliffe Bible.

The chapter divisions commonly used today were developed by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury. Langton put the modern chapter divisions into place around A.D. 1227. The Wycliffe English Bible of 1382 was the first Bible to use this chapter pattern. Since the Wycliffe Bible, nearly all Bible translations have followed Langton’s chapter divisions. (Ref: https://www.gotquestions.org/divided-Bible-chapters-verses.html)

With that in mind, let’s ignore the chapter division of 1 Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5 and read it through from 1 Thessalonians 4:14 to 5:3.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

You see, if you read it through like this you can take it as events that all happen on the same day! Those who belong to Jesus Christ will be gathered to Him, and the wicked will be dealt with.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said the wicked will be gathered before the righteous!

Matthew 13:30  Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

This sure indicates to me there is no significant gap of time between the gathering of the saints and the elimination of the wicked.




The Return of Covid

The Return of Covid

Protesters in Guam against vaccination mandates.

This is a transcription of an audio podcast by Christian J. Pinto given on September 5, 2023. I’m excited to transcribe one of his podcasts, and especially this one because I think it’s a very important and timely one. My wife and I love to listen to him just before bed every evening. He’s one of the few people, in our opinion, who sees the big picture of Satan’s onslaught on Earth which is led by the Jesuit Order and the Vatican.


Okay, praise the Lord you guys and welcome. I’m Chris Pinto. This is Noise of Thunder Radio. Today on the show, we are going to talk about a number of items.

We’re going to talk about all of the warnings now that they are planning to bring back the COVID regulations. What will that mean? Will there be forced mask-wearing? Is there a new variant out there? What’s going to happen with it? And how should we understand that as Americans?

We’re going to go over some of those stories. We’re also going to talk about what’s going on in New York.

Now, we warned everybody about Georgetown University. We’ve warned people many times to pay attention to what happens at Georgetown. Georgetown University, in my opinion, is the most politically influential university in the country. And there they built a mosque earlier this year. Built a mosque for the Muslims earlier this year (2023).

And now, months later, we are hearing that the mayor of New York has agreed to allow the Muslims to broadcast their call to prayer. The Islamic call to prayer will now be blasted throughout the streets of New York as we approach the anniversary of 911, the anniversary of the attack on September the 11th. And it’s in this month, the month of September, that the mayor of New York has decided, yes, now it’s time to let the Muslims broadcast their call to prayer. And not a few people are objecting to this, obviously. But we’ll talk about that and what does that mean.

But let’s go over this COVID stuff. There’s a story posted by the New York Post not long ago, in fact, just a day ago. And the headline says,

“Fauci admits to lack of COVID mask evidence, but wants us to wear them anyway.”

So people are warning that these mask mandates are going to return, that they’re going to start forcing people to wear masks again. For example, when you travel, when you go out in public, when you go to different places, they’re going to require it. Supposedly it hasn’t happened yet. But people have been warning that it’s moving in that direction.

Is that what we’re going to see happen here through September and October as we arrive at the end of this year? Remember when COVID first broke out, there were things that were going on in October, November and December. It was then January, and February that they began really announcing that there was this pandemic. So I don’t know if history repeats itself. Maybe what they’re doing is laying the groundwork here in the fall. And then after the first of the year, they’re really going to push the agenda.

But let’s listen to a sound bite here from Dr. Fauci on CNN talking about the whole mask wearing debate. Here’s what he said. Listen.

“Yeah, but there are other studies, Michael, that show at an individual level for an individual. When you’re talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong. But when you talk about as an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there’s no doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage.”

Okay, now I’m going to play just a little tiny montage. This is from a YouTube source called Meet News Network. Meet News Network. And they have a whole series of audio clips with music in the background showing how everybody from Dr. Fauci to Dr. Birx, to the surgeon general, et cetera, said masks are not necessary and they discourage them early on. And that if you’re a healthy person, the mask is not going to do you any good at all. That used to be what they told everyone. Listen.

(There are different voices, and I’m not sure who they all are. Each paragraph is a different person.)

(TV host:) Government officials say face masks are not necessary if you are healthy.

Wearing this as a healthy person will not protect you.

They say by washing your hands, by covering your cough, by staying home if you’re sick. Masks do not work for the general public and prevent them from getting coronavirus.

(Fauci:) People should not be walking around with masks.

Are you sure of it? Because people are listening really closely to that.

(Fauci:) Right now there’s no reason to be walking around with masks.

And so for everyday New Yorkers, we don’t recommend the use of surgical masks.

We don’t generally recommend the wearing of masks in public by otherwise well individuals because it has not been up to now associated with any particular benefit.

And it really does displease me to find people going out with masks. There’s no role for these masks in the community.

All right. So in that clip again, you were hearing everybody from Dr. Birx who was saying that the mask is not going to do you any good if you’re healthy, to the surgeon general admitting to this. The very last person you heard, well you heard Fauci in there as well, then you heard one of the health directors from New York, New York State. And the last person you heard was Dr. Redfield with the CDC, saying that it just really bothers him people going around wearing these masks, and there’s no need for it, etc.

And then later on, Fauci claimed that the reason they said that was because people were buying up the masks and they needed them for the medical community, the doctors and the nurses needed the masks. So they were afraid there was going to be a mask shortage. Then later on they flip-flopped and said, no, now we think everybody needs to wear a mask and so on.

Senator Rand Paul. I want to play one more clip. This is of Senator Rand Paul confronting Dr. Fauci, which he’s done in a number of ways that I think we should all be thankful for, thankful that we’ve got somebody in our government who’s actually standing up and confronting the ridiculousness of these COVID mandates that are constantly changing. But listen to what Senator Rand Paul said to Fauci and you can hear their exchange. Here it is.

Fauci: There’s variants.

Rand Paul: What proof is there that there are significant reinfections with hospitalizations and death from the variants? None in our country. Zero.

Fauci: Well, because we don’t have a prevalent of a variant yet. We’re having one. We’re having deaths becoming more dominant.

Rand Paul: It’s policy based on conjecture.

Fauci: No, it isn’t based on conjecture.

Rand Paul: So you want people to wear a mask for another couple of years! You’ve been vaccinated, and you parade around in two masks for show! You can’t get it again. There’s almost there’s virtually zero percent chance you’re going to get it. And you’re telling people who have had the vaccine who have immunity. You’re defying everything we know about immunity by telling people to wear a mask who’ve been vaccinated. Instead, you should be saying there is no science to say we’re going to have a problem from the large number of people who have been vaccinated. Do you want to get rid of vaccine hesitancy? Then have them quit wearing their mask after they get the vaccine. Do you want people to get the vaccine? Give them a reward instead of telling them that the nanny state’s going to be there for three more years and you got to wear a mask forever. People don’t want to hear it. There’s no science behind it.

Fauci: Well, let me just state for the record that masks are not theater, masks are protective.

Rand Paul: And you have immunity. If you already have immunity, you’re wearing a mask to give comfort to others. You’re not wearing a mask because of these.

Fauci: I totally disagree with you.

Okay. So just so we understand that debate is from according to where it is found on YouTube. It says March 18th, 2021. So about two years ago, a little over two years ago, that was the debate on masks. And we all know what happened. The mask mandates continued. You couldn’t get on an airplane without a mask. I mean, I just gave up flying during that time because I didn’t want to have to go through all of the arguments and everything at the airport. And I didn’t want to go fly and wear a mask and this kind of thing. So I just gave up flying. Then once they dropped the mask mandate at the airports, I remember going there and things seemed like they were back to normal. In fact, if anything, the airports, all of the airports, because I traveled to different places, I think I went through Dallas at one point. I think I may have gone through Atlanta, but the airports were very, very full. Lots and lots of people. Lots of people. Busier than they had been before COVID. And it seemed like people were eager to get back out and travel again. That’s how it seemed to me.

But anyway, so this now begs the question, are they going to after all these exchanges and back and forth? And you have some people saying that masks are beneficial. Other people are saying, no, they do absolutely nothing. They’re not going to prevent anything, et cetera. Where is society, the government?

Dr. Fauci, as we know, is no longer in the office that he had before. He has retired from that office and now is working surprise, surprise over at Georgetown University. I’ve talked about that before. But remember, it was at Georgetown University that Dr. Fauci made the announcement shortly after Donald Trump was elected president back in 2016. It’s from Georgetown that he makes the announcement that there will be a surprise pandemic for the Trump administration. And I’ve played that audio before. We’re not going to go over it again today. But very interesting, that Dr. Fauci is at Georgetown University.

And what’s going to happen with these mask mandates? Some people are saying they’re coming back. Others are saying they won’t. President Trump published a video in which he openly spoke concerning the COVID lock-downs and so on. He said, quote, “We will not comply.” And so he’s basically thrown down the gauntlet at the Biden administration and pretty much all of the governments across the country and said, “No, we’re not going to allow lockdowns to happen again, shutting down the businesses and all these other things.”

People have been predicting that this is what’s going to happen here through September and October. Maybe it’ll spill over into November and December. Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see.

But people are arguing that if there is pushback, the American people will push back, they will stand up and they will say, no, we’re not going to go along with this. We reject it. We refuse it, et cetera. If enough people refuse to cooperate, then the powers of government will back down. Will back down. And I think where this Covid stuff is concerned, especially where the vaccines are concerned, they will back down.

You know, the masks are one thing. They’re really annoying. I admit, very annoying. The whole idea of wearing these masks, but with the vaccine now with all these stories that are openly admitted that you can be subject to sudden death syndrome, you can be subject to myocarditis with the heart condition, you can be subject to the blood clots that can cause death, that there are all sorts of conditions that people have developed. Some that I think they don’t yet fully understand. But there’s no question that a certain percentage of the population has a negative reaction from the COVID vaccines.

As we know, there are several different versions of the Covid vaccine, but nonetheless, there’s plenty of data out there. The death toll has gone up dramatically since they rolled out the vaccines. They’re finding strange substances in people’s blood, strange clotting and everything else that’s going on in the human bloodstreams. Some people are even predicting that in the years ahead, the unvaxxed, the people who have never been vaccinated with this COVID vaccine, that their blood is going to be the most desirable for blood transfusions and things like that, because people who have been vaccinated, their DNA has been permanently altered.

Now, I’m not a scientist, folks. I am simply telling you what is being discussed, and what is being reported by doctors, nurses, medical professionals, and scientists out there who have been talking about this for the past several years. And many of you are already aware of it.

Now, I believe as I did a show when we talked about this before and I compared the COVID vaccines, what they do with a COVID vaccine in terms of making them mandatory and effectively saying that they want to shut down people’s lives if you don’t go along with the COVID vaccine. I think we are right to stand up to and to object to because they essentially want to make it impossible for you to live and work and just live your life in our society unless you accept this highly controversial and in many cases dangerous and even deadly vaccine that has had a harmful impact on many people. And you don’t know whether or not you’re going to be one of those people until after you’ve taken the vaccine. That’s the problem with it. Does the government have a right to force this kind of thing on the general population?

Well, I relate this to the story of the children of Israel and a guy named Nahash the Ammonite in the Old Testament. (1 Samuel 11:1)

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to our commercial break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about Nahash the Ammonite. We’re going to talk about a woman, a very brave, very bold woman who’s been speaking out, Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament. We’ll talk about all that when we come back right after this.

(Commercial break)

Today we’re talking about the possible return of COVID. Will it be COVID 2.0? Well, the next few months will be the answer to that question, I think, at least based on the reports we’re hearing early on. It looks like they may try to bring back the COVID mandates. There are many voices, however, including that of President Donald Trump saying, we will not comply. That’s the response being given by many people. It should be interesting.

All right, so now we return to our primary subject today, which is COVID 2.0, the return. COVID part two.

You know, they always had sequels to Jaws, and Friday the 13th and Halloween, all those horror movies. I guess Covid is kind of an American horror story. Maybe Covid 2.0, Covid part two. Something like that, who knows? But again, right now, a lot of it is speculation. Not entirely. There are things that are beginning to happen. There are some colleges, universities and so on that have begun to reintroduce the requirement of wearing masks and that kind of thing. So it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens through September into October. That’s where this is supposed to gain more and more momentum.

And of course, they’re claiming that there’s a new variant out there. And so these things are going to become more and more important as things press forward. So we’ve got to be in prayer and we’ve got to seek how we ought to respond. Now I wanted to play some audio from Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament. She has been speaking out on this whole issue on the COVID pandemic that some people call a plannedemic. And let’s hear what she had to say.

Somebody had posted this on Twitter, which is now called X. And they said, quote,

You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. It is impossible. Stop complying. Start rebelling. They’re out to get you if you do not resist.”

And then it has a quote,

“COVID madness, the so-called pandemic. It was just a test balloon, a gigantic test balloon.”

And they are apparently quoting this member of the European Parliament, an MEP, Christine Anderson. Let’s hear what she had to say. Here it is.

“Oh, COVID madness, this so-called pandemic. It was just a test balloon. A gigantic test balloon.

Well, for what you ask? Well, to see how far they could go. To see what exactly they would have to do to get free individuals in a free and democratic society, to consent, to be forced into compliance. That’s what they were trying to establish. That’s what they were trying to figure out. And they have figured it out, trust me. They are much smarter now.

The goal ultimately is to transform our free and democratic societies into totalitarian societies. Their goal is to strip each and every one of us of our fundamental rights, of freedom, democracy, the rule of law. They want to get rid of all of this.

This whole COVID thing had never anything to do with public health. It never had anything to do with breaking ???. (I can’t catch it.) It always had to do with breaking people in order to make us a part of a mindless, malleable mass, which they can totally control. And we will be completely dependent upon this globalitarian elite.

So I’m really imploring the people and all the peoples around the world. Stop giving your democratically elected governments the benefit of the doubt. They are not deserving of that. They are not. Stop rationalizing whatever your government is doing. Stop rationalizing and come up with some good intentions. They have no good intentions.

Never, as I said before in the entire history of mankind, there has never been a political elite concerned about the well-being of regular people. And it isn’t any different now. Why should it? Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because I can tell you, you cannot comply your way out of a tyranny. It is impossible. Trying to do so, you will only feed a gigantic alligator in the hopes of being eaten last. But guess what? Your turn will come and then you will be the one swallowed up.

I also have to ask the people, end your silence. Speak up. Stop complying. Start rebelling. They are out to get you if you do not resist.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Well, you know, at this point, nobody can say that there were no warnings. Nobody can say that, well, nobody in leadership was willing to sound an alarm or to warn anybody. We can’t say that. We have had people who have been giving warnings on this whole COVID issue, this whole controversy. We’ve had warnings right from the beginning. We’ve had people who have warned about the vaccine, people who have warned that this is really about power and control. This doesn’t have anything to do with public health or any of that. And I’m not going to go over all the issues. There’s lots of information out there. People have made thousands and thousands of videos and podcasts and all kinds of stuff. By now, if you’re not aware of the warnings, then it’s because you’re not paying attention. You’re just not paying attention to what’s going on.

I believe we have a responsibility as Christians. Jesus says, take heed that no man deceive you. I believe we have a responsibility to resist and avoid deception in as much as we have the ability to do it. None of us is perfect. We all fall short somewhere. But on this issue, there are many, many warnings that are out there.

Well on the other side, those who are very pro-vax and pro-fauci et cetera, people who are just hook line and sinker, given into fauciism, something like Sean Penn, the Hollywood actor, Sean Penn, is now being quoted. He’s posted a video where he’s saying that COVID is a mandatory rehearsal for things to come. And people are asking, you know, well, who signed up for this mandatory rehearsal? Huh? What? Let’s listen to what Sean Penn said. This is pretty short. Here it is.

“We’ll ultimately get us out of this mess with a vaccine. But this is also a kind of, you know, we’re going to have to take the silver linings on this. This is a mandatory rehearsal for things to come and that we are going to have to deal with as a society.”

Okay. Now that quote there, we know that Hollywood is part of the globalist machine, that there are people in the intelligence community and the CIA and elsewhere who are projecting ideas through Hollywood. This has been going on for decades. He had the great, great American iconic actor, John Wayne, warning years ago, he warned that the communists were trying to infiltrate Hollywood. There’s even an interview with John Wayne. I’ve played audio from it before. I’m not going to play it again, but you can find it online where John Wayne is warning about the commies coming into Hollywood. And the Duke, to his credit, was one of those great Americans who opposed them and said, “No, we’re not going to cooperate with these guys.” And, but of course, eventually because they’re very persistent and they’re relentless. Eventually, they got in.

So that clip sounds more like what people were saying early on with COVID that coronavirus is the crown jewel of the New World Order, that they are going to use this whole concept of this coronavirus and pandemics and this kind of thing to establish the entire totalitarian system of globalism, world communism that they have been working on for many, many years, literally more than a hundred years now, according to official records. When I say official records, I mean the US Congress and the Reese Committee that documented the activities of these Marxist groups with Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and others that joined them many years afterward, like George Soros and Bill and Melinda Gates, their foundation, the Clinton Foundation, et cetera, they’re all moving things in the same direction.

But let me play another clip from Sean Penn because this is where you have kind of Mark of the Beast-type dialogue going on, and it’s why people in the Christian community have associated the COVID vaccine with the Mark of the Beast from the book of Revelation because the powers at work want to make being vaccinated or not being vaccinated a matter of whether you can operate in society. That if they could get what they want, no man might be able to buy or sell except he who bears the mark of vaccination or so it seems.

Now up to now, I have not believed that the vaccine is “the Mark of the Beast.” I don’t necessarily think it is, but the arguments that are being made, are certainly moving things in that direction.

Let’s hear what Sean Penn had to say. And this is another interview that he was in where he’s being asked about the unvaccinated. Listen.

Interviewer: What comes to your mind when you hear a lot of the anti-vaccine rhetoric?

Sean Penn: “It’s a cowardice of conviction. I think that it is an unwillingness to engage in a culture of common sense. At this point, it seems criminal to me, actually. I really feel that if someone chooses not to be vaccinated they should choose to stay home, not go to work, not have a job. As long as we’re all paying (?) for these streets, we’ve got to ride safely on them. And so I’m just hopeful that the mindset will change.”

We know that this really started with leadership. And now I think that there are some examples of leadership that are helpful with it, but we really got to get everyone else, everybody on the same page. I think the CDC should be much more clear.

Okay. So that’s again, Sean Penn. That’s his view. And we know that there’s a number of people out there in Hollywood who have a similar view. And whether or not this is all going to resurface, it’s almost like COVID was exposed as a sham. The vaccines, because people are just dying suddenly. They’re dropping over.

Everybody can get on the Internet. The mainstream media can choose not to show videos of these things happening. But with the Internet now, people all over the world can get online and they can see this stuff. And because virtually everybody has a camera who owns an iPhone or some kind of cell phone, people can record stuff wherever they are. And then they can upload it to the Internet and mainstream media cannot regulate it. They can’t stop it. They’re trying to find ways to stop it now because they realize that the Internet is sort of overwhelming them by exposing their lives.

It reminds me of what happened with the great Reformation and the printing press. Once society reached a point where they could produce more Bibles and more Bible tracks and writings and so on, preaching the gospel and preaching the Word of God and confronting the anti-Christ powers of the Inquisition, et cetera. That’s what helped to transform society.

My hope and my prayer is that the Internet would become like the printing press and that God-fearing people would make full use of it to proclaim God’s truth and also to sound the alarm. I do believe that we have a responsibility to speak out against evil and wickedness and deception when it’s obvious that it’s happening.

Look at the approach that was taken by Grace to You (church) with John MacArthur out there in California. They went along with the shutdowns initially and they said, okay, we’ll close things down. We don’t want to be responsible for harming anybody. But once a few months had passed and it became clear that there was no pandemic, John MacArthur, I think rightly said, “We’re just not going to keep going along with this. This is obviously not really a pandemic.” And so they started having church again and many other churches followed. I’m thankful that we had here in America, somebody like John MacArthur, somebody who had a significant standing and who could be influential across the country. And of course, he was interacting with President Trump as well.

But if you listen to what Sean Penn was saying, when Sean Penn was saying he thought it was a leadership problem, that was obviously, I think he directed at President Trump. And if anything, I think President Trump went along too far with Fauci and these guys. I think he should have resisted them even more. But it was a very, very bad situation.

Who knows what’s going to happen going forward? We need to be in prayer. We need to seek the Lord and just hope and pray that our country doesn’t go into lockdown again. And that’s part of the reason why we’re talking about this, to make people aware of what the issues are. Remember if this deception is from the prince of the power of the air, from the devil, if this is a devilish deception, let’s remember what the scripture says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Let’s hope that can be the case on any potential, COVID lockdown 2.0.

But when they start talking about things like what we heard Sean Penn say, and he’s not alone in this kind of assertion. There are other people who talk this way, saying that it’s quote “criminal, that you’re not getting vaccinated, that, that you should be forced to stay home. You should not be allowed to work, et cetera.” They’re basically saying your life should be canceled unless you go along with this Covid mandate.

And I have talked about this before. I believe we have biblical wisdom on this. This is to me, this is just like what happened when Nahash the Ammonite we read about in 1 Samuel chapter 11. Let’s just read a few verses here.

It says,

1 Samuel 11:1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabeshgilead: and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we will serve thee.

So the men of Jabesh, this is part of Israel, they said to this guy who when he came up against them with his army and he’s threatening them, and they’re going out to him. They’re sending representatives out to say, “Make a covenant with us, make some kind of agreement, and then we’ll serve thee. We’ll be in submission to you.

Verse two:

And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.

So Nahash says to the leaders of Israel, “Okay, yeah, we’ll make a covenant. Here’s my condition. I want to be able to thrust out your right eyes.”

Gouge out their right eyes! How horrific!

“And if you let me do that, then I’ll make a covenant. That’ll be the covenant. I want to lay that for a reproach upon all Israel. And then we can be at peace because that’s what the covenant’s going to be. It’s going to be a covenant of peace, right? So we’ll have peace once we get to gouge out all of your eyes, your right eyes.”

Leave them with one eye, but take the right eye. Those are the conditions.

1 Samuel 11:3  And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days’ respite, that we may send messengers unto all the coasts of Israel: and then, if there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee. 4  Then came the messengers to Gibeah of Saul, and told the tidings in the ears of the people: and all the people lifted up their voices, and wept. 5  And, behold, Saul came after the herd out of the field; and Saul said, What aileth the people that they weep? And they told him the tidings of the men of Jabesh. 6  And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly. 7  And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out with one consent.

So notice what happens. I want to draw attention to verse six because I believe this is the Lord’s response to this kind of tyranny. In verse six it says, “And the spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings and his anger was kindled greatly. The indignation of this, this wicked declaration from an enemy of Israel, trying to subjugate them and humiliate them and force them to do something that’s going to be a painful and horrible reproach upon them as a form of humiliation to gouge out their eyes.

And notice Saul when the spirit of the Lord comes upon him, he doesn’t suddenly develop this loving attitude toward Nahash the Ammonite and say, “Well, let’s call people together and pray for Nahash” and whatever. That’s not what happens. That’s not what happens at all. There is a sense of wrath and indignation against the wicked that God has. And that doesn’t really change in the New Testament, not when you’re talking about this kind of evil. There’s one thing for people to operate in ignorance, but how could anybody be ignorant? How could Nahash be ignorant about what he’s doing? It is part of the common law that God has written on the hearts of all men, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Read Romans chapter 2. It makes that very clear. Nahash should have known better than to make this kind of demand of the children of Israel.

And so Saul, who was the first king of Israel, he’d really just been anointed a short time earlier and anointed and crowned as king. And there were some people who questioned whether or not he would be able to deliver them from their enemies. So that’s why this conviction is there. And Saul hews the oxen in pieces and says, “Let the men know that if they don’t turn out, this is what’s going to happen to their oxen.” And so then the fear of the Lord came upon the people and they joined together and they supported Saul and what happens? They go into battle, they resist this guy, Nahash the Ammonite and by the grace of God, by the power of God, they prevail. They defeat their wicked enemy.

Now I believe that is how the Lord would have his people to respond to tyranny. I think that when people start quoting, turn the other cheek and love your enemies and stuff like that in situations like this, they are quoting the scriptures out of context. It’s just like when somebody quotes, “Judge not lest ye should be judged” because you rebuke or speak against evil and wickedness. “Oh, Jesus said, judge not lest ye should be judged.” No, you’re quoting scripture out of context. There’s a time and a place for that, but speaking out against evil, that’s not the time to go around saying judge not less should be judged.

So it is when you have this kind of wicked tyranny, this kind of abuse of power, that’s not the time to say, “Oh well, love your enemies and Jesus just wants us to pray for them.” That’s not appropriate. You’re not going to find Jesus doing that anywhere in the New Testament.

Now some people think that that’s what’s going on when He prays from the Cross in Luke 23, and He says, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. When Jesus is praying, He’s praying for those who are ignorant, those who don’t realize what they are doing. He’s not praying for people who are presumptuous and arrogant and who know that what they’re doing is unreasonable and wrong and that they would not want other people to do this to them. The Roman soldiers probably who were crucifying Jesus were just following orders in a sense, just like if we’ve got guys that work at a jail somewhere and somebody’s taken to the jail in handcuffs and they say, “All right, you got to check this guy in.” That might be a completely innocent man, but the jailers don’t know that. They’re, they’re not aware. Their job is just to go put the guy in a cell.

Okay. So that’s the sense of it. Father forgive them for they know not what they do, which is entirely consistent with Numbers chapter 15 in the Old Testament where God says the high priest makes an atonement for those who sin in ignorance. For those who sin in ignorance, an atonement is made, they’re forgiven their sin who sin in ignorance. But the Lord says, “Whosoever doeth of presumption, even that soul shall be utterly cut off” because they have despised the word of the Lord and broken his commandment.

