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THE LIBERAL ELEMENT AGAINST THE
CHURCH - MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE
Dangers of the Hour
It follows the full text transcript of
Matilda Joslyn Gage's speech Dangers of the
Hour, delivered
on February 24, 1890.
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For one hundred
and fourteen years we have seen |
our country
gradually advancing in recognition of broader
freedom, fewer restrictions upon personal
liberty, and the peoples of all nations looking
towards us as the great exemplar of political
and religious freedom. But of late a rapidly
increasing tendency has been shown towards the
destruction of our civil liberties. The work has
been stealthily carried on for a number of years
under names and purposes which have prevented a
real recognition of the design in view. So
strong has this movement now become that we are
confronted by the fact that our form of
government is undergoing a radical change, with
a well organized body greedy for power pressing
to that end so that centralization instead of
diffused power has overcome the aim and intent
of a large body of people, a fact that can be
traced to the war of the sixties and the
condition of the country immediately afterwards.
Personal freedom is now threatened by two foes,
alike in character although differing in name,
centralization and clericalism, ever the great
antagonists to liberty. The control of questions
which should be entirely left with the
respective States is being gradually assumed by
the United States. It has been said that the war
proved one thing — our nationality. It seems
likely to prove much more — the destruction of
local self government, which is becoming
gradually lost.
This general
tendency towards centralizing power in the
nation is a vast help to those persons who wish
to incorporate certain religious dogmas in the
Federal constitution. The constitution is
superior to all statutory enactments and for
this reason the Christian party in politics is
not content that laws favoring it should be
enacted by Congress alone, but aim to secure a
constitutional amendment of like character.
Albion Tourgee says our conservatism consists in
doing nothing until it is absolutely necessary.
Americans never move until the fifty-ninth
minute of the eleventh hour. The fifty-ninth
minute is now upon us.
There is an
impending struggle greater in its influence upon
humanity than the one fought for freedom thirty
years since. The government is undergoing
changes which are signs of danger. The red
signal is out, if you are color blind and cannot
see it the more the pity for you. An unreasoning
confidence is the chronic state of the people.
To them it does not seem possible there is
danger to their free inheritance. They forget
that liberty must ever be guarded. They forget
the hereditary enslavement, the bondage of the
human will to the church, and thousands bound do
not heed this enslavement, to them it seems
liberty.
In 1889, four new
States were admitted to the union, not one
possessing a republican form of government as
required by the Federal constitution, not one
recognizing the rights of one half their
citizens to self government. The defeat of woman
suffrage was remarkable because in each of these
four States a battle was fought in its favor by
women. The new state of Washington is especially
noticeable as three times under territorial laws
woman had gained and used the ballot. Eighteen
hundred and eighty-nine will not soon be
forgotten by the friends of woman suffrage.
Forty-one years after the first convention
making such demand, four new States which at
that period were unknown portions of the world,
their very names yet to be given, if at all on
geography or atlas, noted as desert lands, but
now possessing tens of thousands of inhabitants,
have this year come into the union denying the
first principles upon which this government
purports to be founded, equality of rights and
self government.
We are told the
country is in a dangerous condition with tens of
thousands uncultured emigrants yearly pouring
onto its shores. We are told our flag is hissed
by anarchists who have 25,000 drilled men at
their command. We are told the experiment of
free government in towns and cities is a
failure, but what danger from ignorant emigrants
so great, what peril from anarchists so near,
what experiment of free government such an utter
failure as the admission of four new States
largely populated by native-born American
citizens, men and women of eastern birth, the
young, the cultured, wide-awake business men and
business women, under denial of the first
principles of freedom?
The danger menacing our country does not lie
with the foreigners, nor the Anarchists, nor in
municipal mismanagement. Free institutions are
jeopardized because the country is false to its
principles in the case of one-half of its
citizens. But back of this falsity away down to
the depths of causes deep in the hidden darkness
of men's minds, must we look for the source of
this perennial wrong. To a person of thought
this is easily found in early religious
training. Men have not yet learned to regard
woman as a being of equal creation with
themselves. Do not yet believe that she stands
on a par with them in natural rights even to the
air she breathes. In order to secure victory for
woman we must unfetter the minds of men from
religious bondage.
We have petitioned
legislatures and congress, we have appeared
before committees with the best arguments
founded on justice, we have educated men
politically, and yet the victory is not ours
because the teachings of the church have stood
in the way. Now our warfare must be upon another
plan, now we must free men from that bondage of
the will which is the most direful form of
slavery, now we must show the falsity of that
reed upon which men lean. In the old
anti-slavery times men did not hesitate to call
the American Church the bulwark of American
slavery. In like manner to-day we shall proclaim
the Church-American, English, Greek, Protestant,
Catholic-to be the bulwark of woman's slavery.
