Roman Catholics

“ In a much more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with their historical antecedents, their hereditary temper, and their ecclesiastical logic, the Roman Catholics in this country are, in many states, and every great city of the Union, using the tremendous power they possess as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public treasure in a strong current into their own channels, and thus secure an illegitimate support as a religious body. ”

“ Within living memory never had Roman Catholic priests been so active in the work of making proselytes: never had so many Roman Catholic publications issued from the press; never had the attention of all who cared about religion been so closely fixed on the dispute between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. ”

“ Now this epistle containing this doctrine was written by Paul to the Church at Rome, and which these modern people called Roman Catholics profess to be members of. If they are what they profess to be, every one of them have been buried with Christ in baptism, and have risen again to newness of life. ”

“ It is true, it added in the 6th article, that the Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic religion was the religion of the state. Nevertheless, the equality between creeds having been proclaimed first and formally, the distinction granted to (Roman) Catholicism would be, according to the terms of the Constitution, nothing more than a simple privilege of honour, without any hurtful or oppressive privilege, and the Protestants were all disposed to concede the honour of the first place to the Romish church, provided their rights were as much respected as those of the (Roman) Catholics. ”

“ Devotion in Roman Catholicism is totally distinct in its essence from that of Protestantism. The devotion of Protestants is scriptural and reasonable; that of Roman Catholics poetical and affectionate. The Protestant considers God as a spiritual being, and, as such, incomprehensible, the only object of worship, the only p. 103fountain of grace and pardon. The Roman Catholic represents the Eternal in material forms, accessible only through the indirect medium of intercession, and addresses him with the familiarity and tenderness peculiar to the human relations between a father and a son. ”

“ Do Protestants believe this divine fact?
"Reason, it is true," says the Roman Catechism, "and the senses, are compelled to ascertain the existence of the Church, that is, of a society of men devoted and consecrated to Jesus Christ; no faith is necessary to understand a truth which is acknowledged by Jews and Turks; but do Protestants believe the privileges and dignity of the Church as Catholics believe them? By no means, because they have not the light of faith, which alone enables us to say I believe the Catholic Church." ”

“ The most deadly enemies of the Roman Catholics are they who love best their religion as Protestants. When we look to individuals we always find it so, though it hardly suits us to admit as much when we discuss these subjects broadly. ”

“ Catholics hold that Protestants who have these dispositions, and who have no suspicion of their religion being false, and no means to discover, or fail in their honest endeavors to discover, the true religion, and who are so disposed in their heart that they would at any cost embrace the Roman Catholic Religion if they knew it to be the true one, are Catholics in spirit and in some sense within the Catholic Church, without themselves knowing it. ”

“ The world is a whole generation older and wiser than when the father was of his son's age.
So far as I have observed persons nearing the end of life, the Roman Catholics understand the business of dying better than Protestants. They have an expert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, in which they both, patient and priestly ministrant, place implicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unction,—these all inspire a confidence which without this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in over-sensitive natures. ”

“ It is a truth received by all Catholics, as Toumely, a French divine, who writes against the infallibility of the Holy See, expresses it, " That as the Roman and apostolical See is the bond of Catholic unity and of Catholic communion, no man can be held to be a Catholic, unless he be joined with that See in the unity of Faith and doctrine." ”

“ The additional qualification of “Roman” she tolerates, since it proclaims her doctrine of the see of Rome as the keystone of Catholicism; but to herself she is “the Catholic Church,” and her members are “Catholics.”
Yet to concede this claim and surrender without qualification the word “Catholic” to a connotation which is at best only universal in theory, is to beg several very weighty questions. The doctrine of the Catholic Church, i.e. the essential unity and interdependence of “all God’s faithful people scattered throughout the world,” is common to all sections of Christians. ”

“ To complete the harmony of this most desired unity, it remains for Us to address all those throughout the world whose salvation has long been the object of Our thoughts and watchful cares; We mean Catholics, whom the profession of the Roman faith, while it renders them obedient to the Apostolic See, preserves in union with Jesus Christ There is no need to exhort them to true and holy unity, since through the divine goodness they already possess it ”

“ That to fancy the words of consecration perform what the papists call transubstantiation, by converting the wafer and wine into the real and identical body and blood of Christ, which was crucified, and which afterward ascended into heaven, is too gross an absurdity for even a child to believe, who was come to the least glimmering of reason; and that nothing but the most blind superstition could make the Roman catholics put a confidence in any thing so completely ridiculous. ”

“ Free thought and free inquiry in almost any direction are fatal to some vital principle of Roman Catholicism. To match metaphors with his Holiness, they are spiritual sappers and miners, whose strokes tell fearfully among the foundation-stones of the Vatican. ”

“ One must go to the Catholic historians, especially the French, to know the details of the lives of those saints whom the Catholic Church has canonized. Of nothing is Protestant ecclesiastical history more barren than the heroism, sufferings, and struggles of those great characters who adorned the fourth and fifth centuries, as if the early ages of the Church have no interest except to Catholics. ”

“ From this universal and irresistible predominance it results that the entire existence of the Roman Catholic is a continual observance of the worship which he professes, and consequently, that Roman Catholicism, at the same time that it entirely modifies man, must of necessity, in its turn, receive, in some degree, the impress of that temper which nature has bestowed upon him. ”