So it’s simply not appropriate to say love your enemies, and this kind of thing in every situation, just like it’s not appropriate to say judge, not unless you be judged in every situation. So we have to consider the whole counsel of God. And it’s important to remember when Jesus said, “Love your enemies”, He said, “love your enemies so that you can be as the sons of your father in heaven, like father, like son. Jesus said, the son can do nothing of himself, but only that which he sees the father doeth. He said, if Abraham were your father, then you would do the works of Abraham.

So the only way that you can love your enemies and be like a child of God is to love your enemies in the same way that God loves his enemies. That’s the only way, in imitation of God. Children typically imitate their Father, but the only way that we can know how God loves His enemies is by searching the Holy Scripture and looking at the examples of how God loves His enemies from Genesis to Revelation. And we have to remember that Jesus said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And that Paul tells us all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for instruction, for reproof, for doctrine, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. So it’s only through an examination of the Holy Scriptures that we can comprehend these things.

Of ourselves, we will fall from one extreme to the other. We’ll either be too harsh and severe or too wishy-washy and too willing to accept evil behavior. Like for example, when you have King Ahab dealing with Benhadad and Benhadad, you know, God wanted him to put Benhadad to death. And rather than put Benhadad to death, Ahab says, “Oh, Benhadad, does he live? He is my brother.” We’re brothers now. Here this was an enemy that had tried to invade the country and to take over Ahab’s kingdom and humiliate him and the people of Israel and had also blasphemed God if you read the account. And God wanted Ahab, King Ahab to put Benhadad to death, but he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t execute judgment against him. He wouldn’t use the lawful authority of a magistrate before God to carry out God’s judgment. And so what happened? God sends a prophet who says, Your life shall go for his life, your people for his people because you have let go out of your hand, one whom the Lord had appointed for destruction.

And this is a side of God’s judgments and his expectations for His people that we’ve not examined enough in the 20th and now into the 21st century. Our ancestors examined it, I think, in greater detail. But for whatever reason, in post World War II, America and really throughout the West, everything bends in the direction of excessive toleration, toleration of things that are just evil and wicked. And that form of toleration has now progressed to the point where we have levels of evil and wickedness going on that are being normalized that are just beyond belief. I mean, especially with the schools and what they’re doing with children right now is unbelievable, unbelievable.

You have people who are saying they want abortion rights up to 30 days, a child 30 days out of the womb, up to months out of the womb I’ve heard some people. Say it’s unbelievable! Just wanting to legalize the outright murder of newborn children. And there are people who want to sign this into law. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable. But why? Because I believe God-fearing Christian people in this country since the end of World War II have simply allowed an excessive amount of toleration toward evil, toward outright evil in our country, in our society. And exactly what needs to be done to turn this thing around? Because this is not the first time in history that this has happened. I know some people see and hear these things and they think, “Oh, the world must be getting ready to end any moment.” Not necessarily.

This is what happened in ancient Sodom and Gomorrah. This is what happened when you read the book of Judges and you read about the Benjamites and how the Benjamites had corrupted themselves, where they had gang raped a woman, the Levite’s concubine and raped her to death, killed her. And then all of the other tribes of Israel when they find out about it, they come out against them and they confront them at first and they say, “What is this wickedness that you have done?” But apparently, the Benjamites were so calloused, they’d been so conditioned to do evil that they simply were not willing to accept any accountability for what was obviously an evil, wicked act of murder. And so they chose to fight instead. And of course, it had a catastrophic conclusion to it.

I had somebody send me an email not long ago, one of our listeners was asking me about the story of the Benjamite war and that as a picture of what’s going on in our country. Have we as a country reached the point where licentiousness and excessive toleration for evil has reached the point where, as a nation, we no longer have a population large enough and convicted enough with the righteousness of God to actually do something about the evil that’s happening? I think that my answer to his question would be where our political leaders are concerned, I don’t see any, I’ve said this over and over and over again. How is it that none of our political leaders is willing to go out and actually arrest any of these people who are committing crimes in certain cases, outright crimes for which they should be in jail? And yet we have no magistrates, we have no politicians, we have no one in power who will go out there and place these people under arrest.

I commented on this when Black Lives Matter was burning down the country every day. And I said you’ve got to be kidding. We don’t have anyone, Democrat, Republican, no one who was willing to go out there and hold these people accountable.

And so as Sir Edward Cook, the great man of law who’s responsible for our third and fourth amendment said, quote, “Success in crime always invites to worse deeds. Success in crime always invites to worse deeds.” And that is certainly the case with what is happening in America today. These are getting unfortunately worse and worse.

Now having said that, I’m still not a fatalist. I have to tell you, I’m not a fatalist. I believe that God can raise up men and women to turn this ship around and that there can be a national repentance and we can have a period of reformation or revival, renewal, however, you want to call it, I believe it is possible. I don’t know if it will happen. But I do believe it is possible because, with God, all things are possible. Nothing shall be impossible with God. Praise the Lord.

So I continue with hope for our country and we just have to live one day at a time and do the best we can do to be God’s bright lights upon the earth and to be good citizens of our nation as much as we are able at such a time as this and trust the Lord to guide us. As David says in the scripture, he says, the Lord shall lighten my darkness. And that’s what we’ve got to believe. We’ve got to believe that God will provide us the light that we need when we need it.

(End of transcription.)




Why I left SGI and Turned to Jesus

Why I left SGI and Turned to Jesus

– By Andrew Fisher

Forward by the Webmaster:

I was very surprised when my cyberspace Christian friend, Andrew from the UK, told me he was with Soka Gakkai for nearly 25 years! I asked him to write up his story. I met many Soka Gakkai people from time to time when I lived in Japan and can tell you they are some of the hardest people to share my faith in Christ with. For one thing, they try to proselytize me when I’m trying to convert them!


I have received the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart.

For almost 30 years I was a practising Nichiren Buddhist and a local leader in the UK of the lay Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai International.

As many people are aware, Buddhism is a godless, atheist religion. To understand why I gave up being a practising Nichiren Buddhist and member of SGI we need to examine why I turned to Buddhism in the first place.

Until I was about 21 years old I was a Roman Catholic. Like many other young Catholics I had bit by bit relaxed my religious practice to the point where I never attended church regularly, took communion or made a confession. The pagan, maybe even Satanic, influences of rock music in the late 60s and 70s such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath had slowly entered my consciousness and had begun slowly, but surely, to dull the soft words of the Lord.

As a child I recall speaking happily and directly to the Lord about everything in my life. But now as a young man I found myself one day in the confessional box. As I confessed to some minor sins, the priest absolved me as usual and gave me a small penance of 10 Hail Marys. As I silently recited the prayers, I was struck by the ludicrousness of the situation. Here I was chanting away to the Virgin Mary while in my heart of hearts I no longer believed in a God. The steady chipping away of my soul by Satan had finally worked…at least for a while.

I thought that Nichiren Buddhism held the answers to inner peace for me and began many years of sincere practice. I began to notice as I taught many people about Buddhism that I was saying something that no other Buddhists said (or at least dared to say):

“If this practice fails to work for me personally, then I will immediately give up the practice of Buddhism.”

Nichiren Buddhism essentially believes that everything can be achieved (all earthly desires are considered as enlightenment)by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (devotion to the mystic law of cause and effect). The universe is subservient tho this law and adjusts everything in harmony with the desire of the chanting Buddhist. Little did I know that there were challenges ahead of me that chanting could not overcome. As I slowly realised this was the case I began to acknowledge that chanting had not achieved my “earthy desires”.

So what happened to me? Simple! Like Paul on the road, but less painfully, I woke up one morning and I believed again in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord had filled the spiritual vacuum. I was that little boy once again being talked to in a comforting way with his dear heavenly Father. A natural and painless rebirth had occurred in my heart.

Now I found that there was a power infinitely greater than I had ever known before. Jesus was alive!

Over the next weeks and months, as I walked about in my new body, I determined to ask as many people as possible about their experiences of the Lord in their daily lives.

One of the first people I spoke to was my dentist. He told me that his grandfather had been a Methodist preacher in Argentina. He felt that, although many professed to believing in Jesus, in reality they lived godless lives.

A local young Muslim man who runs a grocery store near my home in Marbella and who has trouble finding the monthly rent and health insurance for his sick mother and brother showed me a YouTube video he was watching the as I walked in to his shop. The video was about the daily life of Jesus.

An experience that affected me profoundly and showed me I was truly walking with Jesus occurred one day as I spoke to my wife. My beloved wife is a practising Nichiren Buddhist. She often talks painfully about losing her dear brother to cancer when he was only 12 years old. For the 34 years of our married life I have often watched the tears roll down her face as she talks about the suffering of her brother as he died and of the pain of her parents as they cared for him in his last days in this world.

For years, answering as a Buddhist, I often spoke about her brother’s karma and reincarnation. Now, as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the first time in all those years, the correct words came into my mouth: “Don’t worry, my love. Your brother and your mother and father are in Heaven now. At rest and at peace.”

Her face lit up and said, “Thank you for that.” For the first time in our years together, I saw a peace finally descend upon her.

Praise the Lord and thank you!




666 – The Anti-Christ to Come?

666 – The Anti-Christ to Come?

I got this article from http://historicism.com/misc/666antichristprint.htm It is so good I just had to make a copy of it on this site to preserve it in case that page ever goes offline. It summarizes all my present beliefs about the Book of Revelation.

I especially like the interpretation of the Two Witnesses in this article. I just read it to my wife, and she agrees it’s logical and reasonable. Part of the interpretation is based on an actual historical event that happened three and a half years before Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis on a Catholic church in Wittenburg, Germany, on Oct. 31st, 1517.
Richard Gunter


666 – The Anti-Christ to come?

– By Richard Gunter

There are two main schools of thought on prophecy when it comes to interpreting the books of Daniel and Revelation. One is called Historicist, and the other is called Futurist. (There is a third, called Praeterist, which is more like a ‘lucky dip’ than a serious method so we will leave it out) Both the Historicist and Futurist points of view are a long way apart, and they cannot possibly be joined together, or merged, yet both claim to be the correct way of interpreting certain prophecies, especially when it comes to the two books mentioned.

The Historicist view was held by all the Protestant Reformers – that is, every major preacher of the gospel on the Protestant side of the Reformation. They all believed that the Papacy was the Antichrist. This view did not mean that the Pope as an individual was the Antichrist, but the succession of Popes, from about 600 AD right through the centuries. Pope after pope after pope – all represented ‘the Antichrist’.

The word “Antichrist” comes from the Greek word “antichristos” which means “in the place of”. The Popes all confirm this name because they all wear a triple crown, representing dominion over Heaven, Earth and Hell, and they take the name “Vicar of Christ:” which means “In the place of Christ”.

The Futurist view holds that the Antichrist is yet to come. No accusing finger is pointed at the Papacy or the church of Rome.

About 1180 AD Peter Waldo identified the Papacy as the Antichrist.

Not long after that, the connection between the Bible’s Antichrist and the Papacy became clear to Joachim of Floris, in 1190 AD, whose followers were called Joachites. They believed that the Pope of their time, by claiming to be in the place of Christ, was the “antichristos”, and so convinced was Joachim of this connection that he actually informed the crusader Richard 1 (Coeur de Lion).

In 1380 John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English and immediately recognised the Papacy as the Antichrist. (See the preface to the King James Bible – the Papacy is called “that man of sin”.)

In 1519 Martin Luther first called the Pope the Antichrist and later wrote to Pope Leo X and with great boldness informed him that he, the Pope, was the Antichrist of that time. Not long after, Luther was notified of his ex-communication.

All the Reformers saw the Pope as the Antichrist. Among these many devout Christians we have John Calvin, John Ridley, Hugh Latimer, John Knox, John Bunyan, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, Charles H. Spurgeon, Dr. F.B.Meyer, Dr. Hudson Taylor, Dr. H.Grattan Guinness, Dr. Drinsdale Young, George Jeffreys and many others. These Reformers and Evangelists named the Papacy as the Antichrist and stood in the Historicist camp.

Please note: this view does not say that all Roman Catholics are bad or wicked. It does not label all Catholics as Antichristian, nor does it say that all Popes are wicked men. All this view does is identify a religious system. Individual Catholics may become Christians, as may any Pope.

The effect of the Reformation was to cause huge numbers of people to swing either away from or into the church of Rome. The great zeal of the newly-fired up Christians caused a great division between the two systems, and many people were forced to take their stand, either for or against the Pope. It was at about this time that Luther, who had been reading the Scriptures for himself, discovered several areas in which he knew his church was failing to obey God. At the start, he did not want to leave the church or cause any trouble. All he wanted was a few small reforms, and he would have remained a devout Catholic, but his objections caused a great stir and forced him back to the Scriptures. Eventually, he realized that God’s Word was more important than Man’s word, which caused him to write down exactly what the Bible said. Gradually the contrast between what his church taught and what the Bible said became clearer and he realised how far from God’s Word his church had come.

Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg church and as a result, half the congregation defected from Rome. Although many of Luther’s beliefs were still strongly Catholic, he had started a move that made more and more people examine the Scriptures carefully, and make more comparisons.

The Presbyterians (from the Greek “presbuteros” meaning “elders” not Popes) sprang up in Holland and Scotland. The Congregational church sprang up in England. The early British church, established, some say, in Glastonbury, also grew rapidly, and soon the Church of England was established.

The church of Rome saw these developments and became quite worried, especially as the Reformation deprived it of the steady flow of money that it was used to. (King Henry VIII had put a stop to this.) So the church of Rome devised many plans in order to win the Protestant ‘heretics’ back into the fold of the ‘Mother church’. The Anglo-Catholic and Tractarian movements were started, and a group of highly trained men called the Jesuits were sent out to launch clandestine plans aimed at winning people back to Rome – by hook or by crook.

One of the plans devised by the Roman church was hatched by a Spanish priest called Fransisco de Ribera. In 1585 he wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation, in which he tried to take the spotlight off the Pope. While the Reformers were pointing to Revelation 13 and declaring the Papacy as the Antichrist, Ribera explained that this “Antichrist” was some person who was to appear somewhere in the future. Ribera’s comments were published as footnotes in the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible – meant for Roman Catholics to read of course.

Here, in summary, is what Ribera said about the Antichrist:

1. The Antichrist is a political leader, and individual, who will appear sometime in the future,
2. He will arise in the last days and make a covenant with the Jewish nation,
3. He will rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, where the Muslim dome of the rock now stands, and restore animal sacrifices for the Jews, ruling there for 3 and a half years,
4. He will emerge as a world ruler, with power and authority over all nations, using miracles to back his claims and subdue the church under him during a great tribulation.

Ribera misquoted Daniel chapter 9 in his attempt to shift the focus away from the Pope. He changed the word “confirm” to “make” in Dan 9:27, saying that the Antichrist would “make” a covenant with the Jews. The reference is actually to the Messiah, who confirmed the New Covenant and then died for his people. It should not surprise us to see how the Roman church twisted Scripture to bolster a lie.

One outstanding horror of Ribera’s work was to shift the focus away from the Papacy, but then he added insult to injury by taking the glory away from Jesus the Messiah.

In 1838 Archbishop William Howley appointed Samuel Roffey Maitland as Librarian and Keeper of the Manuscripts at Lambeth Palace. This was the headquarters of the Archbishop, where the library of the Church of England was kept. Dr. Maitland discovered Ribera’s work and was so impressed by the new slant on the Scriptures that he decided to publish it.

The errors of Ribera were circulated, and soon one of the leaders of the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby read them. He got busy and published the work himself, spreading its message far and wide, so it was not long before thousands of Christians were influenced by the lies of the Spanish priest. Perhaps because it was ‘novel’, and perhaps because the huge struggle of the Reformation was slipping away into distant memory, and perhaps because many Christians did not want to seem uncharitable to what looked like a very powerful Christian church – the Roman one – the writings of Ribera were accepted. The Historicist view was not so relevant, now that the Reformation had taken place, and many Christian leaders were expounding the Futurist teachings, so many lay people accepted what their leaders said without question.

Today the situation is even worse. Most Christians are familiar with Ribera’s teaching, but very few have even heard of the Historicist view.

What Futurists must do to make their view look right:

1. They must not see some things. One of their views holds that, in the latter days “a great falling away” must occur before the Antichrist can appear. They get this idea from 2Thess.2 where Paul warns the Christians that before the “man of sin” can appear there must first be a great “falling away”. This in fact has happened already. The “great falling away” comes from the Greek meaning an apostasy, which occurred soon after the Early Church was established. Right on time, the first popes appeared in the 600’s after the great falling away.

2. They have to believe that, in a world that is continually demanding more “Rights”, and “Freedoms” and which is increasingly breaking up into more and more “Independent” countries and nations, each with its own flag and constitution, some as-yet-unknown man is going to draw them all together under his control. This seems highly unlikely! Can you imagine The President of the USA and the top man in China bowing to some Jewish man?

3. A piece of Daniel 9, (the last part of the prophecy about the 70 weeks), has to be ripped out of place and pasted into some future time – and this must be done in violation of the grammar, the context, and the clear application to the Messiah.

4. Some future period, called “the Great Tribulation” must still happen, and obviously, Jesus may not return until it happens first. This means that Christians can complacently believe that Jesus will not come today because the “Great Tribulation” hasn’t happened yet.

5. The moment this so-called Antichrist character appears, we can start counting the days, and know precisely and exactly when Jesus is returning – despite the fact that he said we would not know the day or the hour.

Have we been through the tribulation yet?

Dr.Grattan Guinness wrote: “It has been calculated that the Popes of Rome have directly or indirectly slain on account of their faith, 50,000,000 martyrs; men and women who refused to be party to the Romish idolatries, who held to the Bible as the Word of God, and loved not their lives unto death, but resisted unto blood, striving against sin”. (The Approaching End of the Age p212)

The Futurists are saying therefore that some future Antichrist will slaughter MORE than 50,000,000 people in 3 and a half years. How does this compare with WW2? About 20,000,000 were killed.

So if there ever was a “Great Tribulation” we have been through it. It was called the Dark Ages, under Papal Rome.

Bible language.

One of the main reasons why the modern church, that is Christians in general, jump into the Futurist camp, is because of their ignorance of Bible language. They do not have a good working knowledge of the language of the prophets, so they tend to take prophetic language literally when they read it in the New Testament. Westerners, including myself, tend to come into the Bible from the N.T. end, so they miss out on the whole O.T. with its symbols and pictures, its visions and manner of speaking. (I have met several long-standing Christians who had not even read the O.T. even after many years) The Bible can be a difficult book to understand. Jesus used many cryptic expressions, and there are many passages that seem totally inexplicable. An interpretation that sounds right, even if it is wrong, is sometimes accepted simply because it seems to make sense.

But when we come to the book of Revelation, we do not need to take it as a separate book and try to work out its symbols as if we had no precedent. Every symbol in the book is already explained by other Scriptures if only we will take the time to refer back to them in the Old Testament.

Even the very first verse of Revelation gives us a clear lead: “The revelation of Jesus Christ . . . and he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John” The root word for “signified” in Greek is “semaino” from which we get the word “signs”. A sign is a pointer to something else, like a signpost.

This shows that the book of Revelation is written in a code, but why would God hide the future under a layer of signs and code words? Because the book came out at the time when the Roman Empire was in its strength, and the book of Revelation predicts the fall and destruction of the Roman Empire. It would have been quite unkind of God to give the church a book that clearly foretold the fall of Rome. The Romans thought their ‘glorious empire’ was going to last forever. The Christians had enough problems without a book which struck at the heart of the emperors.

But Christians (mainly Jews at first) who knew the O.T. symbols would have had no trouble in understanding the prophetic code. This gave them hope, while the Romans knew nothing about it.

How the code works is given in chapter one of Revelation. 1:20 says “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which you see are the seven churches”. These signs and symbols were quite meaningless to the average Roman, who regarded Christians as a peculiar “superstitio”, and who never read the Jewish Old Testament.

Futurists, however, take many of the “signs” in the book of Revelation as literal, just like your average ignorant Roman, and misunderstand the meaning of the prophecies. You can’t normally break a code without the correct decryption system.

Revelation chapter 11.

Now, returning to the theme of the Papacy, it must be understood that all the Reformers accepted the “beast” in Revelation chapter 11:7 as referring to the Papacy. The timescale was 1260 years, as shown by Rev.11:3, taking one prophetic day as one literal year. This is the correct decoding system.

In AD 533 there was a decree by Emperor Justinian, which constituted the bishop of Rome as “Head of all Holy Churches, and of all Holy priests of God”. Up to this time, the Bishops of all the various districts were looked upon as equals, each with their own small flock to guide, but now the Emperor had decided that the Bishop of Rome was the most important Bishop of them all.

This decree in 533 paved the way for the first of the Popes to rise. His name was Boniface III.

Now add 1260 day/years to this date and we come to 1793, when the French Revolution took place, and the power of the Papacy was struck down by a terrible blow. To understand how terrible this blow was we need to look at a little history.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, France had slaughtered or exiled every Protestant, and was known as “the eldest daughter” of the Vatican. But now, during the French Revolution, there was a complete change. Within 5 years some 2,000,000 people died, including 24,000 priests (murdered) and 40,000 church buildings were turned into stables.

The impact of the French Revolution spread to other Catholic-dominated countries, and the impact of those times is still continuing through to today. The Papacy never regained its power, and never will.

2 Thess.2 also describes the fall of the Papacy, in two stages.
1. By the “breath of the Lord’s mouth” and
2. By the brightness of His coming. The symbol of the mouth signifies preaching, which happened during the Reformation. The Roman church was brought down by the use of the mouths of God’s faithful evangelists and teachers. The second stage in the Roman church’s fall is the return of Christ.

Once the decree of Justinian had been passed, the way was set for all the future Popes, and the clock began to tick towards the time when the power of the Popes would be broken. It may be objected that there is still a Pope in the world today, and he seems to have great power, but most people regard him as a harmless old man who goes about the world talking about peace and so on. He no longer has the immense military, political and spiritual power that Popes used to wield up until the French Revolution. Besides, the Bible says that some remnant of the Papacy must remain up until the return of Christ, so the fact that there still is a Pope actually confirms Scripture.

In AD 606 the Roman Emperor Phocas issued a decree conceding to Boniface III the “Headship over all the churches of Christendom”. The decree was written in Latin.

In this single stroke of the pen, the Emperor set Boniface III up as Universal Bishop. As the Rev. J.A.Wylie says, in his work on Evangelical Alliance: “The ecclesiastical supremacy had now a legal existence, but it must become real also. So vast (a) power, extending over (so) many interests, and over such a portion of the globe, no imperial fiat could create; it must grow” (From ‘The Papacy’, page 31)

The Papacy did indeed grow, slowly but surely. By 1073 – 1085, Pope Gregory was able to exert supreme power.

Opposed to this terrible power of the Papacy were many Christians, who became known as Paulicians. They witnessed the gospel and the truth over the whole 1260 years, using the Scriptures as their guide. God supported his “two witnesses” throughout the 1260 years, who were “clothed in sack-cloth” which was a stark contrast to the rich clothing of the priests and cardinals.

Who were the Two Witnesses?

The Futurists (predictably) say they are two literal people, two men of great faith, who emerge from the general population and do great things for a few years. But this view contradicts the code of Revelation. The “two witnesses” must be a sign, or symbol, of something else. One clue is that these two witnesses are working throughout the whole 1260 years -hardly a normal human lifespan – and another clue is the fact that they are clothed in “sack-cloth”.

What does history show? It shows that throughout the whole 1260 years of Papal rule there never was a time when Protestant Christianity ceased. True Christians were always somewhere in the world, protesting the truth, and quoting the Bible, to confirm what they believed. (I also feel that the Church is pictured here, because it seems demeaning to think that the two witnesses simply represent the Old and New Testaments, i.e. just the Bible).

Following through with the view that the Two Witnesses are the faithful Church remnant, we should see consistency in the rest of the chapter to support it. Let us see if this is so.

The Two Witnesses finish their testimony and “the beast” overcomes them and kills them. History shows that the Popes opposed the circulation of the Bible and killed true Christians so thoroughly that, at one point, it looked as if Rome had won.

The bodies of the Two Witnesses are said to lie in the street of “the great city”, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt. Here the Bible gives us another helpful clue, by identifying Sodom and Egypt as “spiritual” names, i.e. coded or symbolic, in the form of prophetic language.

Sodom represents the impurity of the Dark Ages, and Egypt represents the idolatry of the Dark Ages. Both names are distinguished in the Old Testament in certain specific ways. Sodom had the interbreeding of humans in immoral ways, and Egypt had the worship of creation, idols and demons. The church of Rome was distinguished by both characteristics. It not only committed spiritual impurity by ‘interbreeding’ or adopting many pagan rites and practices, but it also included the worship of saints and the doctrines of devils.

The bodies of the Two Witnesses are said to lie in the streets for three and a half days, while the enemies of God rejoice, and the bodies are not permitted to be buried. The enemies of God make merry over this apparent victory.

What does history show? The representatives of the Roman church of Western Europe came together to hear a famous proclamation of triumph. The Council address was given by A. Pucci of Rome on May 5th, 1514. He said, to the delegates gathered before him: “There is an end of resistance to Papal rule and religion. Nobody opposes anymore.” There was great joy over this proclamation . . . but on October 31st, 1517, exactly 3 and a half years later, when the Council of the Church announced that all ‘heretics’ were finally dead, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg church. His thesis was a loud protest against the many unscriptural practices of the Roman church, and it sent shockwaves through Europe.

Rev.11:11 says that the Two Witnesses suddenly stood up on their feet again, causing great fear to come on those who saw it. Martin Luther recognized what had happened from the symbols in Revelation when he wrote: “We are not the first ones who applied the Antichristian kingdom to the Papacy. These many great men have dared to do many years before us, and that frankly and openly under the greatest persecution. The old-divinely ordained witnesses confirm our doctrine, and the bodies of these saints arise as it were among us with the newly vivified Gospel, and (they) awaken much confidence.”