Man trained by the church from infancy that
woman is secondary and inferior to him, made for
him, to be obedient to him, the same idea
permeating the Jewish and all Christian
churches, all social, industrial and educational
life, all civil and religious institutions, it
is no subject of astonishment, if one gives a
moment's thought, that woman's political
enfranchisement is so long delayed.
In the State of Washington where suffrage for
woman had in its territorial days been so long
and so happily tried there were never better
laid plans to bring about its defeat in the new
constitution. Miss Hindman, who spoke throughout
the territory in its favor, says there were
three political parties in the field all as
parties opposed to woman suffrage, even its old
friends among men refusing to speak for it lest
it should delay statehood ; the churches also
refusing to take it up or advocate it on the
specious ground that it was a political
question, those ministers solitary and few who
did favor it doing so not because of justice nor
even because the basic principles of the nation
demanded it, but "that woman might vote for
temperance," or aid some plan of the church.
It has not been without bitter resistance by the
clergy that woman's property and educational
rights have advanced. Woman's anti-slavery
work-her temperance work, her demand for
personal rights, for political equality, for
religious freedom and every step of kindred
character has met with opposition from the
church as a body and from the clergy as
exponents of its views.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat in an editorial of
May 5, 1888, said:
"There is no
more striking anomaly in the history of
civilization than the fact that the churches
have profited in the greatest degree by the
devotion of women, and yet have been among
the slowest of organized institutions to
concede to the sex the rights and advantages
which it has managed to obtain. Most of the
work done for the improvement of woman's
condition as a member of society has been
accomplished, not without a certain measure
of Church sympathy, but without distinct and
aggressive Church support. We refer
particularly to the removal of invidious
legal restrictions, and the development of
sentiments of justice and fairness with
regard to woman's political interests, and
her relation to the philosophy of general
progress."
Many insidious steps by both Catholic and
Protestant prove the church now, as of old, the
enemy of freedom. In 1884, a Plenary Council,
preceded by an encyclical from the Pope laying
out its line of work, was held in Baltimore. The
two points against which the effort of the
church is now chiefly directed, are marriage and
public schools. In its control of these two
questions it has ever found its chief sources of
power. The Pope's encyclical declared that
"civil marriage must be resented by the whole
Catholic world." The establishment of parochial
schools in every parish was also commanded
within two years unless excused therefrom by the
bishop.
In compliance with papal demand the Plenary
Council formulated decrees against marriage as a
civil act, or as under civil authority ; against
marriage with a Protestant, and against evening
marriages. The sacramental character of the rite
was solemnly affirmed, the necessity of priestly
benediction and nuptial mass enforced. But well
knowing the immediate promulgation of its
decrees would rouse public attention to its aim,
these were held in abeyance until such times as
the dignitaries of the church deemed best. Not
until three years later were the canons upon
marriage made known on the Pacific Coast, at
which time the archbishop of San Francisco, the
bishops of Monterey, Los Angeles, and Grass
Valley, addressed a pastoral letter to the
Catholics of that region condemning civil
marriage as a sin and sacrilege, illegal, and a
"horrible concubinage." Marriage with a
Protestant was also forbidden, and marriage
unblessed by a priest it was declared, subjected
the parties to excommunication.
When the territory about my own city of Syracuse
was formed into a diocese, one of the first acts
of its newly appointed bishop was a prohibition
against evening marriages. Archbishop Ryan of
Philadelphia has commanded the observance of
these decrees in his diocese enjoining nuptial
mass etc. The Bishop of Savannah, GA, some time
since issued an order prohibiting marriages
after nightfall, and thus have these decrees
been gradually brought to bear over different
portions of the country.
It must be remembered that the Baltimore council
was a body composed wholly of celibates governed
by the chief celibate, the Pope of Rome, and
that it decided upon a question of which it
possessed no practical knowledge. It must also
be recollected that no woman's voice was heard
in this council in regard to a relation in which
as wife, she takes an equal, and as mother a
superior part. The judgment of these celibate
men was alone to decide upon the form,
obligation, validity and permanence of marriage,
the church threatening penalties for their
non-observance. In the decrees upon marriage of
this council and the preceding encyclical, two
points are especially to be borne in mind.
First, that woman is the chief victim, not alone
the question decided without her voice but its
indissolubility pressing most heavily upon her.
For it must be remembered that while the church
asserts marriage to be an indissoluble
sacrament, her past history shows it to have
been in the power of man, of the husband, to
secure that release from its bonds that has ever
been denied to the wife.
The second point not to be forgotten, is that
the power possessed by the church during the
middle ages was largely due to the control it
had secured over domestic relations, and that no
more severe blow has ever been inflicted upon it
than the institution of civil marriage. This
fact is well known to the church and its
persistent effort to again secure control of
this relation is for the purpose of once more
acquiring the power it has lost in those
countries where civil marriage exists. Wherever
established by the state it has met with
determined opposition by the church. Historians
agree as to the power the church acquired by its
hold upon marriage. Lecky says that when
religious marriages were alone recognized they
were a potent instrument in securing the power
of the priesthood who were able to compel men to
submit to the conditions they imposed in the
formation of the most important contract in
life.
