Anti-Catholicism

“ Such often end with a special preoccupation of hatred which takes the place of their older allegiance, and they become more concerned with the destruction of Catholicism than with the preservation of their country or the defense of lay rights or their delight in that repose of not-thinking, which is the Modern Mind's especial lure and value for weary man. But the three moods themselves are not specifically and consciously anti-Catholic; they are not so by definition nor to their own knowledge. They appear so only indirectly and usually by reaction against Catholic effort or advance. ”

“ We all know how the world has turned this mighty weapon against the Catholic Church. To create an anti-Catholic opinion, to surround the Church—its authority, its practices—with an atmosphere of prejudice and antagonism has always been the aim of the non-Catholic press. ”

“ It is a great organization against liberty, against man's rights, against man's conscience, for the honor of a church and of a man. And this we must resist, too. In my country, I declare that the cause of all our ills, the fact that is at the basis of all our suffering and all our misfortunes, is nothing else than Roman Catholicism. This is against the conscience of many souls; this throws many people into sheer Atheism, because they see no choice between kissing the shoe of the Pope, as is done in ceremonies, and denying the existence of God. So they deny God rather than submit to the Pope. ”

“ Have not her priests made this land ring with the assertion, that Infidels and Protestants have no right where Catholicism is triumphant.
But who is she that has the audacity to proclaim such principles? A church, which has been dripping with the blood of innocence for ages, yet is thirsting for more. Who are they that prate about chastity? A body of the most corrupt, unprincipled, and licentious priests that ever disgraced the name of religion. The cold dissoluteness of the Catholic orders is not only undeniable, but it is even frightful. ”

“ That church covered Europe with cathedrals and dungeons, and robbed men of the jewel of the soul. That church had ignorance upon its knees. That church went in partnership with the tyrants of the throne, and between those two vultures, the altar and the throne, the heart of man was devoured.
Of course I have met, and cheerfully admit that there are thousands of good Catholics; but Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot. ”

“ Here, Florry, you have the clew to my anti-Romanism. I fear the extension of papal doctrines, because liberty of conscience was never yet allowed where sufficient power was vested in the Roman Catholic clergy to compel submission. To preserve the balance of power in ecclesiastical affairs is the only aim of Protestants. We but contend for the privilege of placing the Bible in the hands of the masses—of flashing the glorious flambeau of truth into the dark recesses of ignorance and superstition—into the abysmal depths of papal iniquity. ”

“ It has grown up, ever since England's apostasy, in an anti-Catholic soil, in an anti-Catholic atmosphere, and from an anti-Catholic stem. It is essentially anti-Catholic, and tends, wherever it comes in contact with Catholic feelings and principles, to sully, infect, and utterly corrupt them. Sound knowledge, a sound head, strong faith, and great grace—all these combined—may indeed preserve one whom the necessity of his position may lead into un-Catholic schools ”

“ By simply accepting the inheritance of the mediæval theory of the religious unity of the empire, they would have been its victims. By asserting that persecution was justifiable only against error, that is, only when purely religious, they set up a shield for themselves, and a sword against those sects for whose destruction they were more eager than the Catholics. Whether we refer the origin of Protestant intolerance to the doctrines or to the interests of the Reformation, it appears totally unconnected with the tradition of Catholic ages, or the atmosphere of Catholicism. ”

“ Individuals attached to one or more of these three moods, Nationalism, Anti-Clericalism and the Modern Mind, are often led into direct and personal hatred of the Catholic Church because that organization has clashed with the object of their devotion. ”

“ When that is done the days of superstition, of arrogance, of theology, will be numbered. It is very laughable to see a Catholic quoting scientific men in favor of Moses, when the same men would have taken great pleasure in swearing that the Catholic Church was the worst possible organization. That church should forever hold its peace. Wherever it has had authority it has destroyed human liberty. It reduced Italy to a hand organ, Spain to a guitar, Ireland to exile, Portugal to contempt. Catholicism is the upas tree in whose shade the intellect of man has withered. ”

“ They have continued to say—it sounded reasonable to them—that though the Prelates of the Catholic Church were not admitted to official ceremonies, yet that was but a point of civic procedure; that the great thing was to convert society again to a universal Catholic spirit and not to trouble about details of etiquette.
But the facts have become too strong for them. A battle is by this time engaged, which a man must be upon one side or the other. And when in the last development of Anti-clericalism the movement becomes explicitly one for the destruction of the Faith, they will divide. ”

“ How seldom do we find in the labored essays, the disjointed platitudes, the pretentious diatribes, the ornate editorials, or the epigrams which distinguish our prominent journals a sentiment or an argument based on sound views of morality and religion! With a constituency at least professedly Christian, they bandy with words and phrases, opinions and speculations, essentially anti-Christian. One sneers at the Catholic Church and everything we hold sacred; another patronizes us in a manner more insulting than complimentary ”

“ These elements of strength in the Catholic position act, of course, as irritants to the opponents of the Faith; but they are not the main roots of that Anti-clericalism. Such Anti-Clericalism proceeds, I repeat, from a recognition in the Catholic quite as much as in his opponent, that Catholic life is not normal to a society unless Catholic morals and doctrine be supreme therein. Unless the morals of the Faith appear fully in the laws of that society, unless it be the established and authoritative religion of that society, the Church is ill at ease. ”

“ Deep down in my heart I knew that, with the Catholic Church eliminated from Christianity, the whole fabric tottered and fell, and Christ was stamped with the mark of an impostor and a failure—His life, His wonders, and His death, shams. Instinctively I knew, too, that without the Catholic Church the Christian world would fall to the level of Rome at its worst, and that every enemy of Christ turned his face against her priests. I knew that every real atheist, every licentious man, most revolutionists, every anarchist, hated a priest. ”