Rev.11:12 says that God calls the Two Witnesses up into heaven so their enemies can see them there, in a cloud. If this was literal, we would have an absurd situation – bodies floating about in the clouds, heaven in our Earth’s atmosphere, resurrected saints raised before the day of resurrection . . .??? But if we stay within the Bible’s consistent use of symbols we have “heaven” representing a “place of elevation” as in importance. And this is exactly what history shows us. The Reformers were no longer the downtrodden, but became a powerful force, and soon became too strong for the enemies of the truth to attack.

What does history show? In Germany, Martin Luther was elevated and protected by Frederick of Germany. In Britain the Reformed Church was protected by Henry VIII. Once the Reformers were protected, the Reformation traveled fast through Holland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, England and Scotland. Since then the Two Witnesses, embodied in the true Church and the Bible, have penetrated to the ends of the Earth.

The Reformation has caused endless trouble for the Papacy. True Christians have no need for rosary beads, confessionals, statues of Mary or the saints, blessings from bishops, or priests – since all believers are priests. All Christians are saints too, and there is no need to have a head over the churches, since Christ is the only rightful Head. (Etc, etc)

So steady has been the undermining of the Roman church that it was reported in the newspaper a few years ago that Pope Paul VI was “appearing deeply depressed, even despairing”. He was quoted as saying that “the church is doomed to die”. (NZ Herald 26/10/74

All the above has been done by way of setting the scene for the subject of this article. Having shown how prophetic language works, and where the relevant verses are in regard to real history, we can now move on to the question of the identity of 666 and the Mark of the Beast.

What is the mystery of 666 and the Mark of the Beast?

Linked with the Antichrist is the mystery number 666. There have been many attempts to identify this person, and the Futurists are no exception. They have come up with many suggestions, naming Henry Kissinger at one stage, and John Lennon at another. But because Futurists always look into the future for the fulfilment, they can never be sure.

Rev.13:18 The number of the beast is the number of a man: 666. This chapter describes the end of the Pagan Roman Empire, and then the rise and fall of the Papal Roman Empire. And we must never forget that the whole book of Revelation is written in the same code, so we cannot expect to read a literal account of history in the way we might read a newspaper. The true meaning of the prophecy is hidden behind the signs and symbols.

One good reason why the code is used is to protect the Church. As we saw before, the Church would come under a lot more persecution if the Romans thought there was a book that foretold the fall of Rome. In the same way, much persecution did actually come when some Christians identified the Papacy as the Antichrist. If they had not said this, they might not have been troubled so much.

The beast of Rev. 13:1 “Having seven heads and ten horns” is a description of pagan Rome. The seven heads represent the seven different systems of government that Rome employed, all represented by the headship symbol, and the ten horns represent the ten different divisions into which Rome subsequently divided.

Way back in Daniel (which is like the first half of Revelation), we saw the coming of the Roman Empire. There was the head of gold (Babylon), then the chest and arms of silver (Medo-Persia and Elam), the belly of brass (Greece), and the legs of iron (East and West Rome) – Dan.2. After Rome came the sub-divisions which we call Europe, symbolized by the iron and clay feet.

Some background information from the history books:

The historian Machiavelli lists TEN small kingdoms that arose out of the broken pagan Roman Empire: The Lombards, Franks, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Heruli, Sueves, Huns and Saxons (Elliot’s Horae, vol.3, page 136)

The Pope of Rome claimed himself to be king of kings over all the kings of these ten kingdoms, and over their successors, for centuries, right up until the Reformation, when, one by one, the nations threw off his temporal power. Britain was the first, in 1534. Italy was the last, in 1870.

Gibbon, another historian, who specialized in ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ wrote of the first Norman king of Sicily: “The nine kings of the Latin world might disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff” Nine plus one is always ten.

Back to Revelation again, and in ch 13:3 we see the end of the pagan Roman Empire, and its almost miraculous re-appearance as the Papal Empire: “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world (the Roman world) wondered after the beast”.

What does history show? In 476 AD pagan Rome fell under the blows of the Goths and the city was captured. The Roman Empire came to an end. It looked as if that “head” was wounded to death. But 60 years later, in 533 AD, the decree by Justinian gave power to the bishop of Rome, and the Papal Empire began to rise. In this way, the “deadly wound” was healed, and the amazing resurgence of Rome began to take place.

Harnack, in his book ‘What is Christianity?’ page 126 says: “The Roman church in this way privily (secretly) pushed itself into the place of the ole Roman-world Empire, of which it is the actual continuation; the empire has not perished but has only undergone a transformation”.

Rev. 13:11 Another head is seen, which has two horns like a lamb, but with a voice like a dragon. There are two symbols combined here – a lamb and a dragon.

What does history show? Having seen the rise and power of the Papacy from the ashes of Pagan Rome, and the Pope instead of the Emperor, we come to the Pope’s hardcore administrative council – the Lateran Council. Since the time of Pope Gregory in 590 AD all the bishops wore a pallium, made of specially blessed wool of lambs. (Incidentally, Jesus warned against wolves in “sheep’s clothing” Mat. 7:15)

The abbots wore two-pointed miters, and they were called Goruti, which means “horned ones”. Not to mention that whereas the symbol of a dragon depicts Satan’s power in chapter 12, and a lamb depicts Christ Himself in chapter 5, the combination of the symbols of lamb and dragon in chapter 13 depicts the puppets of Satan, the Roman Catholic clergy, impersonating Christ as both head of the Church and mediator between God and man.

The Papacy ruled over the same territory as the Pagan Roman Empire, and it also retained the same totalitarian power of dictatorship. Woe betide anyone who disobeyed the Pope! Dissidents were crushed as ruthlessly by the Popes as by any Diocletian or Nero. (For example on the authority of the Pope an Inquisition was established in the Netherlands to suppress the Reformation. As a result some 30,000 Protestants were martyred.)

How exact the Bible was when it described the Papacy as both a false lamb and a dragon.

Rev. 13:13. So universal was the power of the Papacy that, in the code language of Revelation, they seemed to make fire come down from heaven. Fire and heaven are not literal, but symbolic.

The beast system commanded symbolic fire to come down, and claimed for itself the divine prerogative to punish what it decided was disobedience. The “great wonders” include Satanic manifestations, false tears or blood from statues, arms or legs on images moving as if in blessing, visions, strange healings and voices. Often these “wonders” came along in response to various amounts of money donated to the church.

As the Papal power increased, the Papacy used the Lateran Council as its spokesman. Rev. 13:15 describes this Council as “the image of the beast”. As we know, Adam was made in God’s image, so the code is cracked. The beast has produced an image of itself, the Council, which reflected faithfully everything which the Papacy did and said.

The Popes “spoke” their decrees and judgements through the Council of Trent in 1545 and other Councils. These orders were enforced by the armies which marched at the Pope’s bidding.

Following the example of the Roman Emperors, the decrees, edicts and laws were made binding on every citizen within the borders of the Roman church control, on pain of death.

Rev. 13:16-17. Here we are told that the beast causes everyone who does not receive a mark on their hand or forehead, and if they do not have one they will be ineligible to buy or sell. The “mark” represents slavery. It is a symbol of the Papal demand for complete and unreserved obedience from all within its domain.

What does history show? Many Papal decrees, forbidding trade with ‘heretics’ could be quoted. For example, at the Third Lateran Council in 1178 Pope Alexander III issued an order that “no man presume to entertain or cherish them (the Protestants) in his house, or land, or exercise traffic with them.” The same Pope passed a law against the Protestant Waldenses and Albigenses, demanding that “no man should presume to receive or assist them in selling or buying, that, being deprived of humanity, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their way.”

Pope Martin V in his decree sent out after the Council of Constance, commanded that “they permit not the ‘heretics’ to have homes in their districts, or enter into contracts, or carry on commerce, or enjoy the comforts of humanity with Christians.”

The poor Protestants were a minority, unable to own their own homes, or even rent somewhere to live, and unable to sell their goods or earn a living. As a result, these Bible-loving members of the true Church starved and perished because they would not bear the “mark of the beast”.

So far the Historicist view has been consistent with Scripture and history. All that the Bible says in code has matched perfectly with the sequence and events of real history. Revelation is therefore history written in code. The story has unfolded methodically, verse by verse, without sudden glitches of mystery. Futurists, on the other hand, have to make wild jumps from place to place, joining different scriptures together to make their view seem reasonable.

If Historicists are correct in their view, the number of the beast ought to now unfold in a logical and consistent manner. We will see.

Rev. 13:18 “Here is wisdom, Let him that has understanding count the number of the beats: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666”

What does history show? Going on what we already know about the Papacy, we should logically expect the number of the man to further identify the Papacy. This is exactly what we do find.

The eastern Roman Empire (the left leg of the statue in Daniel) used Greek as its main language, but for the western Empire (the right leg) of Rome it was Latin. It was a Latin world with a Latin liturgy for the Catholic church, a Latin Bible in the Vulgate Version. Everything was Latinised in the church, so that almost every inhabitant of western Europe used Latin, and so, in the code of Revelation, they received the “mark” of the beast. (Just by way of an interesting sidelight, it could be noted in passing that Pope Vitallian issued a decreed commanding the exclusive use of Latin in all the services of the Catholic church . . . in the year 666 AD)

The word LATIN in the Latin language is a proper noun, and also the name of the father of the Latin race. Just as we say the Papal Empire, meaning the Empire fathered by the Pope, we can say the Latin Empire, because it was fathered by Latin. Also, when Pope Vitallian issued the decree that Latin was the only language to be used in worship, he earned for himself the name “Latinus”, which means “The Latin man”.

Latin letters have a numerical value, which, when added together, give us a total. The numerical value of LATIN is 666.

When Latin is changed into Greek we get the word LATEINOS, which also has a total value of 666.

(L=30, A=1, T=300, E=5, I=10, N=50, O=70, S=200 added together = 666.)

Some further interesting facts which neither prove or disprove anything, are as follows:

When a Pope is crowned, there is placed on his head a heavy golden crown made of three crowns. One crown represents rulership over heaven, one is for rulership of earth, and the third is for rulership of hell. When this golden crown is placed on the Pope’s head at his coronation, it bears the inscription VICARIUS FILII DEI, which means, in English “Vicarius Son of God”. A person who is “vicarious” stands in the place of another, on their behalf. This is why the Pope claims to be the vicar of Christ – he actually claims to be God the Son on Earth! The word “anti” means alongside of, or in the place of, so the Pope has elevated himself to equality with God the Son.

The words VICARIUS FILII DEI have a numerical value of 666.

(VICARIUS = 112, FILII = 53, DEI = 501)

It is also interesting to see the numerical value of the title ROMITI which means ROMAN MAN. It is 666.

ROMITI translated into Hebrew gives us ROMITH, which also has a numerical value of 666.

(Footnote: Away back in the 2nd century, a man called Irenaeus, who was a follower of the apostle John, wrote “Lateinos has the number 666, and this is a very probable solution”. Unfortunately he was so far ahead of his time his words were forgotten.)

Conclusion.

So here is the evidence. We have a man who is the Antichrist, who takes on titles and thus blasphemes the holy words of God, who sits in God’s Temple (so he assumes) showing himself to be God, who also rules over a Latin kingdom, with the power to kill and destroy all who oppose him, yet he claims to be a representative of Christ. Who else could this be but the Papacy? The Historicist view makes perfect, logical sense, without violating Scripture or the prophetic code.

For further information, see Mr. Gunther’s other article “The Antichrist in the New Testament”.




The Meaning of 666 – the Number of the Beast: The New World Order’s Economic Control of the World

The Meaning of 666 – the Number of the Beast: The New World Order’s Economic Control of the World

This article is about a revelation I had some time in the late 1980s about a possible interpretation of 666.

I think many people who live in a Western culture know that the number 666 is some reference to the Devil. The last book of the New Testament of the Bible, the book of Revelation chapter 13 says it is the number of the Beast. This is the very last record of that number in Holy Scripture.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. – Revelation 13:18

One score = 20. Six hundred threescore and six = 666.

But how many people know the very first mention of the number 666 in the Bible?

Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold, — 1 Kings 10:14

King Solomon ruled the nation of Israel, the most powerful and richest kingdom on earth at the time. He received 666 talents of gold yearly in taxes paid to him from the nations he had conquered. One talent of gold in ancient Israel equaled 30.3 kilograms according to the Wikipedia article about talent as a measurement.

666 talents X 30.3 kilograms = 20179.8 kilograms = 20,179,800 grams.

1 ounce = 28.349 grams

20,179,800 / 28.349 = 711,835 ounces of gold.

666 talents of gold at the current (September 4th, 2023) price of gold at $1945 USD an ounce: (Ref: Gold Price Today )

711,835 X 1945 = $1,384,519,075 USD

I think that’s a pretty hefty tax and a sign of world dominion seeing the earth’s population was only a fraction of what it is today. Are the Rulers of Darkness using the amount of King Solomon’s yearly revenue in taxes as a symbol of economic control of the world? Economic control also means political control. The Bible in Revelation chapter 13 states that nobody will be able to buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast in either their hand or forehead!

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. – Revelation 13:16,17

It’s interesting to note that John Todd said King Solomon was the one who first came up with the plan of economic conquest of the nations of the world one by one for the purpose of eventually forming a one-world government. He forsook the worship of Jehovah and got into witchcraft.

That’s my interpretation of the number 666. It’s merely an interpretation. There may be many ways to interpret it. Here’s yet another one:

First 6 Roman numerals in reverse order = 666

I like that one too because it points to Rome. Decades ago one of my friends told me that the Vatican has more wealth than any other organization or family. The Rothschilds have had only a couple hundred years to accumulate their wealth. The Roman Catholic church has had at least 1500 years.




Babylon the Mother Church – By Henry Grattan Guiness

Babylon the Mother Church – By Henry Grattan Guiness

“Henry Grattan Guinness D. D. (11 August 1835 – 21 June 1910) was an Irish Protestant Christian preacher, evangelist and author. He was the great evangelist of the Evangelical awakening and preached during the Ulster Revival of 1859 which drew thousands to hear him. He was responsible for training and sending hundreds of “faith missionaries” all over the world. “(From Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Grattan_Guinness

The title of this book attributes the author only as “Grattan Guiness” but I’m pretty sure his full name was Henry Grattan Guiness.

Henry Grattan Guinness

Henry Grattan Guinness

“Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness [1835-1910] of London published nine major works on prophecy between 1878 and 1905. Alarmed by the inroads of the futurist school of counterinterpretation stemming from the Jesuits, Guinness mounted a tremendous defense of the historical school of Protestant view, which holds to the progressive fulfillment of prophecy from John’s time to the second advent.” (From http://www.come2jesus.com.au/Anti-Christ.htm)

Babylon The Mother Church

Grattan Guiness

The Doom Of Mystic Babylon

REVELATION 17

3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE
MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

Babylon The Mother

We point to the fact that the foretold destruction of Babylon is immediately to be followed by “the marriage of the Lamb!” This is clearly foretold in Revelation 19. However, the capture of Rome by Alaric was not followed by that event. Alaric captured Rome fifteen centuries ago, while the marriage of the Lamb is still future. This utterly excludes the notion that the destruction of Rome by Alaric is the judgment intended, and that Babylon the Great represents pagan Rome. And as Babylon the Great does not represent Rome pagan, it must represent Rome Papal; there is no other alternative.

Now, in conclusion, read this wonderful prophecy concerning “Babylon the Great” in the clear and all-revealing light of history. I ask those of you who have read the history of the last eighteen centuries, did not Rome Christian become a harlot? Did not Papal Rome ally herself with the kings of the earth? Did it not glorify itself to be as a queen, and call itself the Mistress of the World?

Did it not ride upon the body of the beast, or fourth empire, and govern its actions for centuries? Did not Papal Rome array itself in purple and scarlet, and deck itself with gold and precious stones and pearls? Is not this its attire still? We appeal to facts. Go to the churches and see. Look at the priests; look at the cardinals; look at the popes; look at the purple robes they wear; look at their scarlet robes see the encrusted jewels. Look at the luxurious palaces in which they live; look at the eleven thousand halls and chambers in the Vatican, and the unbounded wealth and glory gathered there; look at the gorgeous spectacles in St. Peter’s at Rome, casting even the magnificence of royalty into the shade. Go and see these things, or read the testimony of those who have seen them. Shamelessly Rome wears the very raiment, the very hues and colors, portrayed on the pages of inspired prophecy. You may know the harlot by her attire as certainly as by the name upon her brow.

But to come to the darkest feature. Has not the Church of Rome drunk most abundantly the precious blood – of saints and martyrs? We appeal to facts. What of the Albigenses in the thirteenth century? What of the Waldenses from the thirteenth century on to the time of Cromwell and the commonwealth? You have not forgotten Milton’s poem about them, those memorable lines. And what of the persecutions of Protestants in France, those dreadful persecutions mercilessly continued for more than three hundred years? What of the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes? What of the fires of Smithfield? What of the terrible inquisition?

Stay, I will take you to the Inquisition. You shall enter its gloomy portals; you shall walk through its dark passages; you shall stand in its infernal torture chamber; you shall hear the cries of some of its victims; you shall listen to their very words. What agonies have been suffered in these somber vaults, unseen by any human eyes save those of fiendish inquisitors! What cries have been uttered in this dismal place that have never reached the open world in which we live? Locked doors shut them in; stone walls stifled them. No sound escaped, not even that of a faint and distant moan. But now and then a victim found release; one and another have come forth from the torture chamber pale and tremblingly, maimed and mutilated, to tell the things they experienced when in the hands of the holy inquisitors. We shall call in some of these as witnesses.

This book is Limborch’s “History of the Inquisition.” It tells the story of its origin seven hundred years ago, and of its establishment and progress in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany, Holland, and other parts of the world; it describes its ministers and methods, its vicars, assistants, notaries, judges, and other officials. It describes the power of the inquisitors and their manner of proceeding. It unveils their dread tribunal; opens their blood-stained records; describes their dungeons, the secret tortures they inflicted, the extreme, merciless, unmitigated tortures, and also the public so-called “acts of faith,” or burning of heretics. What a record! What a world of tyranny and intolerable anguish compressed into that one word – the Inquisition! Tyranny over the conscience! Men in the name of Jesus Christ stretching and straining maiming and mangling their fellow men, to compel them to call light darkness, and darkness light. To call the Gospel of Christ a lie and the lie of Satan truth to confess that wrong is right, and acknowledge right is wrong. To bow down to man and worship him as God; to call the teachings of Christ heresy, and the teachings of antichrist Divine! Tremendous was the power of that dread tribunal. In Spain and Portugal, it completely crushed the Reformation. No secrets could be withheld from the inquisitors; hundreds of persons were often apprehended in one day, and as a consequence of information resulting from their examinations under torture, thousands more were apprehended.

Prisons, convents, and even private houses, were crowded with victims; the cells of the inquisition were filled and emptied again and again; its torture – chamber was a hell. The most excruciating engines were employed to dislocate the limbs of even tender women. Thousands were burned at the stake. The gospel was gagged and crushed, and Christ Himself in the persons of His members subjected to the anguish of a second Golgotha.

Let us look into the chamber of horrors in the Spanish Inquisition. “The place of torture,” says a Spanish historian, quoted by Limborch, Page 217, ” the place of torture in the Spanish Inquisition is generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it in which the inquisitor, inspector, and secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured brought in, the executioner, who is waiting for him, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment down to his feet and tied close to his body. His head and face are all concealed with a long black cowl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through. All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like the very devil.”

The degrees of torture are described by Julius Clarus and other writers quoted by Limborch. They were various, and included the following:

1. The being threatened to be tortured.
2. Being carried to the place of torture.
3. The stripping and binding.
4. The being hoisted up on the rack.
5. What they called “squassation.”

This was the torture of the pulley. Besides this, there was the torture of the fire, or chafing dish full of burning charcoal applied to the soles of the feet. Then there was the torture of the rack and of another instrument called by the Spaniards “escalero.” Then that of the pouring water into a bag of linen stuffed down the throat and that of iron dice forced into the feet by screws; and of canes placed crosswise between the fingers, and so compressed as to produce intolerable pain. Then the torture of cords drawn tightly round various parts of the body, cutting through the flesh; and of the machine in which the sufferer was fixed head downwards; and, lastly, the torture of red hot irons applied to the breasts and sides till they burned to the bone.

Here, on Page 219, is the account of the stripping of victims, men and women, preparatory to torture. The stripping from them of every vestige of clothing by these holy inquisitors, and how they put on them short linen drawers, leaving all the rest of the body naked for the free action of the tormentors. Here, on page 221, is the account by Isaac Orobio of what he suffered when in their hands. It was towards evening, he says when he was brought to the place of torture in the Inquisition. It was a large, underground room, arched, and the walls covered with black hangings. The candlesticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole room enlightened with candles placed in them. At one end of it there was an enclosed place like a closet, where the inquisitor and notary sat at a table; so that the place seemed to him as the very mansion of death, everything appearing so terrible and awful. Then the inquisitor admonished him to confess the truth before his torments began. When he answered that he had told the truth, the inquisitor gravely protested that since he was so obstinate as to suffer the torture, the holy office would be innocent (what exquisite hypocrisy!) if he should even expire in his torments. When he had said this, they put a linen garment over his body and drew it so very close on each side that almost squeezed him to death.

When he was almost dying, they slackened all at once the sides of the garment, and, after he began to breathe again, the sudden alteration put him to the most grievous anguish and pain. When he had overcome this torture, the same admonition was repeated, that he would confess the truth in order to prevent further torment. As he persisted in his denial, they tied his thumbs so very tight with small cords that made their extremities greatly swell and caused the blood to spurt out from under his nails. After this he was placed with his back against a wall and fixed upon a bench; into the wall were fastened iron pulleys, through which there were ropes drawn and tied round his arms and legs in several places. The executioner, drawing these ropes with great violence, fastened his body with them to the wall, his arms and legs, and especially his fingers and toes, being bound so tightly as to put him to the most exquisite pain so that it seemed to him just as though lie was dissolving in flames. After this, a new kind of torture succeeded.

There was an instrument like a small ladder, made of two upright pieces of wood and five cross ones sharpened in front. This the torturer placed over against him, and by a single motion struck it with great violence against both his shins, so that they received upon each of them at once five violent strokes, which put him to such intolerable anguish that he fainted away. After this, he came to himself, and they inflicted on him a further torture. The torturer tied ropes about Orobio’s wrists, and then put these ropes about his own back, which was covered with leather to prevent his hurting himself; then falling backward he drew the ropes with all his might till they cut through Orobio’s flesh, even to the very bones. And this torture was repeated twice, the ropes being tied about his arms at the distance of two fingers’ breadth from the former wound, and drawn with the same violence. On this, the physician and surgeon were sent out of the neighboring apartment to ask whether the torture could be continued without danger of death. As there was a prospect of his living through it the torture was then repeated, after which he was bound up in his own clothes and carried back to his prison. Here, opposite to this recital, is a picture representing, these various tortures. After prolonged imprisonment, Orobio was released and banished from the kingdom of Seville.

Before we let fall the curtain upon this awful subject, let us listen for a moment to some of the words of William Lithgow, a Scotsman, who suffered the tortures of the Inquisition in the time of James I. After telling of the diabolical treatment he received, which was very similar to that I have just described, he says, “Now mine eyes did begin to startle, my mouth to foam and froth, and my teeth to clatter like the dobbling of drum sticks. Oh, strange, inhuman, monster man manglers. And notwithstanding my shivering lips in this fiery passion, my vehement groaning, and blood springing from my arms, my broken sinews, yea, and my depending weight on flesh cutting cords, yet they struck me on the face with cudgels’ to abate and cease the thundering noise of my wrestling voice. At last, being released from these pinnacles of pain, I was hand fast set on the floor with this their ceaseless imploration: ‘Confess, confess, confess in time, or your inevitable torments ensue.’ Where, finding nothing from me but still innocent, ‘Oh! I am innocent. O Jesus, the Lamb of God, have mercy on me, and strengthen me with patience to undergo this barbarous murder!”

Enough! Here let the curtain drop. I should sicken you were I to pursue the subject further it is too horrible, too damnable.

Here in this paper, I have some of the ashes of the martyrs, some of their burned bones. I have bits of rusted iron and melted lead which I took myself with these hands from the Quemadero in Madrid, the place where they burned the martyrs, not far from the Inquisition. It was in the year 1870 that I visited it, just before the great ecumenical council was held at Rome, by which the pope was proclaimed infallible I was in Spain that spring, and visited the newly opened Quernadero. I saw the ashes of the martyrs. I carried away with me some relics from that spot, which are now lying on this table.

Hear me, though in truth I scarcely know how to speak upon this subject. I am almost dumb with horror when I think of it. I have visited the places in Spain, in France, in Italy most deeply stained and dyed with martyr – blood. I have visited the valleys of Piedmont. I have stood in the shadow of the great cathedral of Seville, on the spot where they burned the martyrs or tore them limb from limb. I have stood breast-deep in the ashes of the martyrs of Madrid. I have read the story of Rome’s deeds. I have waded through many volumes of history and of martyrology.

I have visited, either in travel or in thought, scenes too numerous for me to name, where the saints of God have been slaughtered by Papal Rome, that great butcher of bodies and of souls.