Draper also declares the secret of much of the
influence of the church in the middle ages lay
in the control she has so skillfully gained over
domestic life. The authority of the church over
marriage has always been especially prejudicial
to woman; it is from teachings of the church,
that in the family, power over the wife is given
to the husband. It is the church and not the
state, to which the teaching of woman's
inferiority is due. It is the church which
primarily commanded the obedience of woman to
man. It is the church which stamps with
religious authority the political and domestic
degradation of woman. It is the church which has
placed itself in opposition to all efforts
looking towards her enfranchisement and it has
done this under professed divine authority, and
wherever we find laws of the state bearing with
greater hardship upon woman than upon man, we
shall ever find them due to the teachings of the
church.
But while I have first referred to the
encyclical of the Pope and the action of the
plenary council, upon this question of marriage,
Catholics are scarcely more greedy for power
over this relation than are Protestants. The
church has ever been a barrier to advancing
civilization; when it was the strongest at the
time spoken of, when it possessed the greatest
control over marriage, civilization was at the
lowest.
The Protestant pulpit is only less dangerous
than the Catholic to the liberties of the people
in that its organized strength is less. The old
mediaeval control of the family under and
through marriage is now as fully the aim of the
Protestant church as of the Catholic. The
General Episcopal convention has not convened of
late years without canvassing the question of
marriage and divorce. In 1886 a most stringent
Canon upon this relation was proposed and
although it failed of adoption, a similar effort
was made at the recent triennial convention in
New York the fall of 1889.
The Rev. George Z. Gray, dean of the Episcopal
Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., is
author of a book in which he asserts, referring
to scripture as authority, that marriage is not
a contract between equals, but an appropriation
of the woman by the man, the wife becoming
merged in him and owing him obedience, the right
of divorce lying alone with the husband, the
wife not an independent being possessing
independent rights, but a veritable slave of the
husband. Not alone the Episcopalians, but
Congregationalists, Presbyterians and other
sects oppose marriage as a civil contract
declaring it a rite to be solemnized by the
church alone, and using influence upon
legislative bodies to have it legally declared a
rite pertaining to the church alone. In 1888 a
committee from the Presbyterian synod of New
York, waited upon the legislature of that state
for the purpose of influencing changes in the
celebration of this rite, requesting the
publication of banns etc., and a bill to this
effect passed both houses but fortunately met
with a veto from the governor.
The clergy of Derby, England, have recently
decided not to accept a marriage fee, in the
hope of thus securing control of marriage by the
church, and expect their example to be followed
by their brethren throughout England. These are
dangerous signs of the times as to the effort of
the church to obtain increased power over the
laity. It is also an attack of the church upon
the state. The courts of this country have
decided that marriage is a civil contract. As
such a clergyman is no more fitted to take part
in it than he would be to take acknowledgement
of a deed, or part in the legalization of any
other contract. In fact a marriage performed by
a clergyman of any denomination should be
regarded as invalid in the light of civil law.
It is an infringement of individual rights, that
either state or church should possess absolute
control over this important relation,-one that
enters the inmost life of the individual persons
contracting it. The parties themselves as
chiefly interested, should hold power over its
forms. When consummated it might be placed upon
record for their own safety as is done in case
of other contracts.
The Grand Jury of the General Sessions, New York
City, 1887, in addition to its presentment in
regard to court accommodations also advanced
opinions that marriage should be taken from
magistrates and the laws so amended as to
require all marriages to be performed by a "duly
authenticated and licensed minister," mayor or
Judge of court record.
While still recognizing the right of the higher
state officials to perform marriages, the
dangerous suggestion of the Grand Jury calls to
memory a canon of the Baltimore council which
directed Catholics to use constant influence
upon legislation in line with church plans. The
other important subject against which the powers
of the Catholic church has ever been arrayed,
and whose touch we are beginning to feel in this
country, is that of secular schools. As an
ecclesiastical body the church is opposed to
general education and to systems of public
instruction in any part of the world. In
Belgium, in 1879, when the state established
communal schools under its own control the
opposition of the clerical party was strenuous
and bitter. The sacrament was refused to those
whose children or grandchildren attended public
schools; masters of state schools were
excommunicated and communion refused to the
children in attendance. The sacrament of extreme
unction was also refused to parents whose
children were in the state communal schools.
A curious division of penalty upon parents whose
children were in these schools is notable as
showing the opinion of the church as to where
her chief power in ignorance lies-with women.
The parents of girls attending state schools
were excommunicated, but not those of boys.