“ The parish clergyman or district minister under whom they once sat, the bitter zeal of old ladies who consider Catholicity to be a species of sorcery, priests to be all Jesuits, Jesuits to be one with the devil in cunning and malice, and who know how to insert a sting into the life of the friend who withdraws from their opinions; the quiet humdrum of life in the States or in Europe, so favorable to the status in quo—all these anti-Catholic influences are far away, and there is little substitute for them in California, where there is a singular absence of public opinion and of social despotism. ”

“ I wonder if even human sense, especially in one who claims to be called Christian, fails to see that among these oppressors must be counted those who assault Christian confession and communion with various superstitions. What matters it whether it be a heathen or a so-called Christian who attempts to infringe the genuine tradition of the apostolic rule? Who is so blind that in countries where every heresy has free licence to exhibit its opinions he should deem the liberty of Catholic communion alone should be subverted by those who think themselves religious? ”

“ Instances occurred, where they were strong enough, of their thrusting the clergy out of their own Churches if they wore the surplice, and taking away the bread from the Communion Table because it was in the wafer form. Some fanatics spit in the face of their old acquaintance to testify their utter abhorrence of conformity." And again: [14] "The Puritan clergy, to whom every vestige of Catholicism was an abomination, had succeeded to the intolerance of the Catholic priesthood, to their assumed infallibility, and were now claiming to inherit their spiritual despotism." ”

“ The violent persecution which the Catholic Church in some parts of Europe and South America now suffers, verifies the expression of the Holy Father that anti-Christianity—that is, modern civilization—is incompatible with Catholicity. ”

“ When the Protestant revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited them to dispense with would be the result. ”

“ How has it come to pass that a people who poured out their blood as freely as water in testimony and defence of the Catholic religion, whose history has given innumerable examples of the highest form of Christian heroism in ages past, now follows willingly, or at least submits tamely, to the dictation of leaders who are animated with hatred to the Catholic Church, and are bent on the extermination of the Christian faith, and with it of all religion? ”

“ Protestantism, ecclesiasticism, has been an apt follower of Papacy in suppression of discussion. Witness the systematic world-wide ban on any discussion of Present Truth as presented by God's watchman, Pastor Russell! Ecclesiasticism, priestcraft, had for ages supplanted the worship of God with paganism, and in the Gospel Age has insidiously transformed the Gospel of Christ, has tried to destroy liberty and progress and has built up a gigantic system of oppression and destruction of the friends of the Truth. The most ferocious of the popes are made the “saints” of Satan's church. ”

“ It necessarily opens the eyes of the people to the antichristian doctrine of penance, to the absurdity of indulgences for sin, to the unwarranted worship of the Virgin Mary, to the monstrous claim of papal infallibility, and to all other glaring usurpations by which the popes have ruled the world. There is not a false doctrine in religion, nor an antichristian form of worship, nor a usurped prerogative of the Pope and clergy, which the unrestrained perusal of the Scriptures does not expose. "Hinc illae lacrymae." The dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church are not fools. ”

“ Who are the false prophets we have the most need to be warned against at this present time? Not the professed teachers of heresy, because they are too well known; their doctrine and their principles have lost all attraction for Catholics. Their hatred and opposition to the Holy Church and her doctrines is too violent and untruthful to have any power of attraction for the Catholic heart. I should say they are not wolves in sheep's clothing, but rather wolves in their own skins. ”

“ Every one knows, none better than the leaders of every Protestant sect themselves, that they have no more determined adversaries than we are in their aggressions on the Catholic religion. At the same time, we do not feel called upon to deny them all humane and philanthropic motives, or to denounce them as actuated by mere hatred against the Catholic religion. ”

“ No man has the right before God, however he may before the state, to hold any religion but the one only true Catholic religion, and no one can adhere to any other but at his own peril.
"Yet, with all their boasted liberality, Protestants assert only the liberty to deny the truth, and if their intolerance to Catholicity has changed its form, it has not diminished in its intensity. Their hatred of the Church has in no degree abated. ”

“ It is they who reject the church or deny her authority that have only an arbitrary and capricious human authority, and who abdicate their reason and their freedom, and make themselves slaves, and slaves of human passion, arrogance, and ignorance. The Catholic is the only man who has true mental freedom, or a reason for his faith. ”

“ Then the attempt of the government to destroy the Catholic Church in Germany, by tearing it away from its allegiance to the Pope, and debasing it to a mere function of the state, roused those who might have been disposed to waver, and brought about a universal reawakening of faith. It is the fate of the enemies of God's people to bless when they mean to curse. In fact, when Catholics begin to suffer, they begin to triumph; and hence even those who hate us have of nothing so great horror as of making martyrs and confessors. ”

“ And all this to the end that both the King himself and all the Peers of the realm might be so incensed against Catholics and their religion, as to proceed by laws against the one, as against traitors proved and convinced so to be, and to seek by all means possible, not only to cut down the other as a tree bearing in their opinion such poisoned fruit, but rather wholly to root it out of their earth of England, that there might be no memory left of the name of a Catholic in the land. ”

“ The Catholic Church as an institution was her enemy, and the enemy of all Protestants. "If they could kill you, and not be found out by the law, they'd do it just as quick as wink, because the priest would bail them out of hell for a dollar and a quarter." ”

“ Protestant nations do not now persecute Catholics, as they did in the beginning, from fear of the intervention of foreign Catholic governments, for, strictly speaking, there are no longer any Catholic governments on earth; yet their dread of the Church and hostility to everything Catholic are as great as ever, and precisely because the term Catholic is directly opposed to their denial of objective truth, and their resolution of religion into a subjective sentiment or emotion, varying with place and time, and from individual to individual. ”