I cannot tell you what I have seen, what I have read, what I have thought I cannot tell you what I feel. Oh, it is a bloody tale! I have stood in that valley of Lucerna where dwelt the faithful Waldenses, those ancient Protestants who held to the pure gospel all through the dark ages, that lovely valley with its pine-clad slopes which Rome converted into a slaughterhouse. Oh, horrible massacres of gentle, unoffending noble-minded men! Oh, horrible massacres of tender women and helpless children! Yes; you hated them, you hunted them, you trapped them, you tortured them, you stabbed them, you stuck them on spits, you Impaled them, you hanged them, you roasted them, you flayed them, you cut them in pieces, you violated them, you violated the women, you violated the children, you forced flints into them, and stakes, and stuffed them with gunpowder, and blew them up, and tore them asunder limb from limb, and tossed them over precipices, and dashed them against the rocks; you cut them up alive, you dismembered them; you racked, mutilated, burned, tortured, mangled, massacred holy men, sainted women, mothers, daughters, tender children, harmless babes, hundreds, thousands, thousands upon thousands; you sacrificed them in heaps, in hecatombs turning all Spain, Italy, France, Euro pe, Christian Europe, into a slaughterhouse, a charnel house, an Akeldama. Oh, horrible; too horrible to think of! The sight dims, the heart sickens, and the soul is stunned in the presence of the awful spectacle. O harlot, gilded harlot, with brazen brow and brazen heart! Red are thy garments, red are your hands. Thy name is written in this book. God has written it. The world has read it. Thou art a murderess, O Rome.

Thou art the murderess Babylon – ” Babylon the Great,” drunken, foully drunken; yea, drunken with the sacred blood which thou has shed in streams and torrents, the blood of saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Were there naught else by which to recognize thee, O persecuting Church of Rome, this dreadful mark would identify thee.

The Triumph Of The Saints

Commenting on the prophecy that the little horn should “wear out the saints of the Most High, Albert Barnes, writing on Daniel 7, says “Can anyone doubt that this is true of the papacy? The Inquisition; the persecutions of the Waldenses; the ravages of the Duke of Alva; the fires of Smithfield; the tortures of Goa; indeed, the whole history of the papacy may be appealed to in proof that this is applicable to that power. If anything could have worn out the saints of the Most High – could have cut them off from the earth so that evangelical religion would have become extinct, it would have been the persecutions of the papal power. In the year 1208, a crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III against the Waldenses and Albigenses in which a million men perished. From the beginning of the order of the Jesuits, in the year 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. In the Low Countries, fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, for the crime of heresy, within the space of thirty-eight years from the edict of Charles V, against the Protestants, to the peace of Chateau Cambresis in 1559. Eighteen thousand suffered by the hands of the executioner, in the space of five years and a half, during the administration of the Duke of Alva. Indeed, the slightest acquaintance with the history of the papacy will convince anyone that what is here said of ‘making war with the saints’ (verse 21), and ‘wearing out the saints of the Most High’ (verse 25), is strictly applicable to that power, and will accurately describe its history.” Notes on the Old Testament, comments on Daniel 7.




The History of Persecutions by the Horn of Daniel Chapter 7

The History of Persecutions by the Horn of Daniel Chapter 7

Waldenses burned alive

Daniel 7:21 I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;

Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws.

Revelation 13:7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

Bible scholars all agree the “saints” of Daniel 7:21, Daniel 7:25 and Revelation 13:7 are the born-again believers and receivers of Jesus Christ, true Christians. However, most present-day Bible teachers put the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation in the future. They recognize the “horn” of Daniel 7:21, the “he” of Daniel 7:25 and the “him” of Revelation 13:7 as the Antichrist, but they always put the Antichrist as a person yet to come in the future. Did you know that all of the persecuted Christians up till the 19th century looked at those prophecies of persecution by the Antichrist not in futurist terms, but in the present? It was the Pope who was persecuting them! It was the Pope who was making war with them! As far as they were concerned, the Pope fulfilled the Daniel and Revelation prophecies of the Antichrist perfectly!

The eschatological view of Daniel and Revelation which the early Protestants had is known as Historicism. This is opposed to “Futurism.” According to what I read, it was a Jesuit priest who developed the Futurism view of prophecy! He did it so the Protestants could get their eyes off the Pope being the Antichrist! This of course was well received by the Pope and Roman Catholic church hierarchy.

“The Jesuits were commissioned by the Pope to develop a new interpretation of Scripture that would counteract the Protestant application of the Bible’s prophecies regarding the Antichrist to the Roman Catholic Church. All the reformers’ studies pointed the finger directly at the Roman Catholic Church as the Antichrist power described in Daniel as the “little horn.” Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), a brilliant Jesuit priest and doctor of theology from Spain, answered the Papacy’s call. Like Martin Luther, Francisco Ribera also read by candlelight the prophecies about the Antichrist, the little horn, the man of sin, and the beast of Revelation.

He then developed the doctrine of futurism. He explained that the prophecies apply only to a single sinister man who will arise up at the end of time. Rome quickly adopted this viewpoint as the Church’s official position on the Antichrist.

In 1590 Ribera published a commentary on the Revelation as a counter interpretation to the prevailing view among Protestants which identified the Papacy with the Antichrist. Ribera applied all of Revelation to the end time rather than to the history of the church. Antichrist, he taught, would be a single evil person who would be received by the Jews and who would rebuild Jerusalem.”(Quoted from http://amazingdiscoveries.org/RT_encyclopedia_Futurism_Jesuit_Ribera)

Some examples of persecutions of Christians by the Pope:

The Albigenses

In 1208 the Albigenses (also known as Cathars): “In the sunny south of France, in Provence and Catalonia, lived the Albigenses. They were a civilized and highly educated people. Among these people there sprang up an extensive revival of true religion, and one of its natural effects was a bold testimony against the abominations of apostate Rome. Here is Sismondi’s History of the Albigenses. On page 7 he says of them and of the Vaudois: “All agreed in regarding the Church of Rome as having perverted Christianity, and in maintaining that it was she who was designated in the Apocalypse (book of Revelation) by the name of the whore of Babylon.” Rome could not endure this testimony; she drew her deadly sword and waged war against those who bore it. In the year 1208, the Albigenses were murderously persecuted. Innocent III (what a mockery his name!) employed the Crusaders in this dreadful work. “ (–Romanism and the Reformation 5. INTERPRETATION IN PRE-REFORMATION TIMES by Henry Grattan Guinness)

The Waldensians

“In 1211, more than 80 Waldensians were burned as heretics at Strasbourg” http://metalonmetalblog.blogspot.jp/2011/10/massacres-against-waldensians.html

The Massacre of Mérindol took place in 1545 when Francis I of France ordered the Waldensians of the city of Mérindol to be punished for dissident religious activities. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_M%C3%A9rindol)

In 1655, Catholic forces under the Duke of Savoy carried out a notorious massacre of Waldensians in the Piedmont. (http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/04/24/1655-massacre-of-waldensians/ )

In 1655 the Duke of Savoy commanded the Vaudois (another name for the Waldensians) to attend Mass or remove to the upper valleys, giving them twenty days in which to sell their lands. … On 24 April 1655, at 4 a.m., the signal was given for a general massacre, the horrors of which can be detailed only in small part. The massacre was so brutal it aroused indignation throughout Europe. Oliver Cromwell, then ruler in England, began petitioning on behalf of the Vaudois, writing letters, raising contributions, calling a general fast in England and threatening to send military forces to the rescue. The massacre prompted John Milton’s famous poem on the Waldenses, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”. http://metalonmetalblog.blogspot.jp/2011/10/massacres-against-waldensians.html

The Waldensians were continuously persecuted by the Popes from 1211 to 1655. That’s 444 years of persecution!

1553 – 1558 Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England (aka “bloody Mary”) attempts to bring England back under the yoke of papal tyranny. During her reign, approximately 200 men and women were burned to death at the stake. Her victims include bishops, scholars, and other Protestant leaders.

The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

The Saint Bartholomew’s Day, massacre of, murder of French Protestants, or Huguenots, that began in Paris on Aug. 24, 1572. It was preceded, on Aug. 22, by an attempt, ordered by Catherine de’ Medici, on the life of the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny. The failure of the attempt led to the formulation of the plan for a general massacre. The opportunity was furnished by the presence in Paris of many of the Huguenot nobility for the wedding of Henry of Navarre (later King Henry IV) and Catherine’s daughter, Margaret of Valois. Involved in the scheme were the Duc d’Anjou, later King Henry III; Henri, 3d Duc de Guise (see under Guise); and the reluctant King Charles IX. Coligny was the first victim; his death was followed by the killing of minor leaders and of all Huguenots within reach of the soldiery and the mob. The massacre continued even after a royal order to stop it, and it spread from Paris into other sections of France. Massacres continued into October reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyons, Bourges, Orleans, and Bourdeaux. An estimated 3,000 were killed in Paris, and 70,000 in all of France. News of the massacres was welcomed by the Pope and the King of Spain. (From http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/saint-bartholomew-day-massacre-of.html )

The Thirty Years’ War of 1618 – 1648

This bloody, religious war is planned, instigated, and orchestrated by the Roman Catholic Jesuit order and its agents in an attempt to exterminate all the Protestants in Europe. Many countries in central Europe lose up to half their population.(From http://amazingdiscoveries.org/R-Reformation_Rome_crusade_slaughter )

The Spanish Inquisition from 1478 to 1834

Death tolls are given by historians such as Will Durant, who, in The Reformation (1957), cites Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, as estimating that 31,912 people were executed from 1480 to 1808. He also cites Hernando de Pulgar, a secretary to Queen Isabella, as estimating that 2,000 people were burned before 1490. Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church gave a number of 8,800 people burned in the 18 years of Torquemada. Matthew White, in reviewing these and other figures, gives a median number of deaths at 32,000, with around 9,000 under Torquemada [1]. R. J. Rummel describes similar figures as realistic, though he cites some historians who give figures of up to 135,000 people killed under Torquemada. This number includes 125,000 asserted to have died in prison due to poor conditions, leaving 10,000 sentenced to death.

Now let’s go to the the 20th century.

Catholic extermination camps

Surprisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practicing Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!

In these camps – the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar – orthodox-Christian Serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi “Sicherheitsdient der SS”, watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. (from: http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm )

The Rwanda Genocide

The Catholic Church in Rwanda for more than a century was a witness to the atrocities of genocide. One million Rwandans died in 100 days while many Catholic priests and nuns stood by offering no assistance. Others participated in the slaughter. The majority of those killed were killed in churches or on church grounds. Since Belgium’s acquisition of Rwanda, there have been ties between the Catholic Church and the government of Rwanda. The Catholic Church blamed Belgium for the ethnic class designations and for disturbing the native culture. The Church and priests, however, remained silent and maintained their silence to keep teaching and practicing in Rwanda. While over 60,000 were charged in connection with the genocide, imprisoned for hate crimes, and later released, fewer than twenty, including priests and nuns, were tried and sentenced.

Read more about the Rwanda Genocide.




The Jesuits and the Covid Pandemic

The Jesuits and the Covid Pandemic

This is a transcript from an audio file on Berean Beacon. Because there’s no video, I am making educated guesses on who’s speaking. If you think I assigned the wrong person to a text spoken by someone else, please say so in the comments section and I will correct it.


The teaching of the Bible alone is that sinners are saved by grace alone, through faith or belief alone, and by Christ alone so that all the glory goes to God alone.

The law is given for the knowledge of sin. It is not given for the justification of the believer. And that is the legal use of the law. To try to use the law in a way of justifying oneself is an illegal use of the law.

Protestant Orthodoxy taught that man was a sinner, depraved in all his parts and functions, and therefore desperately in need of divine grace.

You’re listening to Trinity Foundation Radio. I’m your host Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for episode 15. The title of this episode is The Jesuits and the COVID Pandemic. And I’ll be discussing that topic today with two guests, Greg Bentley and Stuart Quint. Both of them are from Berean Beacon. I wanted to have them on because I think they’ve done some fascinating work over the past couple of years, bringing out that important connection between the Jesuits and the COVID Pandemic response. And that side of the COVID Pandemic has been almost completely ignored. But they have brought this out and I think they’ve gotten some really interesting information that you’re going to enjoy today as we play the interview.

So without further ado, let’s get started with our interview.

Steve Matthews: Hello, I’m Steve Matthews with the Trinity Foundation. Thanks for joining me today. Today I also have two guests here with me. We have Greg Bentley and Stuart Quint, both of whom are with Berean Beacon. And welcome to the program.

Greg and Stuart: Thank you.

Steve Matthews: Well, it’s great to have you here. And I think we’ve got a really important topic. And I think a topic that will be very interesting to our listeners here today. We’re going to be dealing with the Jesuits and their involvement with the COVID Pandemic. But before we get into all of that interesting material, I wanted to give both of you an opportunity to introduce yourselves and also if you like, maybe say a few things about your ministry, the Berean Beacon.

Greg Bentley: Okay, well, my name is Greg Bentley. And I’ve been involved with the Berean Beacon for probably close to 25 years. I had met Richard Bennett, who started the ministry out in Portland, Oregon, back in the late 90s. And since then, you know, obviously, Richard has passed on and he kind of passed the baton on to myself and Stuart. We’ve been doing the best we can to maintain his legacy of not only reaching Roman Catholics with the Gospel but also exposing Catholicism for what it truly is and carrying on the work of identifying various aspects of the church and its corruption and its involvement in our present day.

Stuart Quint: I’m Stuart Quint. I was also saved by grace out of Roman Catholicism. Richard Bennett was an amazing man. You can read his story on bereanbeacon.org, saved out of Rome after 22 years as a priest of Rome, one of the most die-hard evangelists I would say I ever met. I mean, he really loved people.

I would just also say, and you know, it’s interesting, Greg shared with me a couple of articles that I didn’t know existed where he was actually talking about Jesuit tactics of all things. And I would also say kind of looping in this conversation, Richard was very adamant up until the day he died that he thought Pope Francis, the Jesuit Pope, is actually the most dangerous pope that we would ever face because of the Jesuit connection being officially on the throne of the Vatican.

Steve Matthews: I think that’s a great point. And of course, Berean Beacon and Richard Bennett, are names and an organization that would certainly be familiar to those who follow the Trinity Foundation. I know Richard Bennett spoke at least one of our conferences I know sometime back, and I know that the Trinity Foundation has also published some of his articles as Trinity review. So that’s, I’d say, his name and of course, Berean Beacon. They’re certainly not strangers to those of us with the Trinity Foundation. So it’s a real honor and a privilege for me to have both of you here with me today and I have a chance to talk to you about this very important topic.

So we’re going to be talking here about the Jesuits in their involvement with the COVID pandemic. But what I thought, maybe before we dive into their involvement with this COVID pandemic, maybe just lay some groundwork and talk a little bit about the Jesuits themselves. So who are the Jesuits and why is it that Christians should be concerned to know something about them?

Stuart Quint: Okay. Why don’t I start with that? I think Greg is going to provide more of the contemporary COVID context to see much more of the expert on that than I.

So the Jesuits, so we know about the Reformation, you know, Mark Luther, John Calvin, and many, many others that recognized they needed to return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as a consequence, steering away from Roman Catholic doctrine.

And so as a consequence in around 1540, you have this crazed, fanatic Spanish soldier, actually a Basque soldier named Ignacio de Loyola, who comes back from the battle wounded. And over time, he develops this constitution, he develops this small following which grows into this thing called the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. And indeed, the name is deceptive because they are as far away from the teaching of Jesus Christ as you can imagine. We’ll get to that in a second.

And basically, through that time, the Pope of Rome recognized their efforts, their dedication, their fanaticism and their ruthlessness. And so they become in effect what historians have called the army of the Counter-Reformation.

So the Reformation was to bring people out of the superstition of Rome and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ while the Jesuits were doing just the opposite. And to this day they still do that.

And one of the things that’s why I could, Steve, is I’m going to be a little bit politically incorrect or maybe not theologically incorrect, but politically incorrect. So just like God has used the mouth of a donkey or used a false prophet like Balaam at times to proclaim his truth. So he can use other people. I’m going to quote from C.S. Lewis, who by the way, just for the record, has a lot of bad theology. But there’s one thing that I think is very appropriate for his conversation on Jesuits. So he wrote a book called The Screwtape Letters, which is a fictional conversation between an older demon and a younger demon. One of the things they talk about is, well, how is it that we can be so effective with scaring people and manipulating them? One of the ways he talks about it is, “Well, if we can convince people we don’t exist, Satan doesn’t exist, and then we can just do our mischief.” And I think that’s very applicable to the Jesuits today. In fact, back to Richard, in the new article that Greg shared with me last night, Richard specifically mentions the willful cover-up of many academics on the history of Jesuits.

Let’s get into some examples. There’s a Canadian historian who quotes from I believe, 1580 to 1931. So about 300 plus years, 81 countries banished the Jesuits from their shores. It was illegal for them to be in these nations. Why? That’s a very radical measure unless indeed they were threats.

And then you go through history, and I mean, we can talk about different examples, but they got involved in things like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. They were involved in the government of China. I was reading some quotes just fairly recently about how some of the leading Jesuits, like Alphonse de LaGuardia, and others, were bragging about how we can rule from France to China, and nobody’s going to know about it. And people might say, “Well, that sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theories.” Go read history. Go read books. I mean, I’ve got a book, for instance, from the Secretary of the Navy that Richard had gotten, written back in the 1800s. And he talked about how this is a real threat in the United States, let alone in Europe, let alone elsewhere. So not only was it in England, you have a holiday called Guy Fawkes Day when the Jesuits attempted to blow up the English Parliament back in the 1600s. They didn’t come back until the 19th century.

So these are small examples, but it’s a very serious group. They’re still around. And the biggest example today is Pope Francis.

And let me just give you three criteria. So when we talk, well, what do you mean by Jesuits? Because you get people who are, let’s just say in the alternative conspiracy theory stuff, and they can get really lost. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about history. We’re talking about what’s actually going on today. So three criteria.

One is they’re Jesuit. And Pope Francis, he’s very open. He’s a Jesuit.

The second is, they study at Jesuit institutions or educational institutions. There are many of them, including in the United States, but also in Europe and Canada. And we say that Pope Francis, yes, he studied at Jesuit institutions.

The third, and I think this is very critical, is to look at their behavior. Look at what they do. Look at what they say and compare it with official Jesuit teaching, such as a spiritual discipline of loyalists, such as Lugory, Bellamine, and some of these other teachers that are Jesuit teachers that are officially recognized by Rome. And you’ll see that they’re around. I’ll give you just two quick examples and I’ll start talking.

So today we have the Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi. Mario Draghi was the former head of the European Central Bank before he became Prime Minister of Italy. Mario Draghi studied at a Jesuit college. He doesn’t say that he’s a Jesuit, but if you read history and you read the official Jesuit documents, they talk about, well, you don’t need to tell someone if you’re a Jesuit, let alone a Catholic, if it’s advantageous to you. But let’s just say that equivocation, AKA, lying, is a major part of the Jesuit order. And that is how they’ve been able to infiltrate.

So Mario Draghi has just said recently, “If you’re over 50 and you’re not vaccinated, you’re no longer a part of society. You don’t deserve to be in society. You can’t work, you can’t eat.”

That’s ruthless. And that’s a very Jesuit perspective or attitude if you will. It’s an aura of superiority, of dominance of power. And if you don’t obey, you’re nobody. So that’s one example.

The second example is our neighbor to the north, Justin Trudeau. He went to a Jesuit school. He’s been involved, and he’s had actually several scandals, but the most recent one is one with a charity called WE.

So this is a very good case study and it’ll loop into Greg’s stuff. So Justin Trudeau, first of all, went to a Jesuit high school in the province of Quebec, by the way, as did his father. Now one of the things, and this is another thing about the Jesuits is they say, “Oh, well, we’re not so religious. We just have a historical background of being founded by Jesuits, but we’re actually a secular school.”

Well, that’s very interesting because we see in the case of Justin Trudeau how it’s so easy for him to use things like, again, equivocation about, you know, you look at what he said even a few years ago compared to where he is now that he’s turned out to be a big type. You look at the scandal with the WE charity, $900 million. The family that founded this charity has strong ties to the Jesuits. Okay, this isn’t a theory. These are facts. It’s documented.

And then depending, and there are some different schools about it, well, who was really Justin Trudeau’s father? Pome say, oh, Pierre Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau also went to that same prestigious Jesuit school. But some would say, and I don’t know what the answer is, but some would say that his true father might have been Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro. We have a translator whose father knew Fidel Castro in Cuba. He would be actually a very strong Jesuit. So whatever way you look, you see Justin Trudeau has these same tight connections. And when you look at his behavior and what he’s doing and the lust for power and the arrogance, the domination, and, “If you don’t submit, I will crush you.”

Look at these poor truckers, for example, and the people who supported them. Their bank accounts were canceled. That is very much of a Jesuit example.

Steve Matthews: Well, thank you, Stuart, thanks so much for sharing it. It’s some fascinating history and you can see how that comes right on up to the present, just from the headlines here just in the last few weeks. So yeah, thank you for laying that groundwork.

Now what I wanted to do here next is talk a little bit about some articles that have been published by the Berean Beacon. These are items that both you and Greg have written. The Berean Beacon published three articles specifically on prominent scientists associated with the US pandemic response. In all three of these men, we’re talking here about Anthony Fauci, about Francis Collins, and about Robert Redfield. They all have Jesuit ties. So I wouldn’t maybe have you just speak about these gentlemen, speak about these ties, how you may think they’re Jesuit ties, maybe perhaps have influenced some of the policies and things that they have pushed.

Greg Bentley: My research early on in the pandemic, what I was discovering actually started with a lot of photographs of Bill Gates that were floating around, and he was flanked by two men. One was Anthony Fauci, the other was Francis Collins. And no one would have been really talking about these characters. And then when I looked into it, I found that these are Jesuit-trained practicing Roman Catholics. Francis Collins professes to be evangelical. But you see through his beliefs and his practice that he’s not an evangelical Christian.

One of the things that I want to clarify too, a lot of times the term Jesuit goes out as if it’s a separate organization from the Catholic Church, but it’s actually part of the Catholic Church, the Roman priest, the religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuit order is just one of those and there’s the Carmelites, you know, and there’s Dominicans and so forth. So we have various orders, priestly orders and it’s just the Jesuits had specialized in the propagation of schools and higher learning institutions and that’s how they were going to influence society in their Counter-Reformation agenda.

So these men that are involved at the high levels in the US government, they were trained, especially Dr. Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield who was the former head of the CDC, these guys were all trained in Jesuit universities and they both, their Jesuit background as being key and the factor in their positions, in their studies and their influence and what they do. So they’re really motivated by their religious belief system. That’s why I feel that the evangelical church needs to wake up to see this because the Roman Catholic agenda is much different than what we find as Christians in the Scripture.

So it’s a very dangerous connection when you see these religiously driven individuals with a mantra of “the end justifies the means” being ingrained into their brains in their Jesuit basically starting off in grammar school like Anthony Fauci and working all the way up to George Washington where they’re getting their medical degrees.

Would you have anything more to say on that, Stuart?

Stuart Quint: I just wanted to add that I was thinking of a quote by Ignatius de Loyola who said, “If the Church tells me that black is white and white is black, I will submit to the Church because it’s the Church.” I mean I’m paraphrasing that but I think what you brought as a really important point, think about Fauci with the masks, think about the 60 Minutes interview, “O we don’t need masks!” Then oh one mask, two masks, five masks. I mean that, we can make light of it but when you look at the context of as you said Greg, the Jesuit education and then you look at what they actually teach, it’s really striking that again it’s this absolute obedience and it’s, you know, leave your mind at the door and submit to us, and if you don’t there are consequences.

Greg Bentley: Okay, I just want to also emphasize with Francis Collins, you know, professing to be the evangelical Christian, early before he was appointed as the director of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, overseeing actually Dr. Fauci, he had started an organization called BioLogos which is a scientific organization that he used for religious purposes. He was using it to pretty much dumb down the evangelical church and counter the work of some of the ministries like Answers in Genesis which were exposing the lies of evolution, and he was trying to convince the Church that evolution actually works, its way could be accepted as the evangelical teaching, and eventually that spilled over into his view of human life and the use of aborted fetal tissue.

So I always refer to this guy as an organ harvesting person, they’re actively involved in this, it’s just wicked, it’s right from his lips, he uses fetal tissue and what he’s doing is just beyond the pale when you consider that he’s flouting around as an evangelical getting reformed men involved in his work and trying to convince churches to go along with this process, so that’s I just wanted to emphasize that about Francis Collins.

Steve Matthews Yeah and just going back, in fact, you had co-authored a piece on Francis Collins titled Who Is Dr. Francis Collins and Should You Be Concerned?, and one of the points you made in there you said it’s not the least surprising that the Pope in 2009 appointed Dr. Francis Collins to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Greg Bentley: Exactly. And that should raise a red flag for any Protestant. However, the evangelical church has completely lost sight of who the Antichrist is. And it’s actually from being misled through a wrong understanding of end times and failure to remember what those who went before us knew and proclaimed that the Vatican, the office of the Pope is the Antichrist. And once you have that in the proper perspective, and then you have a leader, actually a government employee who has the National Institutes of Health having an office in the Vatican you start wondering why are our taxpayer dollars going to fund a guy to have vacations to meet with the Antichrist? This is how a Christian should see this. But they’ve been blinded by their Jesuit Futurism which is the forerunner to modern dispensational theology. So that has been the agenda there. But his work in the Vatican is well known you can go online and you find all kinds of pictures of Francis Collins surrounded by bishops and cardinals and grinning ear to ear as they give each other awards for their experimentations in human embryo research and trans-humanism. They’re not keeping this a secret from the people, it’s just the people are not performing their due diligence, they’re not studying to be approved. They’re just ignoring reality.

Steve Matthews Yeah and that’s a great point that you make there, Greg. I know you and I were talking before we came on to do the program here today about that very topic. And I had told you that there was a time in my life and I wasn’t so much focused on on eschatology. I thought, Well, that’s kind of something you can kind of leave out there but the longer that I’ve been a Christian and the more that I study and the more that I study the scriptures themselves and also look at the events that go on in our world around us I come to realize eschatology is actually pretty important. And we have the road map that’s given to us in the Word of God but yet so many evangelicals have been pulled off to one side or another. You mentioned Jesuit futurism, that whole idea that the Antichrist is coming into the future that’s something that was developed by the Jesuits, as Stuart was talking about the Counter-Reformation.