The stronghold of the church has ever been the
ignorance and degradation of women. Its control
over woman in the two questions of marriage and
education have given it keys of power more
potent than those of Peter. With her uneducated,
without civil or political rights, the church is
sure of its authority. But once arouse woman to
a disbelief in church teachings regarding her
having brought sin into the world; once open to
her all avenues of education, so that her
teaching of the young in her charge will be of a
broader, more scientific character than in the
past and the doom of the church is sealed.
Persecution of like character as that of Belgium
has taken place in Prussia and other countries
where state schools exist. Even here within the
past twenty-four hours the threat of
excommunication by a Catholic bishop, against
the parents of children not attending parochial
schools, has appeared in your city papers.
Instances of like character have come under my
own observation in the city of Syracuse.
In order to maintain its authority over mankind
it is necessary that the church should control
human thought ; freedom of the will has ever
been its most dangerous foe. The theory of the
superiority of the church over the state, the
doctrine that teaching is a function of the
church and not of the state presents itself in
many forms, and during the present session of
congress, has been the ground of the bitter
opposition to efforts for the establishment of a
common school system for the education of all
Indian children. It was the church that in the
interests of Catholicism by the priesthood
opposed the confirmation by congress of General
Morgan and Dr. Dorchester. But let it not be
thought that the Protestant clergy are less
desirous of priestly control over education.
While their efforts have not been as apparent to
the general public, they no less exist, both in
this country and abroad. Frances Lord, an
English literary woman and reformer, at one time
member of the London School Board, says of
England: "The Church still clings tenaciously to
its authority over the teachers of the youth of
both sexes. The head-masters of our great public
schools, like Eton and Rugby, for instance, must
be clergymen of the Church of England. Unless a
candidate for such a post has taken orders, he
has no chance of being accepted. No woman will
be made head mistress of a girl's High School,
if she be not a Trinitarian."
She declares those great universities controlled
by the church stand as bulwarks against the
advance of new ideas, even though they are
deeply tinctured with infidelity.
The school established by Harriet Martineau at
Cheddar, among an ignorant, vicious, neglected
population was ultimately broken up by the
priesthood, although it was accomplishing an
inconceivable amount of good. The Catholic
clergy of France in a similar way destroyed the
schools of Madam Pepe-Carpentier, who was in
reality the originator of the kindergarten
system. When the statute providing for the
admission of women to Oxford was passed in
England a few years since, the Dean of Norwich
characterized it as "an attempt to defeat Divine
Providence and the Holy Scriptures." It is no
less the Protestant than the Catholic clergy
that show themselves opposed to woman's
education, the church, whether Catholic or
Protestant, possessing the same contemptuous
opinion of woman, the same fear of the results
to follow her education, the same teaching that
through her, sin and death were brought into the
world.
In our own country most of the colleges and
universities are presided over by clergymen ;
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all closing their
doors against the admission of girls. Even
Vassar, a university for women alone has a
clergyman at its head.
Dr. M'Glynn asserts that the Roman church
threatens the republic, especially referring to
the efforts of its clergy against the common
school system "things happening which but a
generation ago would have stirred the country to
a white heat of anger." But the efforts of the
Protestant clergy are no less dangerous. It is
the Protestant priesthood now inciting the bills
before Congress to make religious teaching
obligatory in common schools. Cardinal Gibbons
thinks religious and secular education should
not be divorced, but no less does Protestant
Rev. Dr. Hill, in the Forum, also warmly
vindicate the right of the state to compel
religious teaching in the public schools. Dr.
Hodge, of Princeton, a short time before his
death published an article to which the press
referred at time of its publication as very
similar to those presented by the Roman Catholic
clergy. Dr. Hodge declared Catholics had
maintained a sounder and more consistent
position as to education than Protestants had
had the courage to assume. Bishop Littlejohn
characterized Dr. Hodge's paper as an expression
of the views entertained by many thoughtful men,
"a deep and serious dissatisfaction with the
drift of the public schools." Prof. Seeley, a
foremost representative of New England
Congregationalism, has expressed like opinions,
while other Protestant bodies are showing
increasing opposition to a form of purely
secular education. And yet the history of the
world shows that wherever ecclesiastical schools
have been tried, wherever the church has secured
influence above that of the state, the standard
of education has been universally lowered.
Governor Thomas, of Utah, only last fall
speaking of the public schools of that territory
under control of the Mormon Church, says they in
no respect compare with the schools of
Washington, Montana, or the Dakotas but are
practically worthless. The experience of
centuries past and present prove the danger of
allowing a church of any name, the control of
secular education. This not alone because of the
lowered grade of instruction, but also because
of the greatly increased power of the church
over human thought and human will gained by this
means. In the light of past experience all
bills, legislative or congressional, looking
towards compulsory religious education of
whatsoever character, should be most
persistently and energetically opposed.
