Letter to Pope Pius X, No. 3.

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:

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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, 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 :

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:

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.