And even Preterism, the idea that the Antichrist is somebody that’s already come that we’re not going to have to deal with the Antichrist, is also a Jesuit construct. But both of them are opposed to what the Scriptures teach about the identity of the Antichrist.

Greg Bentley: I think that really has set the stage for operation COVID-19. It was almost played out to the exact letter of their plans. They got the Church off guard, got them out there fantasizing movies about being able to get zapped up into the sky before anything bad happens to you, and they fail to recognize or care to get involved in the social issues of our day and fighting against evil. And that’s what the Church was doing for centuries, this protest against the evils of the Roman Catholic religious orders with their whole involvement and the mingling and the politics of nations. People stood up and pushed back against that like Stuart was saying earlier. They (the Jesuits) were banned from 83 nations over the past 400 years. Why was that? Because they didn’t like the way they looked? No, it’s because of what they’ve been doing, what they were doing to society, fomenting wars, and causing strife and division among nations. It’s clearly the work of the Antichrist.

Steve Matthews It’s one of the reasons why I really wanted to have both of you on because it’s wonderful to hear someone has that correct perspective of eschatology. And when you understand that you can analyze this stuff that’s going on with COVID, and then we’re talk in a couple minutes the Great Reset. And you can see the Antichrist influence in these things. And once you have those proper glasses, the biblical glasses of the identity of the Antichrist, you can’t unsee this stuff.

Stuart Quint: I just like to add something if I could. Those are really good points. Two things. One is you actually have the Catholic Archbishop Vigano who was a former ambassador of the Vatican in the United States. A couple of times in interviews he has commented, “The Jesuits know about the popular version of eschatology in the West, and they’re playing with it.” So I think to your point, and also to what Greg, to what you’re saying before about this passivity, this is something that the Vatican is using to its advantage. And especially when you read one of the encyclicals that Pope Francis had written about COVID, and you very clearly see in there this agenda of basically step aside, and by the way it’s not just about COVID, it’s about climate change, it’s about destroying national borders, it’s the new economy, I mean it’s taken right off this, and you’re going to talk about this in a minute, but right out of the Great Reset, I mean, he’s singing off the same song sheet so to speak. So yeah, I think when we look at our brothers and sisters in ages past, I think the other issue is Antinomianism the idea that today many Christians think the Ten Commandments were buried at the Cross and that it doesn’t matter as opposed to God’s law. For the Christian, it is actually something precious. It doesn’t save us, but it does give us direction as to God’s character and how He wants us to act, especially in society, especially because of these big problems that we’re facing today.

Steve Matthews: Those are great points, Stuart. Thanks so much for bringing that up. And maybe now what we can do since we were hinting a little bit here about the Great Reset and all this, let’s let’s talk some about the Great Reset. There’s the article out there. Let me get that here in front of me. Patient endurance needed for the coming Great Reset. So let’s maybe talk a little bit it. So what is the Great Reset? What’s the Jesuit angle on this?

Stuart Quint: Okay I can start, and Greg you could you can chime in as you like. I think that the second question asked is actually very interesting. So the Great Reset, you’ve heard of Davos and the World Economic Forum which is basically this big grouping of CEOs. It’s not just government officials, it’s CEOs. It’s even actors and other so-called notable people in society that have gotten together and decided that they have an agenda. You might hear of the globalists or the world elites. I don’t know if that comprises all of them but it is a face at least of what they think, and more significantly, what they want to impose upon the rest of us “eaters” as some of them actually call the rest of humanity.

That article goes through it, but basically, some of their platforms, what they want to impose, they want to impose a fourth industrial revolution on society so things like more official intelligence, surveillance, look at the social credit system in China.

By the way, we talked about Canada before, a lot of the issues over the truckers and the freedom convoy. People are too narrowly focused on the mandates. it’s not just about the mandates, it’s about putting in something called the digital ID. You saw people whose bank accounts, entire bank accounts, your investments, your insurance, were all canceled at the stroke of a keystroke just because you had a political view or a worldview that conflicted with the government, and because you wanted to protest even though your constitution allows for peaceful protests. That’s the sort of stuff they’re moving.

There’s also what I call a Woke agenda which is destroying the biblical, the battle of Genesis. God says, one man one woman to have kids, have dominion and fill the earth. Well, the Woke agenda is completely diametrically opposite of it. And that’s also in there. And when you look at it at the end of the day for Christians, it is a very big threat, if you will call it that, and I’d call it that, to not just the Christian worldview but the Church of Christ because it’s saying the government is your God. And the government, by the way, includes these corporations. It’s actually more of a fascist corporatist model where they want to monitor everything you do, and if you step out of line, you get cut off. Their famous quote is, “You will owe nothing and you will be happy.” Which completely flies in the face of private property established in the Scriptures.

Were the Jesuits involved? Well, it’s interesting. I’ll give you one small example. I gave you Draghi, I gave you Trudeau, the quote of Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum who says, “Fifty percent of the Canadian cabinet is infiltrated by our people. Trudeau is one of them.” It turns out Klaus Schwab actually got his doctorate from a school in Germany that was founded by Guess Who? The Jesuits. And this is part of the issue. So again people can say, “Well Jesuits, you’re chasing conspiracy theory.” Where did they study? Look at their actions. Look at how they comport themselves.

I won’t go there unless you want me to, but there’s some stuff from France’s Macron who happened to go to a Jesuit school. Do you hear the theme? Greg just said it. Set up these schools and universities, people come in, they think they’re getting this great education, but what else are they getting? And then if they’re implementing it, you know the old phrase, right? If it looks like a, walks like a, talks like a, smells like a, it is.

Steve Matthews: So you said you had some information you could get into a little bit? You picked my curiosity. What were you gonna say?

Stuart Quint: I literally just dug this up like the last day, but Macron in France, and again, do your own research. So first of all it is a fact that he went to his high school in Amiens, France, a Jesuit school, point one.

Point two, is that’s where he met his teacher, he was 15 she was 40, and they got married. She left her husband and three kids for this guy. So right away, like what’s going on? But there are some interesting quotes, where Macron talks about, “I want to rule France like Jupiter.” I think the Greek god Jupiter. He makes these declarations as if he’s laying down his loyalty to Rome which is very significant when you look at French history. Remember the French Revolution, remember even Napoleon, and again, there were a lot of bad things that happened in those times. Part of that reaction was it was a reaction against the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church in France.

So now you come back to today, and interestingly enough, in 2018 Macron won an award for helping the unity of Europe. In 2016 Pope Francis got this award. And it’s interesting how though he’s not out there officially preaching Roman Catholic doctrine and yet, look at his associations. And of course, look at the tyranny. Look at sending police and armored cars against these protesters. It’s the same attitude as Mario Draghi with the, “Oh, you don’t get this vaccine?” which is killing people. And Greg can get into that if he wants. But you look at this, and again, it’s this heavy-handedness. It’s the Jesuit approach.

You look at what they did in places like Paraguay, and even Croatia back during the Second World War where there were 700,000 victims, people who crossed the Vatican, lots of Orthodox Serbs and others. And again, you see that spirit coming out. I mentioned Trudeau, I mentioned Macron, mentioned Draghi. That’s what we’re starting to dig up. It’s a serious issue for Christians today.

Covid vaccines

Steve Matthews: You mentioned the vaccines. I didn’t have a specific talking point about the vaccines but I think it’s probably something that’s least worth mentioning here.

A headline in the New York Times says Pope calls coronavirus vaccinations an ethical obligation. We see this heavy pushing of vaccines from a number of Jesuits, of course, Pope Francis, but Fauci and some of these other guys here in the United States. And I just wanted to find out what are your thoughts about the vaccines. Do you have anything that you want to comment on regarding that?

Stuart Quint:Well, most of our research has not been on the evidence of what’s in the vaccine. We’ve always been relying on the doctors and the scientists who are out actually uncovering that the best they can. And there’s quite a few today. I have a few links on the Berean Beacon website to those that we feel confident that these are men and women of truth. But what I can say personally is that it’s a lie. The whole COVID agenda and the whole vaccine agenda is the promotion of a lie. And I’ve told many individuals it’s either you believe in COVID or you believe in Christ. And those that have gone down the not trusting in the truth, the way in the truth, they’ve fallen prey to believing lies. And these lies tend to stack upon lies. And it goes right back to the father of lies because basically, they’re forcing a vaccine agenda for a vaccine that you have a 99.8% survival rate. There’s no really need to be vaccinated.

There’s no evidence that the vaccine actually prevents the spread of the disease. You’re seeing that now coming out. People with the vaccine are getting the flu or COVID or whatever you want to call it. So you just have to wonder well why? Why are they forcing this substance into people’s bodies? And I think time will tell. There are quite a few experts out there on the stump already. And I had to encourage people to actually do their due diligence and start looking at the work of Dr. Malone, Dr. McCullough, to find out, what Dr. Zelenko says, what their views are on what this is going to be doing to people.

So I did I don’t want to speculate what it’s actually going to do or what’s in it because honestly I personally do not know. But I do know that it is a lie. So whatever they’re doing, even the insert on the vaccine bio boxes is completely blank. So the populace is completely clueless, and informed consent is completely shunned. So I would say, stay away.

Steve Matthews: So maybe to just build on that a little bit, one of the big issues that Christians, not just Christians, everybody, but Christians especially have to face and have had to face are these vaccine mandates. Joe Biden famously got up there and he lectured Americans saying his patience is wearing thin with the unvaccinated people. And he announced that he’s going to issue these vaccine mandates where everybody, if it’s a large employer of 100 people or more, that they have to be vaccinated. Of course, that was rejected by the Supreme Court. However the Supreme Court did uphold the vaccine mandate for the medical field, people in the medical field. So Christians have had to face this issue. It’s like, do I take this jab? Or do I lose my job?

I was curious, how would you maybe advise someone, a Christian who’s facing that situation? What would you say to them?

Greg Bentley: I would say lose your job. The door will open for God’s provision in your life in another venue. And any organization, any job that would require that — and that is a leeway into another area that I’ve been studying, and that’s that’s actually out there for all the world to see. It’s called the Council For Inclusive Capitalism. And it’s actually headed by the papacy. So here you see global corporate leaders front and center standing next to Pope Francis. So when you see how these corporations are motivated and pressured mostly through monetary means most likely, and you see that the Vatican is directly involved in these banking institutions and corporations that are leading people into forcing them to vaccinate or terminate.

So I would encourage the Christian person to look to God, to trust in God alone, and step back and look at what the Christians that came before us have done. People were put to death for rejecting the Eucharist as being God incarnate! So it’s a small price to pay for standing on truth. And God will provide an opportunity for them. He says “I won’t forsake you.” So He’s not going to leave you alone. He says, “My children don’t beg for bread.” So I would encourage the Christians to step away from those jobs, and trust in the Lord and He’ll direct them.

(For the record, my wife Tess and I stood against the vaccine mandates when we lived in Guam during the pandemic. We were blessed to associate with a Facebook group of like-minded people called, "Guam Freedom Coalition." And we fellowshipped with them not just in cyberspace, we took part in actual local street demonstrations protesting against vaccination mandates. Most of them are Christians. In unity there is strength. And we waited till the Philippine government's Covid vaccination passport requirement to enter the country was dropped. A requirement of a vaccine passport to enter the Philippines would have blocked us. We had no intention of compromising our convictions about not taking the vaccine.)

Steve Matthews: Greg, I when you were we’re talking about the Council for Inclusive Capitalism. I remember reading about that. I’ve got an article here. This is from December 2020. This headline says, “The Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican, a new alliance of global business leaders launches today.” And when I read that, I don’t know if it’s the right reaction, but part of me just wanted to laugh out loud because these guys are so obvious! I mean, it’s not even like they try to hide it. They’re not even remotely subtle. It’s just like they’re showing this big giant flag saying, “Yeah, we’re the Antichrist!” It’s unbelievable but yet it seems like very few people actually pick up on this stuff. And who’s behind this? It’s the Vatican! And all these other people of what I say have not such a great reputation.

Greg Bentley: I was just going to say there’s a strong delusion being poured out across the world that they just cannot see this.

Stuart Quint: I just like to add that I think Steve, what you’re also picking up on is, that people come back to End Times, they put (the Book of) Revelation in a box. They’re waiting for the Left Behind Series. They’re waiting for, “Hi, this guy’s name is Nikolai, he’s the Antichrist. Okay good. Game on.” And in the meantime, we can just go to sleep. First of all, that’s not how John opens Revelation. He says, “You read this book, you’ll be blessed.” I am quoting Jesus Christ.

But I think coming back to Greg’s comments, “What do you do if your job is threatened?” I would go a step further, and this relates to what you just said, Steve, about the Council For Inclusive Capitalism, I actually think when we look at Revelation 17, 18, and 19, it talks about getting out of Babylon. And you see Babylon, one chapter talks about the religious side, and while primarily it would appear to be talking about the Vatican, but you could also throw in any false religious system that is not of Christ.

The next chapter talks about the economic side, kings doing business with Babylon, the goods, and the souls that were bought and sold. I believe part of the application, is something I personally am struggling with right now, trying to figure out we need to find ways to start getting ourselves out of this corporate Catholic Jesuit whatever you want to call it Great Reset economy while we still have time to get ready. And what do I mean? It could be simple things like how to grow food. You can feed your family on a quarter of an acre or a tenth of an acre, or even just by growing bean sprouts to some extent in your apartment if that’s what you have to do.

I mean, it sounds really basic, but I think a lot of our problems are we’re so focused on governments, some of us are focused on the Vatican, but remember, the Vatican also has its clause in the corporations. They’re not elected. They’re the ones that are funding all this, the Great Reset, or the not-so-Great Reset, and they’re also enabling. And we can argue are the Jesuits the main driver or the A driver, whatever. But they’re a key player, there’s no doubt about it. And you can see it and the strategies and the behaviors of these different leaders, it stinks of Jesuitism. So when you look at that you say, “Okay, what can I do?” And I think Greg’s point about trusting God first of all. Go look for another job. But I think secondly is maybe we just need to be thinking more about getting out of the corporate sector, and start thinking about how can you work your own business or small business with people that are like-minded.

And here’s the other thing too. We may be forced to do that because if they do bring in like the digital ID and then the vaccine passport or social credit, listen, if you don’t bow down to Ceasar and burn your pinch of incense, you’re gonna be cut off anyways. So this might be an application of getting out of Babylon.

Steve Matthews: That’s a great point. I really appreciate you making that point. Stuart, I agree with you completely. I think as Christians we really do need to be serious about finding ways that we can begin to separate from this system, because it looks like right now, at least here in the United States, maybe we dodged a bit of a bullet with the Supreme Court saying okay you don’t have to get this vaccine, but you don’t know when that might change. These guys aren’t going to give up.

Greg Bentley: I was saying I think they’re waiting for the official approval of the vaccine right now all the vaccines made available in the United States are just under emergency use that cannot be mandated by law it’s just they could be you’ve be tricked into taking it. But once they go to full approval that’s when we have to step back and see where this is going to go and how it’s going to erupt, and what we as the Church will do to stand up against it. I think it’s just a matter of time.

Stuart Quint: If I could chime in and Greg, have you talk about it. One of the things of Dr. Collins and BioLogos is they’ve been part of the official propaganda campaign for evangelicals. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about that.

Greg Bentley: Yeah, they had early on in the plandemic, they had put out a statement they wanted the evangelicals to sign. You can find the links on our website to the BioLogos website. But they wanted people, the pastoral leadership, to sign on to their agenda of social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccine propagation. And what I found really interesting is having been around Richard Bennett early on when his ministry started, he was exposing the evangelicals and Catholics together the work that was started by Father Neuhaus and Chuck Colson basically to unify Roman Catholics together under political guise. Richard did a marvelous job in exposing that, and it really kind of helped keep the remnant of the Church in America steadfast.

But now we’re seeing that taking shape in the form of scientific ecumenism and that’s where Francis Collins fits the bill on whether he was pre-ordained by the Catholic Church to carry out this agenda or not, but he certainly has used religion to bring in science. I call it scientific ecumenism because in the end result, everyone is being drawn toward the Vatican as the head of this unified scientific group.

We have the Vatican scientists out there with their superstitions and lies just as in the Dark Ages. So I kind of see this as Dark Ages 2.0. You have the same flat earth, now you got flat curves, and you’ve got throwing salt over your shoulder and garlic around your neck or wearing masks and standing six feet apart it’s the same superstition. It’s not backed up by science. It’s backed up by lies and superstition.

Steve Matthews: Alright, well let’s move on here a little bit. We already talked about some of the people like Emmanuel Macron or Justin Trudeau. There are some other people though that have Jesuit ties that have also had a good deal to do with the pandemic response. For instance, a couple of governors, Gavin Newsom. He graduated I believe from Santa Clara University. That’s a Jesuit school. And also Andrew Cuomo. He went to Fordham, he was a graduate of Fordham. Donald Trump. A lot of people don’t think about this but Donald Trump did attend Fordham I believe for two years. He did not graduate from there, but he did attend there. And also I was compiling a list of some people and one I left off after I sent it to you is Joe Biden. I mean, Joe Biden did not go to a Jesuit school but he does I believe attend a Jesuit parish in Georgetown, the Georgetown area of Washington DC. And he attended that same parish, called Holy Trinity, when he was a vice president as well. Do you have anything that you’d like to throw out there about any of those gentlemen?

Greg Bentley: Well I would say about Biden was obvious to me as a former Roman Catholic and having our family Bibles, the big Dewey Rheims stacked Bible leather bound with little brass hinges on it, that’s where he swore in his oath, on a Dewey Rheims Bible right after he attended Mass. So you see all the players in this whole theater. They’re all Roman Catholic. Most are Jesuit-trained. I found there was a really good dialogue between John MacArthur and Gavin Newsom that took place back when Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco, and Newsom came out, and he even from his own mouth told him what a good Catholic he is and that he went to a Jesuit school. So they’re not even hiding their backgrounds. It’s just for some reason Christians are not talking about their backgrounds.

And I really think it just comes back to you. Once you see who the Antichrist is, you’re going to talk about it.

Richard wrote a wonderful article called the Antichrist in our midst. And he did a presentation on that, you can find it on our website. And that’s really the issue at stake. Here we have displayed for all the world to see and yet people are not seeing it, and it’s because of their Jesuit influence and Futurism Dispensational theology.

Steve Matthews: Stuart did you have anything you wanted to add about that?

Stuart Quint: You mentioned Newsom and he’s not unique in this. He tells everybody to wear masks and social distancing and limit the number of people at parties, and then you find a picture of him having a holiday meal with 25 people and nobody masked, etc. You’ve heard of this, “It’s for thee not for me.” That looks a lot like this principle called detachment where I’m above you or I don’t need it. It’s part of the equivocation about, “Well, I don’t really need to tell you the truth because I’m better than you. The goal that I have is more important than the truth.” Or, “I don’t need to conform to that law because there’s a higher law.”

This is moral theology actually somewhat related to what Thomas Aquinas had written about the idea of situational ethics but only taking it to real extremes. So again, I just want to point that out as we’re not just, “Oh because you went to a Jesuit school.” That’s a very shallow conclusion. No, look at the behaviors, and look at what actually has been taught in history.

I just want to add one other thing which I think you might find of interest. There’s some controversy about what happened in November 2020, and who should be occupying the White House. I won’t get into that. But there is a historical precedent that directly involves the Jesuits. It was in Russia, 1605 – 1606, a person called Dimitri, or known in Russian history as the false Dimitri. Ivan the Terrible was was Tsar of Russia. He killed one of his sons. The other one didn’t want to have anything to do with the throne after that. And so this runaway monk comes to Poland, and the Jesuits find this guy, and they say, “Guess what?” And so they have the Polish officials to dress him up and say, “We’re gonna pretend that he’s the son of Ivan the Terrible.” They sent him back to Russia. The people are convinced that he is the Tsar. He became Tsar for a year and a half. The Jesuits almost took over Russia at that time. It’s very little known history, but that is a fact!

That shows you the power of the Jesuits I mean and the cunning and the ruthlessness. People don’t know history. They’ve done a brilliant job of removing themselves from history. People think, “Oh, they’re just the nice parish priest on the corner, or there’s a few of them running around in a monastery” or whatever. Think again. Go look at the facts. Do your research. They are real.

Steve Matthews: Yeah I was going back to something, Stuart, that you had written in your article about, “Who are the Jesuits? And should you be concerned today?” And I think you made a very good point in there. You said, when considering the Jesuits, we should avoid extremes. One extreme is to give the Jesuits too much credit and stoke needless irrational panic. However today we see another extreme that is more common. Many ignore or underestimate the impact of the Jesuits in history and today. And I think that’s the approach that both of you have used here. I think this is the correct approach. I mean it’s not like we’re trying to see a Jesuit behind every bush, but we have to acknowledge these guys are out there, and they have a very significant influence on what goes on. And all of us have been affected by it. I mean there’s not a man woman or child in the United States and probably just about anywhere in the world that has not been affected by the Covid pandemic, and maybe even more specifically the response to it.

Stuart Quint: You know, Steve, I was thinking about Ephesians 6:10. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against powers, principalities, the wickedness in high places. It’s a spiritual war. Satan is the ultimate enemy, but if we have Christ with us – first of all we got the victory with God through Christ. Secondly, it’s a lot easier when you’re in a struggle to recognize who the enemy is. It’s a lot easier when you know who he is and what he’s trying to do. And you don’t need to panic, there’s no reason to panic, but at the same time be aware. Because you look at things like media. Why is there so much propaganda? How could people be so outright liars? How can they say, “Well you need to come ask on but I don’t”? What about all the corruption? What about the money? In a sense we shouldn’t be surprised, but I think for the Christian it should give us hope. First of all, we need to act as children of light not of darkness. We need to be honest. We need to see the lies for what they are and stand on the truth. But I think secondly also is try to help other people. I mean, there are so many people it’s really sad when you hear about kids particularly. I mean, I now know so many dropouts who are like 15, 14, 13 because of all these lies. And I think as Christians part of our duty is to love our neighbor. And part of that is looking for people who’ve really been banged up, and there’s a lot. And I think part of it is helping them see, “You’ve been lied to.” But guess what? There is truth, and the truth is found in Christ, and you need to be with Him.

So, we do need to recognize the enemy. He is a ruthless enemy, that is Satan, and he has his minions in the Vatican, Jesuits, whoever. But we also have the opportunity to minister in the love and power of Christ, and actually, what they’ve meant for evil, God has meant for good.

Steve Matthews:Yeah, we’re not to have fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness. The King James says reprove them and the new King James says expose them. And that’s really both of you gentlemen have done a tremendous job of that and continue to do that and I really appreciate your work so much. Do either of you at this point have anything else you’d like to add to our discussion?

Stuart Quint: If I could, there is one thing actually that’s on my mind, on my heart. Richard Bennett was all about sharing the Gospel, and loving people. Sure, he especially loved Catholics, but he loved all kinds of people. And we wanted to continue to uphold that mandate. And part of that includes as you said, reproving darkness or exposing darkness.

I think one of the things that I’ve seen and Greg can speak even more authoritatively I think than I can, but I’ve been involved somewhat in local initiatives to fight back against the COVID tyranny, and again we’re not politicians, that’s not we’re not saying – “oh make politics your full time thing” – that’s not what we’re saying. But there is a point where you at least need to take a stand in Christ on issues that affect us.

One of my concerns is I believe that there’s a big temptation for some, I’ll call it salvation by patriotic activism. So I mentioned this guy, Archbishop Vigano, who actually has said some very good things in support of the truckers against the COVID tyranny, against Pope Francis, and we would absolutely agree on those issues. Another guy I can think of as the attorney Tom Renz who is doing heroic stuff with exposing the vaccine injuries on the DoD data amongst other things. But I would appeal to men like these and others. Salvation does not come by good deeds. It does not come because you took the right position. And it’s not because we’re better people, we’re not. We’re all sinners. Our righteousness is filthy rags. Salvation is only in Christ alone. It is not through Mary. It is not through the sacraments or the saints. There is no purgatory. It’s Christ alone. It’s what He did once and for all in the cross. You need to reckon with that. You need to ask God to open your eyes and go to Him. And it’s not that Christ is saying I don’t want to deal with you because your sins are too ugly. Just the opposite. He went to the cross to save you and me. That’s what he did with all of us. He can do that for you too. Please do not be deceived. Yes, your activism is great but it’s not going to save you. It’s not going to grant you eternal life. You need Christ. Only Christ can do that. Only faith in Him. Only repentance in Him. That’s the only way to eternal life.

Greg Bentley: That’s a great ending with a good Gospel presentation. And one thing I like to add is what the Gospel is not. And I’ve heard this so often since the start of the scam coming from the popular churches these days is that, “Oh, everything is going from bad to worse. You don’t want to miss the Rapture because you’re going to face the wrath of God. So ask Jesus into your heart and you won’t miss the Rapture.” And I find that such a confusing message to anyone that would hear something like that because here they are trusting in their work, and they got to pray some prayer to somehow not miss the Rapture. It’s really set the Church off on the wrong path. I think what really needs to be brought out these days is the true Gospel as Stuart has presented. So we need to have our Gospel straight that it’s by faith alone, and we need to see who the Antichrist is. And these were the two hallmarks of the Reformation. It brought in maybe a couple of hundred years of liberty around the world with many battles in between, but for the most part, liberty prevailed. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And now we’re going in the opposite direction. So we need to have the true Gospel so people truly get saved, and people involved by the Spirit, and that liberty would be restored. That’s my prayer and my hope.