In November last a Catholic Congress in honor of
the hundredth anniversary of the establishment
of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in this country
assembled in Baltimore. Priests of every degree,
cardinal, monsignors, arch-bishops, bishops,
with hundreds of the laity took part. The whole
tenor of this congress was an affirmation of the
superiority of the church over the state. Among
the notable points of its platform was one
declaring that as the state made no provision
for teaching religion, Catholics must continue
to support their own schools, colleges,
universities already established, and multiply
and perfect others so that a Catholic education
might be brought within the reach of every
Catholic child in the United States. That
resolution points to the first danger, that the
state must teach religion.
The second notable point was shown in the
tendency towards a prohibition of free thought
and free action on questions of labor, and what
is known in Russia as "The will of the People."
It condemned nihilism, the one bright ray in
that land of torture, Russia. Macaulay said of
the French toilers what may be said of those of
many another country, be that country Russia,
England or the United States: "In their
wretchedness and despair there they sat waiting
any leader that might bid them follow." "How far
from that condition now are myriads of our
working men to-day, aye, and working women,
too?" queries that old anti-slavery apostle,
Parker Pillsbury.
The most brilliant leaders of the commune were
women; and was it not just,-woman, the part of
the humanity most debased by church and by
state-woman, upon whom the heaviest weight of
all oppression falls?
"We hear," remarks the Rev. Dr. Channing, "of
the horrors of the Revolution; but in this, as
in other things, we recollect the effect,
without thinking of the guiltier cause. The
Revolution was, indeed, a scene of horror. But
when I look back on the reigns which preceded
it, and which made Paris almost one great play
and gambling-house, and when I see altar and
throne desecrated by a licentiousness
unsurpassed in any former age, I look on scenes
as shocking to the calm and searching eye of
reason and virtue as the 10th of August and the
massacre of September. Bloodshed is indeed a
terrible spectacle, but there are other things
almost as fearful as blood.
"There are
crimes which do not make us shout and turn
pale like the guillotine, but deadlier in
their workings. God forbid that I should say
a word to weaken the thrill of horror with
which we contemplate the outrages of the
French Revolution! But when I hear that
Revolution quoted to frighten us from
Reform, to show us the danger of lifting up
the depressed and ignorant mass, I must ask
whence it came? and the answer is, from the
want of culture among the mass of the
people, and from a corruption of the great,
too deep to be purged away except by
destruction. Even the Atheism and Infidelity
of France were due chiefly to a licentious
priesthood and a licentious court. It was
Religion, so called, that dug her own
grave."
Works, vol. vi., 175, 176.
A third notable recommendation of the Catholic
platform was union of work with non-Catholics,
i.e., Protestants, in order to bring about
certain restrictive laws. It reads thus:
"There are
many Christian issues in which Catholics
could come together with non-Catholics and
shape civil legislation for the public weal.
We should seek alliance with non-Catholics
for proper Sunday observance."
A paper read
during the congress upon Sunday Observance
by Mark B. Tullo, of Cleveland, declared
"what we
should seek is an en rapport with the
Protestant Christians who desire to keep the
Sunday holy."
Cardinal Gibbons
published a book as a contribution to the
centennial anniversary, in which he also
discusses this point of work in unison with
Protestants.
"So far from
despising or rejecting their support," he
says, "I would gladly hold out to them the
right hand of fellowship so long as they
unite with us in striking the common foe."
Thus the Catholic Church places itself in line
with the National Reform Association, the
American Sabbath Union, the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, and with those bills already
before Congress which are conspiring against the
freedom of the people at large. As politics is
said to make strange bed-fellows, so does
conspiracy against freedom unite strange forces.
A fourth notable suggestion of the platform was
one looking to the formation of an exclusively
Catholic associated press agency.
To those who realize the formidable power of the
Associated Press, its capability of creating
public opinion, its ability to report or
suppress the truth, to color or to distort as it
pleases-this recommendation was one of the most
dangerous in the platform.
Fifth: Divorces were declared to be the
plague-spot on our civilization, a discredit to
the government, a degradation of the female sex
and a standing menace to the sanctity of the
marriage bond. It should be noted that this was
the only time that woman or her especial
interests were mentioned during the congress. It
should also be noted that it was under the
offensive term of female, a word solely
applicable to the animal functions which the
church regards as woman's single reason of
existence. The subject of divorce thus far has
been entirely under control of man, whether in
church or state. It is now time that woman
should be consulted, and her opinion obtained as
to the "sanctity" of a relation that brings
sufficient cause for her to seek divorce. Not
alone the rights of woman as wife and mother but
the rights of children demand a home where, if
there is cause for divorce, either through
cruelty, drunkenness, incompatibility of temper
or breaking of marriage vows, it can be
obtained. Believing that the wife is not the
servant of the husband, but possesses equality
of natural rights with him in the marriage
relation, we look upon that portion of the
Catholic platform as a renewed menace to the
growing legal independence of women, and as such
we call especial attention to this point.