“ It happened that in those days, as now, the government and people of France were of the Catholic religion. England, on the other hand, was Protestant. There is a great difference between the Catholic and the Protestant systems. The Catholic Church, though it extends nearly all over the world, is banded together, as the reader is aware, under one man—the pope—who is the great head of the Church, and who lives in state at Rome. The Catholics have, in all countries, many large and splendid churches, which are ornamented with paintings and images of the Virgin Mary and of Christ. ”

“ The traditions in the long run have made the papacy; they are its chief support to-day. To accept them bodily, in mass, is to appeal to actual Christendom—to the historic church—as to a standard and law, and not as to a witness of truth. It is to acknowledge the identity of Christian truth and the Christian Church visible. This brings us again to Romanism, or this is the postulate of the Roman Catholic apologist. ”

“ The Roman Catholic part of our population are seemingly content as they are, in their peaceful and quiet homes, where, with their wives and children around them, they are secured by Protestant laws in the right to worship God unmolested and according to their own consciences, as well as in their pursuit after happiness and prosperity. ”

“ Aided by divine grace, they awakened the indifferent, converted heretics, gathered about them the few Catholics who immigrated from Europe, attracted all men by their affable and conciliating manners, their intelligence and education, and the disinterestedness of their lives. Soon on this apparently sterile soil Catholic parishes grew up and flourished in the midst of people who had never before seen a priest. ”

“ Supposing that the question of the Procession could be resolved by explanations on their part, there would only remain the authority of the Roman See to be admitted by them. {263} You again have retained much more than the Lutherans and Calvinists. What you have of good is ours, is Catholic. If persons among you believe in God, believe in the Redemption, lead a holy life, bring forth good works, I do not deny that all this is Catholic in them; if they are ignorant as to the sin of schism or heresy, this, which is good in them, may be sufficient for their salvation. ”

“ We have shown throughout our articles that in every question which the human mind raises, there is no possible alternative—either embrace the Catholic solution, so coherent with reason; or the pantheistic solution, and the death of the intelligence. Now, when we speak of the Catholic solution, we mean of the solution which is given by the church whose head is the Bishop of Rome, for no other pretended Catholic Church gives all the true solutions.
Second, because it is the Roman Catholic Church alone which knows her own essence and attributes. ”

“ There should therefore be no difficulty in distinguishing between the official policy of the Roman See—which has been almost uniformly odious—and the history of the Christian religion in the Latin countries, which has added new lustre to human nature. The Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful and precious kind of human excellence. ”

“ When I say Catholics have logically the advantage over Protestants, I mean that starting from premises which both sides admit, a merely logical Protestant will find himself driven to the Church of Rome. ”

“ We have had some of these degenerate Catholics among ourselves, retaining the name of Catholic as a kind of national and family heirloom, but denying and mocking at all the mysteries of faith, resisting and thwarting the bishops and priests who founded our American churches, and generally crying out for a priest in their last moments, while their relatives are chiefly anxious for the pomp of a requiem, a solemn funeral procession, and a monument in consecrated ground. ”

“ I do not say that he is the founder of the Roman Catholic Church, for that is another question. Roman Catholicism, as a polity, or government, or institution, is one thing; and Roman Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although they have been often confounded. As a government, or polity, it is peculiar,--the result of the experience of ages, adapted to society and nations in a certain state of progress or development, with evils and corruptions, of course, like all other human institutions. ”

“ And so lastly does the name itself of Catholic, which not without reason, amid so many heresies, that Church alone has so retained that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets no heretic will venture to point to his own basilica or house. Since then so many and so great are the very precious ties belonging to the Christian name which rightly keep a man who is a believer in the Catholic Church ... no one shall move me from the faith which binds my mind with ties so many and so strong to the Christian religion. ”

“ But many of its leaders have been among the glories of the Church of England, and I could never speak of them with disrespect.
Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican, stands to lose heavily by the decay of institutionalism as an article of faith. It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally. The Christian virtues, so far as we can see, flower impartially in the souls of Catholic and Protestant, of Churchman and Schismatic, of Orthodox and Heretic. ”

“ The tremendous strength of the Roman Catholic Church lies in its fidelity to principle, in its religious vitality, and in its hatred of compromise. It should be an object-lesson to all Protestant ministers. ”

“ Such is the prayer of the Church Catholic, whether of the Roman or the Anglican branch; it is in spirit and in truth a Christian prayer, fit for faithful mortals to offer on earth to the Lord of men and of angels in heaven. Would that the Church of Rome, preserving, as she has preserved, this prayer in all its original purity, had never been successfully tempted to mingle in the same service, supplications, which rob the one only God of his exclusive honour and glory, as the God "who heareth prayer;" and to rob Christ of his exclusive honour and glory, as our only Mediator and Advocate! ”

“ In spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion, may he see if he has his eyes open! ”

“ Roman Catholicism, however, must be losing ground fast, as the people increase in knowledge and desire to be free from clerical yoke; and it is astonishing to what an extent Protestantism, everywhere tolerated now, prevails in countries formerly so pope and priest ridden. ”