The Cunning Genius Of The Vatican Papal System – Part I

The Cunning Genius Of The Vatican Papal System – Part I

This is yet another transcription of a podcast by ex-Roman Catholic priest Richard Bennett.

Truly the world is thoroughly enamored with Pope Francis. Whether it’s on television, the radio, Internet news sites or YouTube videos, Pope Francis is presented as the likable hero of our day. What most people don’t know is the stage on which Francis performs. Without the papal platform, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from Argentina, would be unknown to most people in the world.

The papal system stands unrivaled as a monolithic, institutional, religious system throughout the world, yet it appears friendly and inviting. The papacy has immense wealth, worldwide dominion, and dictates its faith to millions. As the largest organization on earth, it shows superb skill in its many endeavors. The papal system is an elitist, priestly, bureaucratic machine. It is so powerful that even the Pope himself must conform to its rule or face the consequences.

An example of this is what happened or appeared to have been the murder of Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, in September 1978, only 33 days after his election. At that time, the Catholic News Service, Zenith, reported that Cardinal Ratzinger said,

“His death was totally unexpected. John Paul I seemed to enjoy good health.”

Ratzinger would have also known about the abnormal deaths of other popes. For example, the many alleged murders of popes include:

Stephen VII from 896 to 897 AD, strangled.
Stephen IX, 939 to 942, mutilated.
John XII, 955 to 964, was murdered.
Benedict VI, 973 to 974, strangled.
John XIV, 983 to 984, starved to death or directly murdered.
Gregory V, from 996 to 999 AD, poisoned.
Clement II, 1046 to 1047, poisoned.
Damasus II, 1048, murdered.
Pope Pius XI, assassinated.
Later in 2013, Ratzinger then Pope Benedict XVI appeared to have been forced to resign.

Now an overview of the history of the papal system. In the fourth and fifth centuries, as the Gospel was watered down to accommodate pagan worship, philosophical schools and Gnostic speculations, the true worship of God and the inner conviction of the Holy Spirit was enveloped by a spirit of worldliness. Pagan cultic practices were assimilated into what was called the Church, which was becoming merely an externalized form of Christianity, alien to Scripture, devoid of authentic spiritual life and experience. The history of the Vaudois, the Waldensians, and the Paulicians, shows that what was called “Church” was more and more separating itself from true biblical faith. Thus it was becoming a vicious persecutor of any who stood for the truth revealed in the New Testament.

From the beginning of Christian times, the Gospel had produced an internal unity among the believers. However, the substitution of ritualism for the Gospel produced merely an external, visible unity for an institutionalized system. The fallacious clergy-laity division spawned an emergent, priestly, episcopal, authoritarian order of parochial dominion. This further devolved into an established hierarchy of ruling clergy, lording it over the flock of God.

By the end of the fifth century, these so-called priests presumed to mediate between God and man. These men had replaced the early pastors of the Gospel who had simply taught the Scripture. The Church no longer was the fellowship of believers in Christ Jesus, united by the Gospel. Rather, for the most part, it was rapidly becoming a system dominated by a hierarchy of bishops and elders.

Before this, in 330 AD, the emperor Constantine removed the seat of the empire from Rome to Constantinople. This marvelously enhanced the power of this developing Roman system. The barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire helped immeasurably to build the emerging structure of what would become the papal system.

Then, by religious assimilation, the bishop of Rome cemented his place as the unifying force that held a corrupt society together. From the decaying, confused ruin of the Western Empire, the Vatican system emerged triumphant by appropriating the prerogatives of the Caesars. In addition, it asserted itself as above presidents, prime ministers, and kings of the world. It has the main spiritual authority, subject to none of them.

Beginning in the fifth century, continuing through several successive centuries as new tribes of people desired to become Christian, and the papal system received these new peoples as they were. As the true Gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, had been abandoned, there was no call to repent and believe. It simply baptized to receive people from the tribes into what was called the Church, and their names were inscribed in its registers. This is in total contrast to the Scripture where there is an absolute connection between the Spirit and the Word of God, and not between physical water and grace.

Coming to new birth, as seen in the New Testament, is by the Holy Spirit through the instrument of God’s Word. Thus, the Apostle Peter proclaims being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Nonetheless, the papal teaching of alleged rebirth by water baptism, which started in those early centuries, still continues in the system to the present day. Thus, the papal code of canon law, canon 849 states, and I quote,

Baptism, the gateway to the sacraments and necessary for salvation by actual reception or at least by desire, is validly conferred only by a washing of true water with the proper form of words. Through baptism men and women are freed from sin, are reborn as children of God, and, configured to Christ by an indelible character, are incorporated into the Church. (Ref: https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann834-878_en.html#TITLE_I.)

We saw already that in the fifth century, men called priests presumed to mediate between God and men. In Scripture, before the all holy God, an individual is saved by his grace alone. Scripture is crystal clear in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, For by grace are you saved through faith. And that, not of yourselves, is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

It’s in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus that God shows the exceeding riches of his grace. That He alone saves is the whole meaning of divine grace.

Attempting to imitate saving grace from the late fifth century, the papal system began to claim that its sacraments were necessary for salvation. It took many centuries for this sacramental system to be fully developed into seven sacraments. As we see today, the official teaching states the following quote,

The Church affirms that, for believers, the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation.

This is the guiding policy of the papal system. Thus on Sunday, May 3, 2015, Pope Francis strictly obeyed the Vatican’s guiding policy regarding the sacraments. He said, quote,

Jesus is the vine. Through him, we are the branches. And through this parable, Jesus wants us to make us understand the importance of remaining united to Him. Grafted by baptism in Christ, we’ve freely received from Him the gift of new life. We’re able to remain in vital communion with Christ. We must remain faithful to our baptism and grow in friendship with the Lord Jesus through prayer, listening and docility to his word, reading the Gospel, participation in the sacraments, the Eucharist and Reconciliation.

Emperor Justinian, who was from 527 to 565 AD, was the one, more than anyone else, to establish the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome as head of the system. He did it in a formal and legal manner by bringing purely ecclesiastical edicts and regulations under the control of civil law. The historian, Frum, summarized what took place, quote,

One of Justinian’s great achievements was the regulation of ecclesiastical and theological matters, crowned by the imperial decretal letter, ceding the Bishop of Rome in the Church as the head of all the holy churches, thus laying the legal foundation for papal ecclesiastical supremacy.

Emperor Justinian’s decree did not create the office of the Pope, but rather it set the legal foundation for advancement in ruling power by the Bishop of Rome. The emperor wished to allay the demise of the imperial empire, thus ecclesiastical unity was imposed. Consequently, the Bishop of Rome became the head of the empire’s church. Then the title of Pope began to fit the one who sat as Bishop of Rome, who now is free to use the civil sword of coercion, given him by Justinian’s decree. Formerly ecclesiastical unity came by the moral persuasion of the Gospel and the Scripture to save individuals who then would be salt and light to their civil societies.

Thus it was in the eighth century that civil power came within the grasp of the papacy. As the power of the system grew, so did the immoral lives of both those who led the system and the men and women who were under its control.

The year 1073 was a turning point from the centuries of gross immorality. Rigorous discipline now became the norm of the papacy. Reaching above the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of papal minds continued to clutch at total dominion, both ecclesiastical and civil. By this time, the line of Charlemagne had grown too weak to keep papal ambitions in check.

Pope Gregory VII, also known as Hildebrand, was ambitious beyond all who had preceded him. He was convinced that the reign of the Pope was in fact the reign of God on earth, and he determined to subject all authority and all power, both spiritual and temporal, to the chair of Peter. It was Gregory VII who envisioned what was to become the vast structure of the papal system. His goal was to be the supreme ruler and judge of all leaders, both church and state. It’s with Gregory’s astute grasp of the notion and his crushing ambition coupled with the enormous wealth that the Roman Catholic Church by then possessed, that made its implementation possible.

These shrewd enactments began to bear fruit even during Gregory’s own rule from 1073 to 1085. Pope Innocent III, 1198 to 1216, and Boniface VIII, 1294 to 1303, put the final touches to the papal system’s spiritual and temporal power.

Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against the Albigenses and offered to all who would engage in it the pardon of all sins, to get to heaven without passing through purgatory. It was a war perpetrated with unimaginable cruelty. Whole villages and towns were indiscriminately butchered. Thousands were burned at the stake, while others were subjected to the most hideous torture. The history of these horrendous deeds of cruelty and murder is established by numerous accounts.

Pope Boniface VIII was stubborn, ambitious, intelligent vain, unscrupulous. He believed deeply that the pope was literally the vicar of Christ on earth, and that he held extraordinary powers. Anyone who opposed him opposed God, therefore must certainly be wicked. He is most famous for a statement in his papal bull called Unum Sanctum.

We declare, say, define and proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation, are entirely subject to the Roman pontiff.

Seventy-five popes, one after another, from Pope Innocent III to Pope Pius VII, approved of torture, murder, burning at the stake, and the confiscation of the property of believers in the horrific six centuries of the Inquisition. The papacy inflicted excruciating torture and cruel death on true believers.

Then comes the Reformation. The Reformation in the sixteenth century greatly restored the biblical faith that had been proclaimed by the apostles. Not only was biblical faith restored, but right across Europe the papal system was devastated. The men of the Reformation were such as Luther at Wittenberg, Erasmus, Colle at Oxford, Billney Latimer, Cartwright, Cambridge, Le Fevarin, Feralic, Paris. (I’m not sure if all these names are spelled correctly.) These leaders of the Reformation were highly trained men of that generation. In some instances, as Baysa and Tyndale, they ranked high as men of letters. The Reformation was a glorious spiritual awakening.

The primary response of the Roman Catholic system to the biblical faith of the Reformers was the counter-Reformation. It was advanced principally through the political and educational influence of the Jesuit order. The Jesuits, in an uncompromising and militant manner, led a movement to restore the Roman Catholic system to the position it had had before the Reformation.

The Jesuits’ intention, then and now, is to indoctrinate populations. Populations that are not grounded in the Bible are notoriously superstitious and servile to all the notions of sentimental religion and mysticism because they do not have any sure knowledge of God through Jesus Christ and his written word. Jesuit mysticism has a great appeal for them. To such people adrift in spiritual darkness, the Roman Catholic system offers both the spiritual authority of the Pope, his visible rituals and potent psychological conditioning.

By the mid-17th century, the Jesuit order had thousands of members across Europe. Their mission, then and now, has been undermining confidence in the Bible as the word of God, and the extirpation of the effects of the Reformation. Over the next few centuries, they became the papacy’s most powerful force to subvert Western culture from Christian biblical principles and liberties. The Jesuits have had a strong political influence on Catholic monarchies across Europe. They’ve led the main counter-Reformation efforts for four centuries by upholding papal authority, restoring the sacramental system and promulgating a compelling version of Roman mysticism and superstitions to many nations that had been touched by the biblical principles of the Reformation. Much of what papal Rome has achieved since the Reformation and in modern times has been due to the planning, strategy and fanatical dedication of the Jesuits.

Devastating economic strategies have also been advocated by the papal system. For example, Pope Francis, a Jesuit, published a document called Joy of the Gospel. Among many other topics, he wrote about economics. One of his statements concerning wealth declared that not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It’s not our own goods which we hold, but theirs. In fact, Pope Francis flagrantly refutes private property and Western economic principles. Applied economic principles give stability and well-being to societies. Thus, factually, the papal system’s economics is worse than Marx’s.

In conclusion, the lesson to be learned. The papal system arose under the imperial Roman Empire and survived the empire’s demise. In 537 AD, Justinian gave the legal base for it to acquire civil power, which it did, throughout the course of the next ten centuries. Its temporal power was arrested by the recovery of the Bible and the Gospel during the Reformation of the 16th century. It was held at bay by the Puritans of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nevertheless, it survived the demise of the Holy Roman Empire to become a sovereign nation in the 20th century and is now set to continue as a major power player in 2015. (And continues to be so in 2023.)

Currently, Pope Francis is the visible head of the Roman Church, but the papal system is still the power behind the throne. The papal system is nothing less than the satanic counterfeit of the true Christian Church. Indeed, it is the mystery of iniquity.

The true Christian Church is the great revelation of God, which had its full manifestation in the person of the Christ of God. Thus, Scripture proclaims:

(Hebrews 1:1-3) “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, {2} Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; {3} Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;”

Thus it is that the true Christian is focused on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and not on any system. As we behold the power, wisdom, and goodness of the heavenly Father, we also behold the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. For as the mediator, he has the nature and perfections of God in himself. The Lord Jesus Christ alone reconciles us to God by the full legal satisfaction for our sins, made by his substitutionary death on the cross. There is absolutely no church system that can redeem a soul by ritualized, sacramental actions, nor can we justify ourselves before God by religious works that are always stained by imperfect performance, tainted by self-focused motives.

A soul will have no peace with God while striving to save itself by any means that God does not accept. It is only the Lord Jesus Christ’s atoning work of shedding his blood on our behalf that meets the demands of an all holy God and his perfect law. It is by simply trusting upon Christ as the Lamb of God that we are saved, by believing on him we are delivered from the universal penalty of the second death and have assurance before God that we are accepted in him.

This is the only way of salvation that God the Holy Spirit testifies as being validated by him in the consciences of men. Thus his word expresses it,

Psalms 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.

How trivial and vain are the promises of the papal system compared to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who is revealed as the chiefest among ten thousand.

Were it not for the recovery of the absolute authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel of grace in salvation during the reformation of the 16th century, the papal system might still be undetected. In spite of the papal system being so rampantly displayed in the world today, the Holy Spirit still convicts individual men of their sin before a holy God, and sends them repentance unto life in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:8,9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

The true believer is thus accepted in the beloved in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

The frightening words of the Lord in Matthew 7:21 are to ring in the ears of those who have spent their whole lives believing in the papal religious system.

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

No person by merely acknowledging Christ’s authority or believing in his divinity, professing faith in his perfection and in the infinite merit of his atonements, shall have any part with God in his glory, but only he who for salvation solely believes on Jesus Christ. The Lord put the command to believe in a nutshell when he said, “This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent.” Likewise, the Apostle Paul and Silas declared, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved and your house.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ stands, and so also does his call on your life. Do you personally know Christ Jesus? The water of life is offered to you in the abundance of grace, which far surpasses the evils of sin. Thus the Lord’s call in Scripture says,

The Spirit and the bride say, come, and let him that hears say, come, and let him that is a thirst, come, and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely.

Once you, as a convicted sinner, believe on Christ Jesus alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, as your only surety and refuge before the all holy God. You find yourself not only freed from your sins, but made to reign in life.

Romans 5:17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)

That was from the Apostle Paul.

Those who receive the abundant grace given by Christ are not only redeemed from the dominion of death, they live in reign with Christ as they are sanctified daily, through his word, by the Holy Spirit, and by constant fellowship with him. With him, they shall reign forever and glorify him for all eternity. Believe on him alone, and you will be secure in him, to the praise of the glory of his grace, his free gift to us in the Beloved.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Another quote from the Apostle Paul.

(End of transcription.)




The Pope, the Catholic Church, and Pedophilia

The Pope, the Catholic Church, and Pedophilia

This is a transcript from an audio podcast by former Irish Catholic priest, Richard Bennett.

Exposing Pope Francis and the Roman Church

Not only does the Roman system conceal its own wickedness, it exalts the glory that the world gives to Pope Francis, truly amazing as the world wonders after him. That man of sin who claims to be the Holy Father and Head of the Lord’s Church mocks our Lord and our Heavenly Father. The exposing of current documented facts about the Roman Church and its Pope including their practice of pedophilia, and child abuse need to be exposed.- Richard Bennett

Welcome to the program. It’s a difficult topic and it’s really necessary that you listen so that we can implement what we document in this video.

The Roman church has paraded all its glory before the world as Pope Francis came to the United States of America in September 2015. We have to see just what was presented to the world to make it look as if the Roman church is a genuine church.

If the Roman church is accepted as a genuine Christian church, it has dire consequences for individual believers and for nations. This is seen in history, and we could give many examples, but I give just a few in my own Ireland in 1172.

The pastors of the Christian church all over Ireland, and the people of the Catholic church accepted the Roman Catholic church as a genuine form of Christianity. And that meant the end of the true Christian faith in Ireland in 1172.

Now it was done with murderous intent by Pope Alexander III and King Henry II of England. With military might the people were forced to submit to the church of Rome, and they did so. How different it would have been if they had been willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Gospel of grace. How different it could have been. But they submitted to accept the Roman church as if it were the true church and if it were genuinely Christian. And that meant for the most part the end of true Christian faith in Ireland.

To this day, there is a lot of good Christian work going on in Ireland, and there has been even in the north for many many years. And in the south there are a lot of Christian works now. But for the most part, it is ruled by Rome. And it is horrendous to see all the artifacts of Rome with statues of Mary and the saints, and all in the different cities and towns as you travel across that nation. That was in Ireland in 1172.

In somewhat a similar way in Poland in the 1560s. Beginning in the 1560s, the Jesuits entered Poland. Poland had become reformed with true biblical faith from the time of the Reformation. It was very very widely accepted biblical faith and true Christian life. And the Jesuits came in the 1560s. They started to found colleges, and they started to influence the different rulers and princes in Poland, and got into educational facilities, and they started to form colleges right across Poland. And so in a matter of years, the Roman Church was accepted as the true church. And for the most part, the Christian faith that had come from the Reformation was lost in Poland. And we could give far more details on that, but that’s just an overview. And it breaks your heart to see what happens when the Roman Church is accepted as a genuine church.

In a similar way from 1600 to 1610 the Jesuits were the foremost in the Counter-Reformation in Hungary. And they set about successfully reconverting people from the Christian faith back to Romanism. And the golden age of biblical faith in Hungary was lost in a similar way that it had been lost in Poland and in Ireland. And so it has been in many other nations. We could give many other examples, but that just illustrates the point. And many other nations have been the same. And it has often been the same with a Jesuit or Jesuits leading the field. The Jesuits have been known to be shrewdly intellectual and dramatically Roman Catholic in how they implement Romanism in a country.

And now we have another Jesuit, Pope Francis. He makes no bones about the fact that he was trained as a Jesuit, and he still is very much a Jesuit and acts very much like a Jesuit, and was very much as a Jesuit that he paraded the glory of the Roman Church for all the people to see in the United States of America in September 2015. He made the pump and the glory of Rome to be seen coast to coast by television and newscasts and over the Internet. And you can still see on the Internet his message to Congress in speaking in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and on and on. You can see these messages as they are still there on the Internet. Pope Francis is presenting the Roman Church as if it were a genuine Christian Church, and the world bowing down to it, and people accepting Romanism who did not accept before that it was a genuine church.

I want to read the exact words of what the New York Times said about this visit. It is significant because there are many many other news agencies who have similar statements regarding the Pope’s coming to the United States. So I quote from the New York Times:

“Welcome with a fanfare of trumpets and a chorus of amens, Pope Francis introduced himself to the United States on Wednesday with a bracing message on climate change, immigration, and poverty that ranged from pastoral to political. On a day that blended this splendor of an ancient church with the frenzy of a modern rock star, Francis waded quietly but forcefully into some of the more polarizing issues of American civic life.

The lauding of Francis by the New York Times and on other news agencies lauded him and his Church, the ancient Church as the New York Times called it there. But it is the acceptance of Romanism that has taken place in the United States of America.

With Pope Francis, it appeared as if nothing was too lofty or beyond his insight or judgment, and nothing too lowly mortal to reach that he could reach out in his mercy. It was as if unseen hands were secretly orchestrating him. Crowds chanted homage and acclamation to the Roman pontiff. To all appearances, the world was wondering after Pope Francis in great admiration for his power, his policy, and his pomp. Very few people tried to comprehend the truth of who Francis is and of the institution that he directs. Very few even bothered to analyze what he said. And it is for us to show just exactly what he said and what his institution is so that we are not taken in as were people of old, people who accepted Romanism and then paid the consequences in their own personal life, in their families, and in their nations. So we must analyze some of the things that happened, and analyze Romanism itself.

We start, for example, with the Pope at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. On September 24th, Francis offered prayers for the hundreds of Muslim pilgrims killed during Islam’s Hijah saying,

“I would like to express two sentiments for my Muslim brothers and sisters, my sentiments of closeness in the face of tragedy, tragedy that they suffered in Mecca. In this moment I give assurances of my prayers, and I unite myself with you all. I pray to the Almighty God all merciful.”

But you can see that this is in accord with the official teaching that Francis accepts of his Roman church, where he and his church accept the Muslim faith. Officially it’s in paragraph 841 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.” (Source: http://scborromeo.org/ccc/para/841.htm)

Pope Francis’s acceptance, an expression of unity of faith with Allah of Islam is an abomination before the one holy true God. The Lord God commands us in his Word,

Exodus 34:14  For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

Isaiah 42:8  I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

You cannot say you’re Christian if, at the same time, you’re uniting in prayer with Allah in praying as if it was one God. There is only one true God, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. There is none other. And for the pope to pray to this other god and unite himself with Muslims is an abomination before God! And it is blasphemy. And so it is that we see the wickedness of this Roman system that they see Muslims as one in faith with themselves. They do the same with the Buddhists and the Hindus. It is heartbreaking that anybody could think that this church is Christian when it does that sort of thing.

And now on a par with this, there is the moral evil of Roman Catholic priests, the child abuse that has continued coast to coast in America and in all the nations of the world, the phenomenon of the gross immorality of Roman Catholic priests. This has been seen. It is not just going back to 2002 when the Boston Globe was one of the first newspapers in the world and news agencies to make this problem known. I quote from the Boston Globe in 2002.

“From Canada to Australia South Africa to Hong Kong across Europe and Ireland, and to Pope Paul John II native’s Poland, clergy sex abuse cases and enduring cover-ups have proven to be a worldwide problem.”

And that problem continues. It doesn’t make the same headlines that it used to, but it’s still continues and has not abated. And the abuse is not about one nation or one country, it’s about an institution. And it’s worldwide, this child abuse, lies, and immorality.

And so I’d like to give some recent reports. In the United States, for example, NPR news wrote on their Internet webpage news concerning what was happening in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

August the 5th 2015. Monday’s deadline for filing claims has passed. The bankruptcy case of the Twin Cities archdiocese moved to its next stage. By the deadline, more than 600 claims have been filed including 407 alleged victims of clergy abuse.

And so in the Twin Cities in the United States, 407 clergy case abuses were revealed on June the 15th, 2015, the New York Times reported. The Archbishop of St Paul Minnesota and deputy bishop resigned Monday after prosecutors recently charged the archdiocese with having failed to protect youths from abuse at the hands of pedophile priests. So pedophile priests on the romp looking for victims as it were in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and this was reported in the New York Times on June 15th.

Now we’ll find that it’s worldwide. There is an organization that you should know about. You can find it easily on the Internet. It is SNAP, (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) the organization for those who have survived clergy abuse. It reports worldwide. In the United States abuses are taking place daily. and it documents them and gives you records. For example, we have in the quotation that I’m just going to read from the web page https://www.snapnetwork.org/:

SNAP makes known a movie detailing massive abuse cover-up in in Boston. The movie documents abuse from offices in Waltham, Massachusetts where there are floor-to-ceiling files of more than a hundred thousand pages of church reports, court documents, media reports, letters from mothers of victims, victims themselves, and even abusers detailing their crimes. The organization SNAP says, “How can you spend your workdays chronicling thousands of cases of Catholic priestly sexual abuse and still remain a Catholic? How can somebody read about these abuses and still remain a Catholic?

So SNAP that organization asked the question, and it is a very good question because how can anybody look as if this church were genuinely Christian or stay in a church that has this horrendous history? And the history continues day by day, nation by nation, across the world.

It is recognized and accepted by the Catholic Church itself that it is the Roman Catholic law that priests are not allowed to marry. That has been a root cause of all these things, the Roman Catholic law by which they have been forbidden to marry. And so it is that we have forced celibacy dominating, and men who are meant to marry and have children are forbidden to marry. And so the predictable outcome. It drives these men to illicit acts. Priest corrupt women, boys and girls, acts of fornication, adultery and sodomy and on and on it goes.

It is known that this law came about by a certain pope in history. It was the well-known Gregory VII, also known as Hildibrand, his name before he became pope in 1075. He issued a decree effectively barring married priests from ministries, a discipline formalized by the First Lateran Council in 1123. That quotation is actually from a Catholic webpage. It’s usCatholic.org who said that it was in 1075, that Pope Gregory issued a decree effectively barring married priests from ministry. And so it is that it’s a Catholic law and it has existed for 940 years.

Now it’s hinted that Pope Francis who changes a lot of traditions has been known to change a lot of things — he might indeed. Would he change this law? It’s very unlikely that he would. But there are financial reasons why he should. Because it not only horrendously disrupts families, leaves scars on people’s minds and consciences of young people who were abused, and horrendously breaks up families across the USA and different parts of the world. Its evil effects on society are still seen day by day. But financially it is also a huge burden on the Roman Catholic Church itself. So I’d like to quote from the Guardian newspaper.

Pope Francis has hailed US bishops for their handling of sexual abuse cases that have rocked the Catholic church for decades saying that they have shown courage throughout and regained the authority and trust which was demanded of them. Between 2004 and 2013, US dioceses paid 1.7 billion dollars in legal settlements.

1.7 billion dollars in legal settlements according to a report released last year by the US Conference of Bishops. And the same period it also paid 379 million in legal fees. So legal fees for cases taken against the Catholic church by the parents and victims and then the legal settlements going into 1.7 billion dollars has cost the Roman Catholic Church a lot. That doesn’t in any way match the horrific moral damage that has been done to families across this nation and families across the world.