Sixth: The key-note of the whole Congress, its
last public statement in line with its general
tendency towards declaring the church to be
superior to the state, lay in that portion of
the platform which demanded that the temporal
power of the Pope should be guaranteed, which
declared that the absolute freedom of the Holy
See was indispensible to the peace of the church
and the welfare of mankind and which asserted
that this freedom should be scrupulously
maintained by all secular governments.
Charles J. Bonaparte discussed this portion of
the platform in a speech, The Independence of
the Holy See, suggesting that the more
important provisions of the "law of guarantees"
might be enforced in a treaty between all the
great powers and thus obtain an international
sanction. He counseled Catholics not to be
passive, declaring that a real solution of the
question must be the universal conviction among
good men of all countries, that to violate it
would be to wrong mankind. "Whether a captive or
an exile, the Pope can never be a subject."
Thus the whole drift of this congress was shown
to be the supremacy of the church and the
restoration to the Pope of the power held by him
in the middle ages when he excommunicated kings,
released subjects from their national
allegiance, held the priesthood of every country
as above the control of civil law, and for the
grossest crimes subject only to ecclesiastical
rule, a system which really destroyed the
national form of every government, making them
but dependencies upon the papal power. The same
view was continued in a speech by the Right Rev.
R. Gilmour, bishop of Cleveland, at the
dedication of the Catholic University in
Washington, immediately following the congress.
He declared it to be a political and social
heresy which assumes and asserts that the state
is all temporal and religion all spiritual. He
declared that no state can or should exist which
does not recognize God as the supreme authority,
that Catholics were willing to accept state
schools as such on condition that the child
should be taught religion and the laws of
morality.
Early this year, some two months after the
centenary, the Pope issued another encyclical,
the most important since his accession to the
throne of the Pontiff. Its chief points were the
declaration of the supremacy of the church over
the state; its order of resistance to the state
if things prejudicial to the church, or hostile
to the duties imposed by religion, or the
authority of Jesus Christ in the person of the
supreme pontiff are commanded. Directions were
given to make politics serve the interests of
Catholicism, that men who promised to merit well
of Catholicism should be supported for office,
the encyclical closing with an admonition not to
criticize the actions of a superior, even when
they appear to merit just censure.
No more thoroughly retrogressive middle-age
document has appeared from papacy during the
present century, none more antagonistic to the
republican ideas of the equality of man with
man, the equal right of each human being to
self-government in all things.
The great danger of the papacy lies in that it
places itself above all civil power; the real
meaning of the word papacy, is religion
in place of civil power, and it is not confined
in signification to the church of Rome. The
papacy exists in the Greek Church of Russia, in
the Anglican Church of England and it is making
an attempt to fasten itself upon this country
through the efforts of "the Christian party in
politics" to introduce an acknowledgement of the
Christian religion and the bible as the source
of all governmental power in the United States.
It is not the Pope of Rome alone who places
himself above all civil power in the demand made
by himself and his followers that he shall be
acknowledged the source of civil and political
power, but the various Protestant sects of this
country are working to a similar end-that the
form of religion known as Protestant shall be
recognized in the Constitution as the source of
all power, instead as now, the people.
The modern democratic-republican idea is the
right of every individual to his own or her own
judgment upon all matters. The
centralized-clerical idea is that no person has
a right to his or her own judgment upon either
religious or political questions. In all that
most deeply concerns the individual he or she is
to bow to the church, embodied in the
priesthood. The laity, unless acting under
specific direction of the priesthood, are not
recognized as possessing right to thought or the
exercise of judgment.
But while in this country there is "less
friction between Catholics and Protestants than
elsewhere in the world," it is because here
religious liberty is based upon civil liberty,
and while, as shown by the Catholic Centenary,
this body is better and more fully organized for
aggressive work than ever before, it is
necessary for us to examine the condition of
Protestantism. In the statements with reference
to Catholic intent doubtless all before me will
agree. We have been taught to watch Catholic
action, while blindly looking upon Protestants
as to be fully trusted. Because of this blind
faith in the purity of Protestant motives, a
belief in their entire devotion to liberty, the
present danger from Protestant effort towards
the destruction of secular liberty in the United
States, is much beyond that of Catholicism. The
same spirit animates each body, the effort of
each is the same, a union of the church and the
state, with the church as controlling power. But
Catholicism has not proceeded as far, has not
taken as decided steps to bring this condition
about, as Protestantism has.
Church aggression is the foremost danger of the
day, and in saying church aggression I do not
refer specifically to the Catholics, but more
emphatically to the Protestants. The Church as a
Church of whatever name is based on the one
central idea, supreme control over the thought,
will and action of mankind.
The National Reform Association is a body of
Protestants, members of many different
denominations, which declares that a written
constitution ought to contain explicit evidence
of the Christian character and purpose of the
nation which frames it. The silence of the
constitution of the United States in regard to
Christianity, causes this body to seek an
amendment which shall incorporate in it a
statement of such belief. As the preamble is
everywhere recognized as the most important part
of a constitution, stating the source of its
authority and the objects for which it is
framed, it is this part of the Constitution that
"The Christian Party in Politics" has selected
for its attack. As it now stands the preamble
reads thus:
"We the people
of the United States in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish
this constitution for the United States of
America."
