Letter to Pope Pius X, No. 1.

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:

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 :

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?

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:

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 :

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.