My own Ireland is an awful example of what was called the Murphy Report. It was horrendous that Ireland was one of the worst nations for the amount of victims that had come from priestly child abuse. It is horrendous. And so it is that Pope Francis may rescind this law for financial reasons, though it is even unlikely that it would do that because they want to have their priests like robots, and they want to have them so that they can command them to do this and to do that. And if a priest were married, he would talk to his wife and have some little freedom or something, but they do not want any independence. They want their priests to be subservient to the Catholic church itself as they are in the present day. So it’s very unlikely that they would ever be allowed to marry.

The dogma of the Catholic Church says that they (the sacraments) transmit grace and bring life to a soul. I’d like to quote what Pope Francis said on May the 3rd 2015 regarding the sacraments of the Catholic church. He said,

“Jesus is divine and through Him we are the branches. And through this parable Jesus wants us to understand the importance of remaining united to Him. Grafted by baptism in Christ we are free to receive from him the gift of new life, and we’re able to remain in vital communion with Christ. We must remain faithful to baptism and grow in friendship with the Lord through prayer, listening and docility (easily taught) to His Word, reading the Gospel, participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and reconciliation.”

So he focuses on the sacraments! Especially the Eucharist. That is the Mass and Communion and “reconciliation” is the modern name for confession, whispering your sins into the ear of a priest. That is not the way we get life. Life does not come transmitted by material physical sacraments. There’s only one mediator, and that’s Christ Jesus. And we come to God in Him to confess our sins and not to any church or any supposed ritual that would bring us God’s grace.

But this is horrendous, and this is the root cause of why the priests are so immoral. They are the ones closest to the Eucharist! They’re the ones closest to confession. They give confession and they could get a confession. They’re the ones closest to all these sacraments, and they’re the ones known for their immoral lives more and more, even more than the average Catholics are these priests known for their immorality. And they are so close to the sacraments. They’re the ones who dish out and work the sacraments.

It shows you that this is the root cause, that the Catholic Church does not have a Gospel. It turns people to look to rituals for salvation. And that is heartbreaking because we have sincere Catholics really believing that if you go and speak your sins into the ear of a priest and he will give you absolution you will be forgiven. That is not the way that sins are forgiven. It is official Catholic teaching. Let me read their official statement from their catechism.

The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the new covenant are necessary for salvation. Sacramental grace is the grace of the Holy Spirit given by Christ and proper to each sacrament.

How audacious can you get claiming that your sacraments are necessary for salvation and that they give you the Holy Spirit? It’s the Father who sends forth the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ the glorious Lord, not any ritualistic sacrament. This is an abomination before God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. And we are saved as it says in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

The Catholic church has it of works, their own works called sacraments. And they do boast about their sacraments. This is horrendous! And it is something we are really horrified to read these exact words.

The riches of Christ Jesus are known as it says in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7:

That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

Jesus Christ shows the riches of His grace by directly giving us forgiveness, giving us everlasting life as we trust upon his finished work and look to God only in Him to forgive our sins. He is the one who through the Holy Spirit sanctifies us day by day, and not any church, and not any religious ritual.

And so we see this teaching. One of the sacraments was highlighted and it was on the Vatican news webpage about the pope giving pre-special powers through the year of Jubilee to forgive the sin of having an abortion. And I’d like to read what this account says. Pope Francis specifically turned his attention to women who resorted to abortion and feared the scar of this agonizing and painful decision saying the forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented. For this reason, he writes:

I have decided to concede to all priests for the Jubilee year the discretion to absolve the sin of abortion to those who have procured it and who would with contrite heart seek forgiveness for it.

So Pope Francis gives permission to preach to forgive the sin of having had an abortion. And it is horrendous to think that he is a man with a pontifical heart on his head, and he thinks that he has the power to give priests who are below him permission to forgive sins of having an abortion. The official Catholic teaching says:

1493 One who desires to obtain reconciliation with God and with the Church, must confess to a priest all the unconfessed grave sins he remembers after having carefully examined his conscience. The confession of venial faults, without being necessary in itself, is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church.

That is the official teaching of the Catholic Church in paragraph 1493 of the catechism, but that’s not the teaching of Scripture. In Scripture, we’re told that we look to God to forgive us our sins. As it says in Isaiah:

Isaiah 43:25  I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

First John chapter one verse nine:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It’s God who forgives us our sins! It is no ritual or man calling himself a priest. This is biblical truth, but for Catholics, it’s going to a priest. And this permission that he gave to priests to forgive sins is horrendous. And it is a blasphemy against God to presume that any human being sinful himself — and we see that these priests most of all are most sinful of those in the Roman system that they should propose that he could forgive people’s sins. We grieve over this and we look to Catholics, and dear Catholics looking at this program, I ask you to look on to Christ Jesus. As the Lord says in John’s Gospel chapter eight verse 36:

If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.

Look to Christ Jesus and ask Him to set you free from this horrendous system, and come to a new life as you would trust in Christ and Christ alone.

And so it is that we document the immorality of the priests and the immorality of their teaching because it’s immoral to teach people a wrong way of salvation and say that sacramental grace comes through the sacraments. That is morally wrong and evil. And I think that Lord Acton, the quite well-known Acton, said it precisely of what Rome is. He said, “It is the fiend skulking behind the crucifix pretending to be Christian. It’s a fiend skulking behind the crucifix.”

We have a system claiming to be Christian that is like a fiend or a devil from hell. It is the lesson we learn, the evil that the Scripture speaks about when it talks about the mystery of evil, the mystery of iniquity, is not atheists, prostitutes, drunkards, and the like, but false religion. That’s what is at stake. The mystery of iniquity is a false religion teaching people a system that will lead them to hell. And we have seen that Francis’ teaching, like a church, is accomplished through physical things.
The first lie of Satan in the Garden of Eden was to convince Eve and then Adam that it was right to take of the fruit of good and evil, that they would know good and evil, the forbidden fruit, and they were to look upon a physical thing to give them understanding. They looked upon the fruit and added as if the physical fruit would give them the way to have knowledge and understanding. And of course, we know the consequences of that sin. Thus the Catholic church also looks to physical things and physical rituals as if they could give life.

And so we have the darkness cover the world as Pope Francis parades his teaching nation by nation. It’s not just that he came here to the United States, he’s been to many other countries, which I just read yesterday on the Internet, that Belfast and Ireland have invited him to come to their city in Northern Ireland, and on and on. Many other countries have invited him, and he has been to the Middle East, he’s been to many other countries of the world and he continues to parade Romanism as if it were respectable and to get the adulation of people. But that is what breaks your heart. It was the acceptance of Romanism in the United States of America. The United States, known for many years to be sound biblically, and to see people accept this horrendous system as if it were genuine, it breaks your heart. And when we know historically other nations and peoples who accepted Romanism as genuine, what it did to families, society, and nations as a whole. We must cry out to God and to know how to answer this abomination.

I think it is great that organizations that I’ve mentioned like SNAP allow you to see what’s going on in other countries. And there are other organizations like SNAP. And I would ask you to find out in your nation what organizations are making these horrors known.

(End of Richard Bennett’s main message.)




Pope Francis Shows His True Colors – By Richard Bennett

Pope Francis Shows His True Colors – By Richard Bennett

This is a talk from a podcast on the Berean Beacon website by former Roman Catholic priest Richard Bennett (March 10, 1938 – September 23, 2019.) After praying what my next project for this website should be, the Lord reminded me of Richard Bennett who served the Church of Rome as a priest for 22 years. I consider insiders who became born-again Christians to be the most reliable and accurate sources of information. I hope you read Richard Bennett’s life story.

I transcribed into text the main message of the first 34 minutes of audio from the 42-minute podcast to make it easier for us all to get Mr. Bennett’s message. The audio is hard to catch in some places.

Pope Francis shows his true colors

Welcome to the program.

Once Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope, he chose the name Francis, after Saint Francis. Saint Francis was known to be soft-hearted and kind, a lover of nature, somebody who was humble and kind and unassuming. Thus it was that Pope Francis implied that he was going to be unassuming, kind humble and gentle. And this would be his image.

That has been the image that the media picked up on. It was amazing to see the media as they were announcing the Pope worldwide on radio and television and the media in newspapers, all showing the Pope as humble. He was the one who paid his own bill at the hotel after he was elected Pope. He went and personally paid his bill at the hotel where he had stayed during the papal conclave (a gathering of the College of Cardinals convened to elect a bishop of Rome, also known as the pope).

And then they showed that he was the one who insisted that he would not take up the regular apartment complex, the papal suite in the Vatican, but he would take up a much more humble one where he would be more accessible, showing that he was visible for people to see him and to know him. And so it was that he was making himself known to be kind and humble. And then he went to a great extent on television and really showed this to welcome back the previous Pope, Benedict the 16th.

Benedict the 16th had resigned with some disgrace and it was difficult for him to resign with the different rumors that were circulating. And now he was welcomed back into the Vatican, showing again that Francis the new Pope was kind and gentle and would welcome back even the aged and the one who had difficulties in the last months of his pontificate, Benedict the 16th. Was this not like a new Francis of Assisi?

However, there was a novel address that took place on the 19th of March, 2013. Pope Francis showed a different face. The new Jesuit Pope began to graphically display a genuine image while thousands of people crammed into St. Peter’s Square and literally millions watched by television and heard by radio across the world.

He said the following,

“Dear brothers and sisters, I thank the Lord I can celebrate this holy mass for the inauguration of my Petrine ministry.”

Francis the new Pope knew quite well what the Vatican declares is the position of the Pope and what the Petrine ministry means. It is in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 882. I’ll read the exact words:

882 The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, “is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.” “For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.”

So Francis knew that this power was now his, and he thanked God that he could celebrate “my Petrine ministry”. And notice the emphasis, my Petrine ministry. It was his, he was the one now in the position of supreme and absolute power, what is claimed for the Bishop of Rome as Pope. And this has always been the Vatican’s position going back many, many hundreds of years, and in particular from the 11th century under the well-known Hilderbrand Pope Gregory VII, this idea of the papacy had a man that goes back to the very position of Peter himself. This was emphasized. And it was to be the presupposition that they just won’t change. No matter the fact that Peter is never recorded to be in Rome, there’s no mention of him going to many cities. They insist that Peter went to Rome and now the Pope takes his position. This is the presupposition that they just will not concede, and is to give them stability in a tumultuous world of many things happening. The Vatican is to appear as stable, appear as stable because they claim no historical or theological grounds.

He then goes on to say why he is celebrating the Mass. Joseph was called to be the costos, the protector. The protector of whom? Of Mary, of Jesus. But this protection is then to extend to the Church. How does Joseph exercise his role as protector? Discreetly, humbly and silently, but with unfaring presence and utter fidelity. These carefully chosen words give a distinct picture in the mind of the person who is listening. And then the Pope went to say these exact words:

“Let us protect Christ in our lives so that we can protect others so that we can protect creation. The vocation of being a protector, however, is not just something involving us as Christians alone, it has a prior dimension which is simply human involving everyone.”

So Francis insists that this idea of protection is a job for everyone, not just Christians, he says, but for everyone. It is amazing that this is a way that Francis very cleverly under the guise of protection is actually bringing in Catholic social dogma into his very first inaugural address. He is declaring that everyone has to look after creation, and everyone is responsible, and that implies that goods belong to everyone and that is official Vatican teaching. And it is this social duty that he is emphasizing.

So I like to read again his exact words. He said,

“Please, I would like to ask all of those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life and all men and women of goodwill. Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan, inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”

And this was required because he said again, quoting,

“There are Herods who plot death, wreak havoc and mar the countenance of men and women.”

Now he does not define who these “Herods” are, but he goes on to describe just how we are to protect.

And this next statement of his as I read the exact words is of uttermost importance. He said the following,

“To protect Jesus and Mary. To protect the whole of creation. To protect each person, especially the poorest. To protect ourselves. This is a service that the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out.”

That is quite amazing that anyone could say this, let alone someone claiming to speak as a Christian or claiming to speak as a Pope. It’s amazing how anyone in their right mind could say this, to protect Jesus with Mary. Jesus does not need to be protected! You just have to read the Scriptures. He’s King of King and Lord of Lords! To read the exact words of Scripture that glorify Jesus, He is the only Potentate, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He needs no protection. So this idea of protecting Jesus with Mary is ludicrous, to say the least.

Then he goes on and he finishes his homily by praying,

“I implore the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, Saint Peter, and Paul, Saint Francis, that the Holy Spirit may accompany my ministry.”

Please notice he did not pray in the name of Christ to the Father. No, what did he do? He called up in prayer, dead saints. Now in scripture, it is emphatically said in the Book of Deuteronomy that we are not to call up the dead. We are to pray to God and God alone. We do not call up the dead to pray to them as if they were divine and could hear prayers. This is really an abomination that somebody who purports to be a Christian leader could pray to the dead and show no understanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ really is.

Following all of this, on March the 20th 2013, Pope Francis addressed religious leaders across the world. Among other matters, he stated:

“First of all, I thank my brother Andrew very much for what he said. Thank you very much. Thank you. It is for a cause of particular joy to me today with you, delegates of the Orthodox churches, the Oriental churches, churches and ecclesial communities of the West. Together with you, I cannot forget how much that counsel has meant for the road of ecumenism. For my part, I wish to assure you in the wake of my predecessors and of my determination to continue on the path of ecumenical dialogue. I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to bring my cordial greetings and assurance of my remembrance in the Lord Jesus, to the churches and Christian communities He represented. I greet them cordially. Thank you all, dear friends belonging to other religious traditions. First of all, the Muslims who worship this one God living and merciful and call upon him in prayer, and all of you. I really appreciate your presence. In it I can see a tangible sign of the will to grow in mutual esteem, cooperation and common good of humanity.”

Again horrendous words, having esteem for the Muslims in prayer saying that they call upon God who is living and merciful. We know that the Allah of the Quran is not like that. It’s not the God of the Bible. But Francis, to please the Muslims, and to accumunize (compromise?) even with the Muslims, is willing to sacrifice biblical truth for the sake of false ecumenical dialogue. In this his Jesuitism. He was a shrewd Jesuit, putting forth his ecumenical goods, totally abhorrent before the God, the Holy God of Scripture.

Two days later on March the 22nd, Pope Francis spoke to a group of diplomats representing governments that have relationships with the Vatican. Again he showed his Jesuit sophistry. His speech began with the words:

Dear Ambassadors, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you again for all the work that you do along with the Secretary of State to build peace, to construct bridges of friendship and fraternity. Through you, I would like to renew to your governments my thanks for their participation in the celebrations on the occasion of my election. And my heartfelt desire to be a fruitful, a common endeavor.”

In his address, Pope Francis emphasized the fact that he was known as the pontiff, that is, the Builder of Bridges. And he said,

“In this work with governments, the role of religion is fundamental.”

That statement, the role of religion is fundamental in the work with governments, is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church claims in its Code of Canon Law. If you want to check the Code of Canon Law, it’s Canon 1405 that the Pope can judge “those who hold the highest civil office of a state.”

The blending of civil with religion has for many centuries been the policy of the Roman Church. It has been quite successful, disastrously so in many cases. The Roman Church by its position of being not only a religious system but also a civil system, it is also a government besides being a religious system, and she can use her position as a nation, a government to have a relationship in the civil order with other nations.

Thus, at the moment when he was speaking, Pope Francis, the Roman Church, had 179 legal agreements with nations of the world. Some of these go back a long time, particularly with some of the European and South American countries, and it can be seen that in nations where the Catholic Church has a civil position, it has been detrimental to the Christians there because the Vatican is claiming and using its power as a civil entity.

They have concordants with nations. A concordant is a guarantee in civil law that the Vatican can teach what is right religion and worship, and declare what is not right religion and worship. That they have a right to establish Catholic education, and a right to object to other education. That they have a right to insist that their laws on marriage and annulments are civilly accepted. Where these agreements are in effect, we have Christians being disbarred (or deprived) from having property in some nations, and things like Christian radio stations become legally impossible because the Vatican declares what religious system is acceptable in civil law!

When I was in Slovakia in the year 2000, and Slovakia became a country having a concordant with Rome, the believers there were horrified. They said,

“You do not understand what this means. It means that we will not be able to set up churches where we like. It means that if we go against the teaching of the Catholic Church, the police will turn up at our doors. This is a civil matter.”

I began to see, and I have a whole video on Vatican control through civil power, and it’s horrendous.

Now Francis knew well what was involved in his talking to leaders of government. And he knew well that he had in Argentina where he was the Cardinal since 1957, a civil agreement with the Church of Rome, and how that helped in civil law for the Catholic Church to increase, and to prevent other Christians, to prevent Christian churches from growing in Argentina. How clever was Francis in talking to these civil leaders in these religious terms addressing the civil leaders about how thankful he was to be able to work together with them! He was setting up, or willing to set up more and more agreements on the civil nature by which the Roman Church could take control in the nations. It’s frightening, and something that many people have no idea exists.

Then on April the 23rd 2013, Pope Francis was again anything but peaceful, humble and unassuming. In the sermon for that day, he said the following:

“In the reading today it makes me think of the missionary expansion the Church began at the time of the persecution and those Christians that went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch and proclaimed the Word. They had this apostolic fervor with them. And that is how the faith spread. But some at Jerusalem, when they heard this, became nervous and sent Barnabus. He saw that things were going well. And so the Church was a mother. The mother of more children of many children it became more and more a mother. A mother that gives us the faith, a mother that gives us an identity because it is not possible to find Jesus outside the Church. The mother Church that gives us Jesus gives us our identity that is not only a seal, it is a belonging. Identity means belonging. This belonging to the Church is beautiful. Think of this mother Church that grows with new children to whom she gives the identity of faith because you cannot believe in Jesus without the Church. Let me ask the Lord for this apostolic fervor that impels us to move forward as brothers, all of us forward.

It is really amazing and horrifying to see what the Pope said in these words. It is actually an official dogma of the Church that he was teaching. I like to read the official catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 181.

181 “Believing” is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. “No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother” (St. Cyprian, De unit. 6: PL 4, 519).

That summarizes what Pope Francis was saying. You must have the Church as mother otherwise you cannot have God as father. In Scripture it is totally different. The apostles said, believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved and thy house. Faith is God given, not Church given. The apostle Peter said,

2 Peter 1:1  Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

We obtain it. It is from God! It is not from any church. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. Scripture summarizes it. But Francis was insisting as does his papal Church that it’s the Mother Church that gives you your identity and gives you Jesus. No mother church gives anyone Jesus! Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. This is a strict sense of what the apostle Paul said in Galatians. If anyone preaches any other Gospel than what you have received, let him be anathema. This is accursed in Scripture, somebody giving a message of salvation that is not a message of salvation saying that Mother Church gives you Jesus.

It is shocking to read such things, but this is what Francis was doing in his very inaugural address. The system that professes to teach faith is teaching religion of trusting rituals and traditions that appear to be religious but are deceitful because they do not deliver what they say they do. This is emphatically contrary to what Scripture says. It is the gift of God. Faith is obtained as Peter said from God.

I’d like to say to you as we have shown these horrific statements of Pope Francis. What the Lord Jesus Christ said on the night before he died. He prayed that they may be one as thou, Father, art in me, and I am in thee, that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou has sent me. Jesus knew very well all whom he prayed for. He prayed for those whom the Father had given him in the words of the Gospel of John. Those who were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God. Those who were born of God, it is God-given. Not any church given, it is God-given! They are the ones who believe.

This is the message I give to you today that you personally, as you watch this program, as you think of what Pope Francis has said, and you think of what really is the message. The message is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved.

The Scriptures teach us that we must serve God acceptably and with Godly fear. God is all holy, and it is something to know that even in the New Testament He is spoken about as a consuming fire. He is not just going to let things pass as if it didn’t count. In a strict justice, He will come against those who teach incorrectly. Those who believe wrong doctrine end up just in their own deception, and they continue in the sins that they were hoping would be forgiven.

In his own day, the Lord Jesus, we could say with compassion and kindness and care, reached out even to the Pharisees. It is in John’s Gospel chapter 8. He said, “I say to you that you shall die in your sins. If you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins. If Francis himself, Pope Francis does not believe in Jesus Christ alone by the faith that God gives, he will die in his sins, and the same for all those that he teaches, and believe in rituals or sacraments, and not on the Lord Jesus Christ alone, they too will die in their sins.

You may say, “Well, I am a sincere Catholic, and I sincerely believe what my church teaches me. When the Pharisees were sincere and they believed what the Torah was supposed to have said to their religious leaders of Pharisees, they were sincere, and it didn’t make any difference. You will die in your sins.

This is a sobering message, and I say that to you. You may know that I was a Catholic for 48 years and 22 as a priest, and I spent many years in that system. I thank God for taking me out of it. I no longer substitute a church for rituals. I personally believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and by God’s grace, I have done that since 1985. It is God’s grace. It is not as Francis says, purporting Mother Church to give you faith. It is God who gives you faith.

It is mind-boggling to see and to read the exact words of Pope Francis. It is shattering to know that there are literally millions upon millions of people across the world who believe what the Pope teaches. All for a billion worldwide, at least on paper, are accepted to be Catholics. Millions in each nation that has any presence of religious sentiment in them. Millions. Does your heart not go out to them to give them the message that is saving and real?

You and I are, as Scripture said, dead in trespasses and sins. By nature, we were born as children of Adam, and by personal sin, we have added to that sin. But in face of all that, the true Gospel came. The Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation, in the words of the apostle Paul. While we are sinners, children of wrath, rebels against God, the all Holy God, we do not match up to His Holiness. We can, by His grace, turn in faith.

I did it, aged 48, and I praise God. And I have known of literally thousands of others, particularly as our DVDs go out, and we get more response from our DVDs, and I thank God for that. People hear the word of God and live. It is really glorious.

I would ask that as you listen to this program, and as later on you see it, you already know that you should send this to friends and that you make it known, this program known to others.

(End of transcript)

This is up to 34 minutes and all of the main message of Richard Bennett’s 42-minute podcast. If you like, you can listen to Mr. Bennett’s entire talk on the Berean Beacon website.




Daniel Chapter 2, an Outline of World History from Babylon to the Present and Beyond

Daniel Chapter 2, an Outline of World History from Babylon to the Present and Beyond

Chapter 2 of the Book of Daniel is probably the easiest to understand of all the prophecies of Daniel, and the interpretation of it is probably the least controversial among Christians! The only people who may question the Book of Daniel are atheists and people who deny the Divine inspiration of the Bible. That’s because Daniel two is an outline of world history of the empires that existed hundreds of years after Daniel was alive. The Lord showed Daniel the empires that would follow the Babylonian empire. There is no way Daniel could have known or shared these things with Nebuchadnezzar unless God, Who knows the future, had revealed it. Because the prophecies of Daniel 2 were all fulfilled after Daniel which history clearly shows us, and because that proves the Divine inspiration of the Book of Daniel, unbelieving academics and scholars have tried to argue that Daniel chapter 2 was written much later than Daniel actually lived, and therefore Daniel could not have written it. They’re wrong. Who would you rather trust? The recorded Word of God or the opinion of some unbelieving academic? I choose the former. Jesus Himself gave credibility to the Book of Daniel when He said in Mark 13:14:

“But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:”

Jesus is talking about the latter half of Daniel 9:27 which says:

…and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

I taught Daniel 2 once during an evening Bible study to my Christian fellowship. I think most of them understood and appreciated it.

Daniel 2:1  And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.

Nebuchadnezzar II, also spelled Nebuchadrezzar II, (born c. 630—died c. 561 bce), second and greatest king of the Chaldean dynasty of Babylonia (reigned c. 605–c. 561 bce). He was known for his military might, the splendour of his capital, Babylon, and his important part in Jewish history. (Source: Britannica)

I don’t like using BCE, before common era, and CE, common era. I’ll just stick with BC, before Christ, and AD, after Christ. I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator say he also prefers to use BC and AD. 🙂

The second year of the King Nebuchadrezzar of the Book of Daniel was therefore 606 BC.

I hope you read the entire chapter 2 from your Bible on your own. I will sum up verses 2 – 30:

King Nebuchadrezzar had a dream he considered important and meaningful, but upon waking up, he couldn’t remember the dream. He therefore called his wise men, the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell him what he dreamed. They of course could not. King Nebuchadrezzer wanted the wise men to tell him both the dream and the interpretation of it! He said if they could tell him the dream, he would know they would tell him the correct interpretation of the dream. When the wise men said there was no way they can tell the king his dream, Nebuchandresser then threatened them and their families with execution! This would have included the prophet Daniel and his Hebrew friends as well if they did not tell the king his dream. Daniel wasn’t in the kings presence at the time.

The wise men said,

Daniel 2:11  And it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is none other that can shew it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.

The king then became furious and ordered all the wise men to be killed! Daniel found out about the king’s order from Arioch, the king’s captain, and went to the king to ask for time to learn both the dream and its interpretation. The king granted his request. Daniel then asked his Hebrew friends to pray that the God of Heaven reveal to him both the dream and the interpretation. Daniel received it by revelation that night and the next day told the king both the dream and the interpretation.

Nebuchadnezzer’s dream

Daniel 2:31-35  ¶Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

The interpretation

Daniel 2:36-38  This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold.

The “image” Nebuchadnezzer saw was a statue of a man. The “head of gold” of the statue represented King Nebuchanezzer and his kingdom that ruled from 626 BC and ended 539 BC. Nebuchadnezzer was king during this time from 605 BC to 561 BC.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC, marking the collapse of the Chaldean dynasty less than a century after its founding. (Source: Wikipedia)

Daniel 2:39  And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

The second kingdom of Daniel 2:39 symbolized by the statue’s breast and his arms of silver and is the dual empire of Medo-Persia which is also known as the Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire. Persia was the stronger of the two, just as in the body one arm is stronger than the other!