As amended, after "We the people of the United
States," it would read: "recognizing Almighty
God as the source of all power and authority in
civil government, our Lord Jesus Christ as the
Ruler of nations, and the Bible as the standard
to decide all moral issues in political life, in
order to form a Christian government, etc."
At a convention of the National Reform
Association, 1888, Rev. W. J. Coleman, Professor
of Political Science in Geneva College,
Pennsylvania, spoke upon "The proposed Christian
Amendment." As has many times been done at woman
suffrage conventions, he critically defined the
constitution as
1. "The
constitution of the United States is the
supreme law of the land."
2. "The constitution is the only
authoritative expression of the will of the
people of the United States."
3. "The constitution is the exclusive basis
of statute law, both in the national
government and in the States."
4. "The constitution is a statement of the
principles by which the people have chosen
to be governed."
These statements
of the reverend gentleman will be admitted, and
it is because a constitution is superior to all
statutory enactments that the wary and
Jesuitical National Reform Association, and the
entire "Christian Party in Politics," are not
content with the enactment of laws by Congress
in their interest, but demand a constitutional
amendment, so that their plans may enter the
very basis of statute laws. Moreover with the
wisdom of the serpent it makes the preamble its
point of attack, well knowing that in law, the
preamble is held as the explanatory part-the
dictionary I may say of the whole constitution.
Chief Justice Jay regarded the preamble of the
Constitution of the United States as an
authoritative guide to a correct interpretation
of that instrument (2 Dallas 419). Coke says
(Lit. 796), "The preamble of a statute is a good
means to find out the meaning of the statute,
and is, as it were, a key to the understanding
thereof."
Judge Story in commentaries on the constitution
(vol. 1, book 3, chap. 6) says, "The importance
of examining the preamble for the purpose of
expounding the language of a statute has always
been felt and universally conceded in all
judicial proceedings."
Under this array of authority as to the
importance of the preamble, we easily discover
the reason that the National Reform Association
desires "to amend" the preamble of the
constitution of the United States. Once that is
changed to read as it desires, this association
will possess the power to interpret the whole
instrument in unison with that change. As legal
authorities maintain that the constitution was
not established by the United States in their
sovereign capacity, but by "the people" of the
United States, in attacking the preamble, "the
Christian Party in Politics" works as astutely
as any Jesuitical body on earth. Subtlety,
finesse, intrigue could go no further than the
effort to change the preamble to the
constitution.
At a convention of the Reformed Presbyterians in
Newburgh, New York, 1887, the synod after
discussion of "National Reform" and the question
of acknowledgement of God in the constitution,
adopted this resolution:
"Resolved,
That we will endeavor to teach more forcibly
the duty of our nation to God and the Bible
view of civil government, and will make our
testimony more emphatic against the
infidelity of the civil government, and will
maintain our position of political dissent
in refusing the election franchise to put
into office men who are bound by their
official oath to support the Constitution of
the United States, and we will become
responsible for suffrage only when they
become responsible to Christ by their
official oath."
At the convention
of this sect in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June
1888, resolutions were adopted disowning the
nation as long as it refused to acknowledge
Christ as its king and the synod was directed to
see that members of the congregation did not
identify themselves with the nation by any act
implying allegiance.
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is firmly
united with the National Reform Association. It
is a component part of that body. Its chief
officers are officers of that association. Its
work is the same, as the speeches of its
president and the resolutions of its conventions
fully show. It not only endorses the aim and
ends of that association, but that body depends
more fully upon the work of the W.C.T.U. for
ultimate success than it does upon its own
specific efforts. As far back as 1886 the
leaders of the W.C.T.U. were enrolled among the
Vice-Presidents of the National Reform
Association. At its annual convention, 1888, Dr.
McAllister declared that "movement bound to
succeed through the influence of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union," while district
secretary Gault said, that "The Woman's
Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition
Party had become so entirely National Reform
organizations, that the regular National Reform
organizers had ceased to organize local National
Reform clubs as such, but worked through those
bodies to spread its ideas."
When the purposes of the National Reform
Association are accomplished the consent of the
governed for men will stand where it does among
women today — nowhere.
The first national convention of the American
Sabbath Union was held in Washington, December,
1888. Just previous to this convention the state
of Illinois held a convention of similar purport
at which time two statements were especially
emphasized.
1. That Christians do not keep Sunday as they
ought.
2. That other people do not go to church as they
ought.
