Religious equality

“ But I have contrived an explanation which has every advantage; is inviting to Christians of every communion; gradually frees them from all religious prejudices; cultivates the social virtues; and animates them by a great, a feasible, and speedy prospect of universal happiness, in a state of liberty and moral equality, freed from the obstacles which subordination, rank, and riches, continually throw in our way. ”

“ We need our moral force, our Catholic spirit, our sense of equality with our neighbors, in order to accomplish much of the good that is before us in both the social and the religious sphere. It will help this spirit of noble independence to become familiar with the history of our church in this country and of its unique achievements. ”

“ As men, citizens, and subjects, we are doubtless equal, and will also stand on a footing of equality before the bar of final judgment; I therefore use the term “religious equality” in order to convey to you the distinction between our relative position as members of the community and as religionists. Being unable (you will excuse my necessary plainness of speech) to recognize you as Christians, I cannot consent to meet you in a way which would imply that we occupy the same religious level. To you there will be no sacrifice of principle or compromise of feeling, in entering our churches ”

“ The fact at all events is that, whether as the result of the attrition, everywhere going on, of dogmatic creeds, or of the growth of the spirit of tolerance, or of indifference, or the rediscovery of charity as a fundamental principle of Christianity, or because toleration is the line of least resistance, or because it best accords with democracy, almost everywhere in modern times in Europe and America religious equality seems to be the condition towards which States are moving. ”

“ The oppressor may contend (like some slave-owners) that he guides his human property better than it would guide itself. But one assertion he cannot make: namely, that God is receiving the loyal homage of a life spontaneously devoted; that a man and not a machine is glorifying God in this body and spirit which are God’s. For the body is but a chattel. This is why the Christian doctrine of the religious equality of all men in Christ carries with it the political assertion of the equal secular rights of the whole human race. ”

“ If religion is moral goodness, a religious organization must be an embodiment of its principles, a practical exemplification of its maxims, and a scheme in measures and policy adapted to extend the observance of its obligations. Such an organization must be consistent with itself, and in harmony with the natural principles of man. In integrity it must be invulnerable; in adherence to right inflexible; in hostility to wrong, uncompromising. It must be the champion of the rights of human nature; the friend of freedom, equality and liberality; the enemy of bigotry, intolerance, and despotism. ”

“ And therefore I respect the religious conviction of every man. I claim religious liberty for myself and my nation, and must of course respect in others the right I claim for myself. There is nothing in the world capable to rouse a greater indignation in my breast than religious oppression. But particularly I respect the Catholic religion, as the religion of some seven millions of my countrymen, to whom I am bound in love, in friendship, in home recollections, in gratitude, and in brotherhood, with the most sacred ties. ”

“ An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. ”

“ To leave that civil society, in which the different sects of religion are now-a-days compelled to live in peace and side by side, and to enter religious society itself, the Christian Church of our days:—what is its actual position with respect to these grand questions which it has to discuss with the spirit of human liberty and audacity? ”

“ That the people have an equal, natural, and unalienable right freely and peaceably to exercise their religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others. ”

“ From these serene heights of Philosophy, Catholic Truth flows into the political, social and economic fields of human life. Our principles on Authority and Liberty, on Capital and Labor, on Family and State, on Marriage and Education are as solid as the rock, and are recognized as such, even by leaders who have a different religious persuasion. ”

“ What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all the privileges of the child of God. ”

“ We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing {214} prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? ”

“ No matter what we claim for the Catholic Church in the theological order—we claim for her in the civil order in this country only equality with the sects, and for Catholics only equal rights with citizens who are not Catholics. We demand the freedom of conscience and the liberty of our church, which is our conscience, enjoyed by Evangelicals. This much the country in its constitution and laws has promised us, and this much it cannot deny us without breaking its faith pledged before the world. ”

“ Though we may profess different creeds and worship in different manners and places, we respect each other’s humanity and expression of faith. People with diverse views can practice their faiths here while living together in peace and harmony, carrying on our Nation’s noble tradition of religious freedom. ”

“ And wherever the Church went, there immediately began to be felt the humanizing effects of Christianity. Liberty, equality, and fraternity was her motto. Liberty for the wife and mother from the thraldom of her lord; liberty for the slave from the yoke of his master; liberty for the sinner from the dominion of the devil. Equality, too, established not by debasing all to an equal grade of servility, but by raising each to a sense of his dignity as a child of God and heir to heaven. ”

“ The law and faith in Jesus Christ—that means love towards our fellow men; it means equality; it means fraternity; it means revolt against the idolatries, in whose name the greatest malefactors are and believe themselves absolved of their crimes by the purchase of indulgences! Only through faith and the practice of the Evangelical law will our sins be remitted. ”

“ When any other man of any other creed, race or color takes his abode among you, teach your children to respect his form of worship. And if they go to the church of the Catholics or that of the Presbyterians or of any other sect, teach them to behave themselves and treat everybody with civility and kindness, and that it is none of their business how these sects worship, teach that they violate good order and good law when they in any way make light of religious exercises. ”