Toward the end of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the Persians began to become a powerful force and under Cyrus II Media was conquered in 549 b.c. and was combined with the empire of the Persians to form Medo-Persia. The combined strength of the Persians and the Medes led to conquest of Babylon in 539 b.c., with the resulting extension of their empire over much of the Middle East until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 331 b.c. (Source: Bible.org)

The third kingdom of Daniel 2:39 symbolized by the belly and his thighs of brass is the Greek empire founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Daniel lived to the beginning of the Medo-Persian empire but the Greek empire came 200 years later! The Greeks were interested in philosophy and religion or spiritual things. And it is held by the Greeks and by almost all religions that the seat of the spirit is in the belly. As Jesus said, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit.)” (John 7:38,39)

In 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Achaemenid Persian Empire and began a series of campaigns that lasted for 10 years. Following his conquest of Asia Minor, Alexander broke the power of Achaemenid Persia in a series of decisive battles, including those at Issus and Gaugamela; he subsequently overthrew Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety.

The first empire was represented by the head of gold, Babylon. The second, the dual empire of Medo-persia represented by arms of silver. Two arms represented the dual kingdom. First Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon, but Cyrus let Darius the Mede be ruler of it in the beginning. The Bible tells me so!

Daniel 5:30-31 In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. 31 And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.

Next, the fourth kingdom:

Daniel 2:40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.

The fourth kingdom represented by the legs or iron was the Roman Empire. Rome, the tough, iron-fisted kingdom which clamped down with iron military rule over the entire known world in the days before Christ, was one of the longest-reigning empires the world has ever known. For nearly one hundred years there were no major wars, no one even being able to muster a force against the Roman rule.The armies of Rome marched all over the known world which gives meaning to the legs of iron. Rome conquered the Greeks in 27 BC. In its decline it was divided into an Eastern and Western Empire. The Western Empire was ruled by Rome, and the Eastern Empire, ruled by Constantinople, was called the Byzantine Empire. So even the parts of the image itself symbolize the kingdoms of man, and this becomes extremely significant as we go on to the feet.

Daniel 2:41-43  And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

This brings us up to the present. Kings ruled the earth until the American Revolution and the French Revolution which brought democracy to the world. The iron rule of the Roman empire continued through the “Holy Roman Empire” by the iron rule of the popes of Rome and their control over kings. Personal liberty and freedom of conscience was suppressed. It’s still hated by the Pope and the Vatican till this day!

The clay can represent the democratic republics such as America which supposedly protects the rights of the individual. The iron may also represent dictatorships, both fascist and communist governments. Germany under Hitler was fascist and the Soviet Union was communist. Both were dictatorships. The people were suppressed. China is of course run by the Chinese Communist Party. There was some freedom when I visited China in 1998 and 1999, but nobody even then discussed politics! I wouldn’t want to visit China today.

Another interpretation of the iron and the clay, and this is my own personal interpretation: I think it may be symbolized by bones in person’s feet and the tissue covering the bones. This reminds me of so called democratic governments today. All nations of the world including democracies have a hidden dictatorial iron core of rule which is covered by the democratic (clay) process. GWB told the American people they had no say in his invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. It would happen no matter if the vast majority of the American people were against it. That’s democracy?

Daniel 2:44-45  And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

The Stone cut out of the mountain without hands represents the Lord Jesus Christ. His coming will break in pieces the kingdoms of this world, the existing governments of man, and He will set up His kingdom on earth to replace them. This, I believe, is very close the time we are living in now! When will it happen? I’m not into date setting but I can’t see how the world can last much longer the way it’s going! I see judgements on nations that have legalized abortion and are promoting the LGBTQ agenda, judgements such as fires, floods, extreme heat in the summer, extreme cold and snow in the winter, tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes. It was Obama who was the first American president that came out with his acceptance of gay people, and Biden has taken it to a whole new level promoting transgenerism. And besides abortion and the LGBTQ agenda, I’m hearing a lot more evil going on, things I cannot ennumerate in this article. If you have seen the “Sound of Freedom” you know what I’m talking about.

Let’s all be busy for the Lord in service to His Kingdom so we will not be ashamed at His coming!

Revelation 22:20-21  ¶He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.




Balanced View of Popes – NAZI POPES – Part 2

Balanced View of Popes – NAZI POPES – Part 2

If you missed part 1, please read it before this.

by Sherman H. Skolnick
April 20, 2005

ACHTUNG!

If you have frayed nerves or a weak stomach, you should press DELETE now and take your nerve pills.

You may or may not well digest what you read here.

A well-informed author on the topic of the Vatican is reportedly coming out with a well-put-together book, showing that the late Pope John Paul 2nd worked for the Nazi Gestapo in Poland during World War Two. He rounded up Polish Resistance Fighters and turned them over to the Nazis who had them shot, so the book contends. Some. however, survived.

Questions remain, of course. WHY did the author wait so long to come out with this book?

Some belatedly contend that secretive German funds possibly post-war surviving Nazis arranged for and financed the clandestine Conclave that installed Wojtyla as Pope John Paul 2nd.

Remember: the Anglo-American Aristocracy financed the rise of Adolf Hitler as a bulwark against the Soviets.

Enforcers for the Vatican are called Jesuits. The head of the Jesuits, although he is NOT a person of color, is nevertheless called the BLACK POPE. Over the centuries, Jesuits, hiding behind royal court types with Jewish names, called hofjuden, sought to control if not topple various European monarchs, most of them Catholics.

So by Royal Order, Jesuits were banished from Spain, France, and a few other places. Hiding behind others, the Jesuits actually went underground, continuing to plot to control Monarchs. In America, the Jesuits have Hollywood hofjuden (Court Jews) as a front. Hollywood angers Christians by not showing films about non-Jewish holocausts.

Jesuits also hide behind aristocracy fronts, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR.

In his Inauguration speech in 1841, President William Henry Harrison directly angered the Jesuits.

He dared confront the Jesuits and then Pope, by proclaiming:

“We admit of no government BY DIVINE RIGHT, believing that so far as power is concerned, the beneficent Creator has made no distinction among men; that all are on an equality, and that the only legitimate right to govern, is upon the expressed grant of power from the governed.”

Thirty-five days later, for the benefit if not actually arranged by the Jesuits and the British Monarchy, President Harrison was poisoned to death.

All told, SEVEN U.S. PRESIDENTS were assassinated from 1841 to 1963, as orchestrated if not actually arranged by the Jesuits and the British Monarchy. four by gunfire, three by poisoning.

Seldom more publicly mentioned, is that over the last two centuries and more, various Jesuits and Popes have labeled the Declaration of Independence as “wickedness”, and that Popular Government, provided by the U.S. Constitution with its Bill of Rights is a “satanic instrument”.

Are we Americans heading for Nazi doctrines if not actually here already?

It is documented beyond dispute, that Prescott S. Bush, Sr., father of George Herbert Walker Bush, and grandfather of George W. Bush, had instrumentally financed the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The term Homeland Security is an anglicized version of the abbreviated German term Gestapo.

Adolf Hitler, 1933,, and George W. Bush, 2000, and repeated in 2004, were installed in the highest office of their nation by arbitrary and corrupt powers.

The new Monarch in the Vatican, Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict 16th, was immediately whitewashed by the liars and whores of the oil-soaked, spy-riddled, massive tax-cheating Monopoly Press. They described his past as his father was so Anti-Nazi that he had to move to another town.

Actually, Joseph Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth and his family were apparently pro-Nazi.

Over the many years, Germany repeatedly attacked France. So French Catholics are appalled, if not angered, that Joseph Ratzinger is the first German Pope in over one thousand years.

Before the 1960 Election, John F. Kennedy spoke in Texas to a group of Protestant preachers. He said he is only nominally Catholic and that if elected, he will not bow down for the Vatican. Right there, such a bold statement was JFK’s Death Warrant. In 1961, shortly after being Inaugurated, President Kennedy reluctantly went along with a plan left over from the Eisenhower Administration, to attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

The Cuban strongman, Fidel Castro, was and is a Jesuit, hiding behind a left-wing label. Castro never disbanded the Catholic Church in Cuba. Under Vatican Canon Law, a Catholic leader of a nation, like JFK, that attacks another Catholic leader and nation, is subject to a Death Warrant.

What Catholic countries want a pro-Nazi Pope?

South America has many such. Included is heavily Catholic Argentina. Toward the end of World War 2, various Nazi war criminals, using Vatican-supplied passports and disguises, escaped down the “Ratlines” to Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and elsewhere in South America.

German submarines loaded with Nazi gold also arrived in South America. So the children and grand-children of escaped Nazis, with their fortunes, dominate the Catholic Church throughout South America. Pope John Paul 2nd was viciously against so-called liberation theology of some South American and Central American archbishops, who sought to cater to the “shirtless ones”.

Such Catholic Church leaders were rooted out, in some instances, assassinated, apparently on the dictates of Pope John Paul 2nd, ostensibly through his enforcer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Centuries ago, at the behest of the Vatican, was the bloody, horrible “Inquisition”.

  • Does it still exist today? Yes, its existence since 1981 was, like centuries ago, to punish “heretics”. Its title is now something like Promoting The Faithful.
  • And who has headed this latter day “Inquisition”? Why, none other than pro-Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict 16th.
  • Was it just a coincidence that Joseph Ratzinger was selected as the new Pope, April 19, 2005, a day before Adolf Hitler’s birthday?
  • What is the result of part of the planet going back to rule by Nazis?



Balanced View of Popes Part I – by Sherman Skolnick

Balanced View of Popes Part I – by Sherman Skolnick

Recently, two of my friends have tried to sell me the theory that Satan’s New World Order is a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy. One friend says that it is, “run by globalist banksters, whom Jesus called the synagogue of Satan.” Another friend told me to check out a website by Timothy Fitzpatrick that tries to discredit the Jesuits, the Vatican, and the Black Pope as the true rulers of the world. Fitzpatrick calls it “the Jesuit conspiracy meme.” His article contains name-calling, false dichotomies, ignorance of true history, ignorance of the true character of the Catholic Church corporation, ignorance of the Counter-Reformation, ignorance of how the Jesuits operate, and just plain lies. And just who is Timothy Fitzpatrick? I can’t find his bio anywhere. He may be a Jesuit coadjutor!

But thanks to Fitzpatrick’s article, I was introduced to Sherman Skolnick, an investigative journalist from my hometown of Chicago. There must be something good about Skolnick because the long-time mayor of Chicago (1955 – 1976) Richard J. Daley, hated him for investigating judicial corruption! Daley was an Irish Roman Catholic democrat. From 1893, nine Irish Catholic mayors ruled Chicago!

“Sherman H. Skolnick (July 13, 1930 – May 21, 2006) was a Chicago-based activist. Skolnick’s investigations put Otto Kerner Jr. in prison for three years; and led to the resignation of two Illinois Supreme Court justices, Roy J. Solfisburg, Jr. and Ray Klingbiel, who, as Skolnick reported, had accepted bribes of stock from a defendant in a case on which they ruled.” (Source: Wikipedia)

I reject the Jewish-Masonic / International Bankers, conspiracy theory because that’s where I was at in my worldview for decades! Been there and done that. Yes, there are some Jews, some Zionists involved, and yes, international bankers, globalists, Masons and other members of secret societies have a role to play, but these guys aren’t at the very top of the pile of evil in my worldview. Mystery Babylon ruling world empires through the centuries up to the present day through the Popes of Rome, the Jesuits, and the Vatican makes a lot more sense to me from a biblical point of view. Rome was the last empire of Daniel chapters 2 and 7. The fourth empire ruled the earth, “Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” – Daniel 7:22. The Lord hasn’t come yet. Conclusion: The Fourth Empire, Rome, is still ruling the earth. It’s officially called, “The Holy See”.

If you have any neo-Nazi propaganda videos for me to see, I definitely will not see them. I believe antisemitic rhetoric is primarily fueled by the Jesuits to deflect blame from what they themselves are doing.

BALANCED VIEW OF POPES

Part One
by Sherman H. Skolnick
April 04, 2005

Having financial hang-ups, the spy-riddled, oil-soaked, heavily tax-cheating Monopoly Press cannot bring you a balanced view of any subject. If you are well informed, you certainly know that.

So, some will like what they read here. Others will not.

Before he became Pope, he was Papal Nuncio in Berlin. Some contend he was supportive of the rise of Adolf Hitler. For some years before, during, and after World War Two, he was Pope Pius 12th.

  • Some authors accused him of being pro-Nazi. “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII”, by John Cornwell,1999.]
  • It is beyond dispute that after World War Two, Pius assisted wanted war-criminal Nazis to escape down the “Rat-lines” to the U.S. South America, and Croatia. [”Aftermath” by Ladislas Farago.]
  • As a young man, he was a theater expert and actor. During his later career, was he just acting as well? During World War Two, he held a position in a facility of I.G. Farben, the Nazi poison gas factory, part of a chemical cartel. [For background, “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben” by Joseph Borkin.]

Karol Wojtyla was a sort of chief assistant to the Bishop of Krakow, who being pro-Nazi, controlled fellow Poles with an iron fist and kept them submissive and docile for the benefit of the German occupation forces.

Later, far too many Poles claimed they knew nothing of the round-up of the Jews from the ghettoes and transporting them to concentration camp for slave labor for I.G. Farben.

Millions of Jews, labor leaders, and other “enemies of the State” were worked to death while being starved. Elderly and disabled Jews were quickly disposed of; they were of no use in the Nazi war factories.

Most Poles later either denied knowing of this when it was happening or claimed they did not participate in the crimes against humanity. Presumably, Wojtyla took the same position as his fellow Poles. In his later career, did anyone in the Monopoly Press ever dare ask him?

Then there is the story of another one. In 1978, in their secret Conclave, the Cardinals selected another Italian to be Pope, John Paul 1st. But, soon it became evident from a geopolitical and religious standpoint, they most likely made a wrong selection.

He soon enough let it be known that he was for modifying the Vatican position of absolute prohibition for Catholics to use birth control. In simple terms, he was against birthing more children than a couple could financially take care of. It was a reasonable, humane position to non-Catholics.

Furthermore, he was determined to put an end to the traditional Sicilian and Italian Mafia, jointly with certain corrupt Archbishops, and the American CIA, in using the Vatican Bank as a money laundry for stolen gold treasuries, dope money, illicit weapons deals, assassination funds, and superior counterfeit currency dealings, among other dirty, bloody business.

Some Italian editors dared demand that Pope John Paul 1st, do something about the Continental Bank of Chicago, the majority owners jointly being the Vatican and the Queen of England.

The bank, some Italian editors stated, was a laundry for the Mafia.

[As we dared point out publicly, the Chief Judge of the Chicago Federal Appeals Court, Walter Cummings, Jr., was a “man of trust” for the Vatican, and held a large block of shares, as nominee and front man for the Pope. Judge Cummings, a banker-judge, did NOT disqualify himself when his Continental Bank and their major clients were litigants in his tribunal. Guess who won in his crooked Court?]

[As predicted accurately by this writer, Continental Bank collapsed in 1984 and was taken over later by Bank of America owned jointly by the Jesuits and the Japanese underworld, the Yakuza.]

Thirty-three days after taking office, Pope John Paul 1st was poisoned with a cup of tea. It was a symbolic warning and death warrant by the Free Masons, the Jesuits, and Opus Dei, the super-fascist, super-secret group (by 2005, Opus Dei occupying their own large building in New York city). [More details of the plot against Pope John Paul 1st in the book “In God’s Name” by David Yallop.]

Thereafter, the Vatican secret Conclave of Cardinals put together a scheme, with the urging of the American CIA, to topple the Soviet government.

To understand the rationale, you have to have a good understanding of history. The Anglo-American Aristocracy financed the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, as a bulwark against the Soviets.

In the beginning, the Prussian/German Aristocracy was reluctant to finance Hitler.

With his background with the pro-Nazi Polish Bishop of Krakow, Wojtyla was a suitable and forceful Anti-Communist.

But he lacked humanity for Italians. In 1979, there was a terrible earthquake in the historically impoverished southern part of Italy. The destitute Italians demanded that John Paul 2nd, the new Pontiff, relieve some of their suffering, by sending them financial aid from his Mafia/American CIA controlled Vatican Bank. The Pope refused.

John Paul 2nd kept censored, as best he could, through his helpers, Vatican Intelligence, of the growing scandal of international swindler Michele Sindona operating through the Vatican Bank and the Vatican-owned Continental Bank of Chicago. [See “St. Peter’s Banker” by Luigi DiFonzo.]

Starting about 1980, the American CIA jointly with a deal with the bosses of Time Magazine, arranged tremendous secret financing for their paid-for Polish provocateur, Lech Walesa. As a leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement, Walesa stirred up the workers at the Lenin Shipyards at Gdansk.

As the Soviets understood it, Pope John Paul 2nd, by his statements and speeches, jointly with Western paid-for provocateur Lech Walesa, was stirring up fellow Poles in rebellion against the Moscow government. To the Soviets, Wojtyla was a rotten intermeddler, considering how many Soviet lives were lost in freeing Poland from the Germans.

In May 1981, a deranged supposed left-wing Turk, was grabbed after reportedly being the “lone assassin” attempting to kill Pope John Paul 2nd by shooting him in the abdomen right in Vatican Square.

Thereafter, two opposing spy shops released supposed details that the other side instigated the would-be assassin. The American CIA planted a flood of apparently phony details that the Bulgarian Secret Police were accomplices of the Turk in Italy and maybe even right in Vatican Square.

Various international inquiries tended to show the CIA stories had no basis.

On the other hand, the Soviets planted stories that seemed to have “legs”. The Soviets made a compelling case that the supposed deranged Turk was part of a RIGHT-wing Military group in Turkey financed by the American CIA.

These two versions tended to cancel each other out. Left unanswered were questions that the Polish Solidarity Movement was reportedly not receiving the funding promised them by the West.

So wounding Wojtyla right on the grounds of the Vatican, was perceived by savvy folks as a way of reminding the West to send more money to the Solidarity Movement. Or, maybe it was just a leftover warning for the Pope to be sure to keep covered up the Sindona scandal. After all, some claimed Sindona’s main efforts in accounting were to whisk huge Italian business funds out of Italy to escape the tax collectors. Or, wounding the Pope was a way for the southern Italians and the Sicilians to remind the Pontiff not to be so stingy refusing earthquake relief funds in 1979.

Compare the following with the position of the murdered Pope John Paul 1st regarding possibly modifying the Church’s position on birth control. When Pope John Paul 2nd visited Mexico, implicit in his statements was that he was urging Mexicans to go full speed ahead in fathering children.

Yet, Mexico City, for example, is over-populated with more than 32 million inhabitants. The authorities have no funds left for sanitation. So the streets in many poor sections become the toilet and dumping grounds. It makes for a terribly unhealthy situation. The Pope offered no remedy, only being interested in more members for his Church.

Over a number of years, Pope John Paul 2nd made apologies for various historical crimes of his Church.

For example, in 1492, Columbus landed in the new world. Thereafter, the Catholic Church committed terrible crimes against the natives of Mexico and Central America and black and other slaves. Five hundred years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul 2nd visited Central America and made apologies for the crimes of five hundred years previous. To some it was an idle gesture.

And the Pope visited a memorial to the Holocaust in Israel and made apologies there. To some, it was an idle, worthless ceremony.

Seldom mentioned in Pope John Paul 2nd’s efforts to topple the Soviet Union, was the more important purpose of the Vatican. That is, to smash, if possible, the Eastern Orthodox Church, a competitor if not enemy of the Vatican for more than a thousand years.

Some people conveniently forget a few things. Such as, Popes up to the beginning of the 19th Century, threatened to throw members out of the Church, excommunicate them, for daring to say the Earth is not flat.

That is, the Vatican was the headquarters of the Flat Earth Committee.

  • Also, did any Pope ever urge scientific progress in medicines, healthcare, transportation, and communications?
  • Or urge progress in laborsaving machinery so human beings would not be just above a pack animal?
  • Why does it seem the Popes have their Church in full reverse gear instead of forward and progressive?



What is the “Water as a Flood after the Woman” from the Mouth of the Serpent of Revelation 12:15?

What is the “Water as a Flood after the Woman” from the Mouth of the Serpent of Revelation 12:15?

I believe the flood is a flood of lies.

When I was young, I would never have believed that my government would ever lie to me. When I was 18, if someone even suggested the government is lying about anything, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have thought the source was parroting some communists to cast doubt on the credibility of the government. I trusted what the authorities had to say. That was before I got saved by the Lord Jesus Christ and knew the truth of the Bible. I came to realize that the government isn’t perfect. Governments are part of the world that Jesus Himself called evil.

John 7:7  The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.
John 17:15  I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
Galatians 1:4  Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

Please don’t get me wrong. I believe governments are necessary. The heart of man is wicked. We need laws and law enforcers. Since I moved to the Philippines in June of 2023, I haven’t heard of any local crimes. I see people leaving their motorcycles with the engines running. I see unlocked bicycles. I also see guards and law enforcers carrying guns and rifles! Jesus said in Luke 11:21  “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:”

What I’m saying is we need to put our trust in the Lord most of all, base our thinking on the Bible, and not look to the government as our standard of morality. A new law in California forbids teachers from telling parents that their child is seeking to change his or her gender! School teacher Jessica Tapias lost her job for not obeying that law. I say to her, “Bravo!”

Christians should not obey authorities when laws are in violation of our morals and faith! We have a duty before God to protest evil to government authorities! Ecclesiastes 8:2 says, I counsel thee to keep the king’s commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God. We must not obey ungodly orders from the government that violate Christian morality.

Sad to say, all governments use propaganda to control their people. The 1994 Rwanda genocide of the Tutsi people would have not happened without the cooperation and complicity of the common people! Authorities told them to kill the Tutsis, and that’s what they did. And the Catholic Church was complicit in the genocide but Pope Francis only apologized for 23 years later in 2017! And remember how the common German people were deceived by the wicked criminal Nazi government of Hitler. They believed Germany had a right to conquer and take over Europe. The same thing with the Japanese in World War II thinking they had a right to take over East Asia. They believed their emperor was a god and laid down their lives for him. Satan deceived them with a flood of lies which washed them away.

And of course, false doctrines and heresies abound in the world today. They are too innumerable to count. We must stay grounded in the Word of God lest we be led astray by something we hear on the news or social media. If you wondered why I’m not posting on this website everything I hear that sounds like an evil conspiracy, that’s why. I’m going to stick with what I know to be true. There’s a lot of disinformation on the Internet. Just remember how Alex Jones got in trouble for repeating falsehoods he heard about the Sandy Hook massacre.

Also remember, the government and medical facilities are not responsible for our health, we are! People vaccinated for Covid still became ill with Covid in spite of the fact the government said they would not if they get vaccinated. The governments of the world claimed the vaccine was “safe and effective” and yet I’ve heard many sad testimonials of vaccine injuries.

Doctors don’t always give us the right advice. Doctors on Guam gave my wife Tess contradictory advice about the joint pain in her knee. A doctor in the Philippines gave her an expensive shot that did absolutely nothing to heal her chronic pain. We are seeking the Lord for what is best.

What Bible commentator John Gill has to say about Revelation 12:15:

John Gill (23 November 1697 – 14 October 1771) was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian. He was also the first Baptist pastor to write a commentary on the entire Bible. His interpretation of the prophecies of the Books of Daniel and the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 are in agreement with most of his contemporaries who held to the Historicist school of interpretation. Sad to say not very many Christians today know what John Gill and his fellows had to say. Their voices have been drowned out by John Nelson Darby’s Futurism. Why would Darby be promoted over John Gill? Undoubtedly it was because of the insidious work of the Jesuit Order! The Jesuit’s plan is to bring the “separated brethren” back to the fold of the Pope. Will you follow them? I’m not.

John Gill calls the water as a flood from the mouth of the serpent of Revelation 12:15 false doctrines and heresies:

As the words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, (Proverbs 18:4); and doctrines, good or bad, may be so called; that flood of errors and heresies, which were poured in between the times of Constantine and the rise of antichrist may be here intended; such as the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ; the Nestorian heresy, which divided his person; and the Eutychian heresy, which confounded the two natures in him; and the Macedonian heresy, which took away the deity of the Holy Ghost; and the Pelagian heresy, which destroyed the grace of God, and set up the power of man’s free will: and this flood of errors and heresies may be truly said to be cast out of the serpent’s mouth; since the old serpent, the devil, is the father of all lies, and errors: and the above heresies are the doctrines of devils, and damnable ones; and were designed by Satan to destroy the souls of men, and ruin the church.

What Bible commentator Matthew Henry has to say about Revelation 12:15:

Matthew Henry (18 October 1662 – 22 June 1714) was a British Nonconformist minister and author who was born in Wales but spent much of his life in England. He is best known for the six-volume biblical commentary Exposition of the Old and New Testaments.

This is thought to be meant of a flood of error and heresy, which was breathed by Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, and many more, by which the church of God was in danger of being overwhelmed and carried away. The church of God is in more danger from heretics than from persecutors; and heresies are as certainly from the devil as open force and violence.

What Bible commentator Matthew Poole has to say about Revelation 12:15:

Matthew Poole (1624 – 1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian.

And the serpent; the devil, the old serpent, mentioned Revelation 12:9, being able no longer to execute his malice as a dragon, by the civil power of the heathen emperors, tearing Christians in pieces, but discerning the church secured by the special providence of God, went to work another way.

Cast out of his mouth water as a flood; corrupting the judgments of several persons, who, out of the abundance of error in their hearts, preached corrupt doctrine. Such were the followers of Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, Pelagius, &c. The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, Proverbs 18:4. The mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things, Proverbs 15:28.

That he might cause her to be carried away of the flood; on purpose to ruin the church: and, indeed, such were the ill effects of these heresies, that he who is but meanly versed in the history of the fifth age, will see reason to adore the providence of God, that the Roman emperors, upon the sight of them, did not again turn pagans, and add their force to the malice of these pretended Christians against the sincerer part of the church.