Members of the Christian Party have not
hesitated to declare that attendance upon church
should be made compulsory. But as long as the
sun shines the wind blows, flowers blossom and
all nature performs its usual functions on that
day, man should be as free as nature. Sunshine
and storm are out of such people's reach or they
too would doubtless be held responsible. To be
fully consistent the "Christian Party" should
place animals and insects on trial as was done
in Christian lands only a few hundred years
since. The light of advancing civilization has
not yet touched the majority of Christians; the
Christian party in politics is the fifteenth
century living in the nineteenth, its members are
the heathen of the world whom civilization has
not yet touched.
This National Sunday Union, which is another
branch of the Christian party in politics, was
first suggested by Dr. H.F. Crafts in 1887. In
May, 1888, he addressed a memorial to the
Methodist General Conference assembled in New
York, that same General Conference, that in
emulation of the world's anti-slavery conference
in London, 1840, and the world's temperance
convention in New York, 1854, refused to receive
regularly appointed woman delegates. The
Methodist Conference of 1888, having denied to
women the right of representation on the ground
that laymen did not include women, entered
"cordially" into the plan of a National Sabbath
Union. The general assembly of the Presbyterian
church north, the Presbyterian church south, the
United Presbyterian church, the Baptist Union,
the Congregationalists, the Methodist Protestant
church and fifteen others entered heartily into
this plan of organization. In addition the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the National
Reform Association, the various State and
National Sunday Schools, the Knights of Labor,
the body of Locomotive Engineers and the
9,000,000 of the Catholic church, priestly and
lay, men, women, children and the babe in arms,
are all counted as sustaining this union.
As Catholics and Protestants are united in this
Sunday observance demand it has been pertinently
asked which kind of Sunday keeping is expected?
All the Catholic priesthood require is morning
attendance upon mass. This is especially true
in Europe, after which observance the day is
spent as one of holiday enjoyment. Bull-fights
in Catholic Spain, the opera in music-loving
Italy, dances in merry France, drives, sails,
drinks everywhere.
Is this to be the style, or are we to return to
Puritan custom, "Hanging of his cat on Monday for killing of a mouse on Sunday,"
and no one allowed to drive or walk for
pleasure, or for rest. Which Sunday is it to be?
The purpose of this Sunday observance as
directly stated by Dr. Crafts himself is not
that people should enjoy the day as one of rest
from usual labor, it is not for the benefit of
man, but in order to commemorate the work of
creation. The grounds for its demand are purely
religious.
Every law of this character is dangerous because
of the fact that law and right soon grow to be
synonymous in the minds of men. Hon. Sheldon
Amos, former Professor of Jurisprudence in
Oxford University, speaking in regard to certain
evil legislation in England, said: "Whatever law
recognizes and provides for is regarded as
morally right, comes to be so regarded by the
hereditary instincts of the human mind."
It has been clearly proven that the enforcement
of rest at any time, is the enforcement of
idleness, and not only tends to the destruction
of self-reliance but to the increase of crime.
In some branches of business enforced Sunday
rest means overwork the remaining six days, or
as Chauncey Depew says of railroading "somebody
must work harder during the rest of the week
than has hitherto been the case."
While France, Mexico, Brazil and other countries
are getting rid of clericalism and centralized
power, it is one of the mysteries of the age
that the United States seems striving to
incorporate these two systems in her form of
government. This tendency strikes every
observant person, as does also its pretext,
"protection of the people." This theory of
protection has been the assumption through
past ages, governing every attempt for the
destruction of liberty. There are now before
congress several bills and amendments of this
dangerous protective character. Forty-four
amendments to the constitution were introduced
during the fiftieth congress, ranging from the
control of marriage and divorce to a six years
term for the Presidency.
The chief danger of the present situation lies
in the fact that the majority of the people do
not see that there is danger. One friend wrote,
"To me it does not mean that so alarming a state
of things exists, to me it is daybreak
everywhere."
Yes, it is daybreak everywhere; we see its
radiance in Europe, in South America, in Africa.
Peaceful revolutions are rapidly taking place on
two hemispheres, yet just as a dark cloud
shadows some parts of the earth even at break of
day, heralding a coming storm, so while it is
breaking day in many countries, yet over our own
beloved land the fell shadow sweeps, over it
falls the pall of a coming storm. Amid so much
liberty, people fail to see the gradual
encroachments of organized power either in the
church or in the state. But so sure am I of the
coming storm that I cannot believe it will pass
over us without the possible shedding of blood.
The struggle will be fierce and bitter; a man's
enemies will be of his own household, for this
storm will not be, as some surmise, a warfare
between Catholic and Protestant. It will be a
battle of the liberal element against the church
and its dogmas of whatever name or nature. After
a time liberty will triumph, and then and not
until then shall we see a true Republic upon
this soil. As the battle for political liberty
began here so will that for full religious
liberty end here. The conflict we were sure had
gone by will again arise; the decisive battle
has yet to be fought. It seems to me when that
hour has passed there will be no more church
forever, for science and the spirit of free
thought will have destroyed its very
foundations.
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