“ Where ordinary virtue fails, one may ask,—Why does not religion come in to bridge the gulf between two races, both of whom, as in the Southern States, worship the same God? Christianity has proclaimed in the most solemn and exalted terms the absolute equality and brotherhood of all men. ”

“ And there has never been a time, with but few exceptions, in some isolated cases, that they had even equal rights among men, either civil, religious, or political;—I say, with very few exceptions, there has never been a time that the representatives of God on the earth, his servants, his Priesthood, his people,—those that carried out the principles of righteousness, and were obedient to his law, observed his statutes, and kept his commandments,—that such a people possessed either their civil, religious, or political rights among men. ”

“ It is this inevitable consequence which impels many among liberal Protestants to reject all external worship, nay, all external religious community, and makes them advocate what they call, individual religion. ”

“ It was the leveling, the equalizing of rank and power that gave the impetus, at first, to those truths which are the pillars of the faith of the Christian nations of earth. “Come, ye who are heavy-laden,” is the doctrine that appealed to the “Common People.” As lasting and as abiding as the faith that we have in the Christian religion, so long and enduring will be the sentiment of the human soul believing in the equality of man. ”

“ If it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting Spirit, it would be easy to adduce illustration in particulars of a man's equality to the church, of his equality to the state, and of his equality to every other man. ”

“ If Christianity has been and is the force in promoting and shaping civilization that we regard it, we may be sure that it is not as a political agent, or an annuller of the inequalities of life, that we are to expect aid from it. Its office, or rather one of its chief offices on earth, is to diffuse through the world, regardless of condition or possessions or talent or opportunity, sympathy and a recognition of the value of manhood underlying every lot and every diversity—a value not measured by earthly accidents, but by heavenly standards. This we understand to be “Christian equality.” ”

“ Since the Christian Religion lives in these times confronting civil liberty, those alone can be efficient champions of religion who at the same time profess fully the Christian Faith and accept with sincerity the tests of Liberty. ”

“ Religion is of such a personal nature, so wholly a matter of conscience, that it cannot be said in any proper sense to be universal. Yet the need of religions sentiment and freedom in development of that sentiment is universal. The state does well to provide security for religious thought, practices and fostering influences in all governmental machinery. ”

“ If we desire to adopt religious life in its entirety and fullness, we must not, we cannot, reject or ignore any particular nation or any branch of God’s vast family. If we embrace all nations and races; if we can take in all religious scriptures, all so-called sacred writings; if we are prepared to do honour to all prophets and the great men of all nations and races; then certainly, but not till then, can we do justice to universal and absolute religion as it exists in God. ”

“ They were men of sterling character, of deep religious convictions, of willingness to make painful sacrifices for the sake of principle, of great reverence for the Bible and the institutions of religion, of purity of life in the home and in their social relations. They believed that religion was the supreme thing and that the commandments of God were of binding obligation upon all intelligent moral beings. ”

“ While these present a Godward side and express the perpetual human need of union and fellowship with the infinite divine Source of all Good, they at the same time testify to a distinctively moral constitution and action of human life. The sense of obligation, duty and guilt appears in the warp and woof of religion everywhere. While with a singular breach with reason religious rites and practices here and there have shown a wide departure from correct moral principles, yet the religious consciousness of the race has been almost a synonym for the action of the moral sense. ”

“ When, however, the State is not permitted to derive any further advantage from religion, or when people think far too variously on religious matters to allow the State to adopt a consistent and uniform procedure with respect to them, the way out of the difficulty will necessarily present itself, namely to treat religion as a private affair and leave it to the conscience and custom of each single individual. ”

“ One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply imbedded in the human heart is that of the natural equality of men.... It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be peculiar to christian times, of one class uplifting another, the happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of the oppressed. ”

“ A natural consequence of the coexistence of religion and ethics in human life has been that each has influenced the other. Advance in the purity and clearness of social ethical ideals has had the effect of modifying not only religious codes but also religious dogmas. The old belief (founded on the conception of social solidarity) that 579a family, tribe, or nation was punished by the deity for the sin of one of its members vanished before the recognition of individual responsibility. ”

“ This land is the birthright of Protestants, wherein those of every religious faith, Catholics, and all others, have equal rights and privileges; but to maintain our liberties, we must educate into the minds of all, personal liberty, and accountability, and leave the conscience untrammeled so far as regards popes, priests, bishops, or ministers, controlling man's future destiny. ”

“ Has the religion of Christ been a disturber of the social organization where social rights were properly understood and regarded? or has it set aside the rights and obligations of men in social life where men were enjoying peaceable, happy relations? Does its legitimate influence make men more wicked and miserable? An honest answer to these questions will commend the religion of Jesus Christ, and do honor to him as our Lord and Master. The Scriptures have been the means of establishing institutions which have stood for centuries. ”