A RECENT editorial in the Christian Statesman headed, “A Glimpse at the Catholic Question,” closes with the following paragraph:—
It becomes us Americans to look at once into the secret plottings of this political church. They are striving with mighty energy to gain control of the whole Government of America, national and State, as well as municipal. The assertion is ventured, without much fear of mistake, that they have already succeeded to an extent that, if known to the people, would turn our faces white with fear and wrath.
The assertion may be ventured without any fear of mistake. Another assertion is ventured without any fear of mistake, and that assertion is that the Christian Statesman and the National Reform Association, of which it is the organ, and the American Sabbath Union, and the Pennsylvania Sabbath Association, with which the Statesman is allied, is responsible in large measure for the success of “the secret plotting” of the Roman Catholic Church to gain control of the whole Government of America, national, State, and municipal. And let it be said before forgetting it, that it illy becomes the Christian Statesman and the political churches and associations which are behind it to speak of the Roman Catholic Church as a “political church,” and of its efforts to secure favorable legislation as “secret plottings” “to gain control of the whole Government.” This is just what the Christian Statesman and its allies have been doing for over a quarter of a century. The only difference is that the Roman Catholic Church has been plotting to gain control of the whole Government in the interests of Roman Catholicism; while the Christian Statesman and its allies have been plotting to gain control of the whole Government in the interests of a system the perfect image of Roman Catholicism. The first by order of the pope has been plotting “to cause the constitutions of States and legislation to be modeled in the principles of the true church.” The second has been plotting to “place all Christian laws, institutions, and usages of our Government on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land.” So similar have been the objects of these plotters that they have found it profitable to play into each others hands. Now that the faces of the editors of the Christian Statesman turn white with fear and wrath at the successful plottings of their “mother,” it is proper to make them fear a chapter in the history of their plotting to gain control of the whole Government of America.
Aug. 31:1881 the Christian Statesman published the following:—
This common interest [“of all religious people in the Sabbath,“—Sunday] ought both to strengthen our determination to work, and our readiness to coöperate in every way with our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens. We may be subjected to some rebuffs in our first proffers, and the time has not yet come when the Roman Church will consent to strike hands with other churches—as such; but the time has come to make repeated advances, and gladly to accept coöperation in any form in which they may be willing to exhibit it. It is one of the necessities of the situation.
As the result of this request for coöperation Cardinal Gibbons in 1888 indorsed by letter the petition for a national law enforcing the observance of the Roman Catholic Sunday. The next year, Nov. 12, 1889, the Congress of Catholic Laymen passed, [338] “with the greatest demonstrations” of enthusiasm, the following:—
There are many Christian … to which Catholics could come together with non-Catholics, and shape civil legislation for the public weal. In spite of rebuff and injustice and overlooking rivalry, we should seek alliance with non-Catholics for proper Sunday observance. Without going over to the Judaic Sabbath, we can bring the masses over to the moderation of the Christian Sunday.
Commenting on their success, one branch of this political church combination spoke thus:—
The National Lay Congress of Roman Catholics, after correspondence and compliance with the American Sabbath Union, passed its famous resolution in favor of coöperation with Protestants in Sabbath reform…. This does not mean that the millennium is to be built in a day. This is only a proposal of courtship; and the parties thus far have approached each other shyly.
The Christian Statesman and the National Reform Association continued to circulate literature among legislative and judicial heads of the Government until finally the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision asserting that “this is a Christian nation,” and in evidence citing the Sunday laws of the several States, “in a document that reads as if largely gathered from the National Reform manual” (Christian Statesman, June 25, 1892). With this decision in their hands the Christian Statesman editors and their allied political churches continued their plotting to gain control of the whole Government of America. They urged upon congressmen that since this country had been declared a Christian nation, since Sunday was the Christian Sabbath, it was the duty of a Christian nation to protect the Christian Sabbath. At the same time they continued to solicit the aid of that other political church, the papacy, and to present the names of her archbishops and bishops in favor of their scheme. To all this was added the political boycott, and congressmen were threatened with political death if they refused to vote for a Sunday law closing the World’s Fair on Sunday. The plotting succeeded. The Government surrendered to these political churches. A Sunday law was enacted. Something the Congress of the United States had, up to this time, utterly refused to do. Not only refused, but declared if it were ever done it would result in the ruin of the American Republic. Here are the words of the United States Senate report on Sunday mails, adopted Jan. 19, 1829, in response to petitions for a Sunday law:—
Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World.
Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. This first effort [to secure a national Sunday law] of the kind calls for the establishment of a principle which, in the opinion of the committee, would lay the foundation for dangerous innovations upon the spirit of the Constitution, and upon the religious rights of the citizens. If admitted, it may be justly apprehended that the future measures of the Government will be strongly marked, if not eventually controlled, by the same influence. All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.
And now that the Christian Statesman and its allied political church have, with the aid of that other political church, been successful in their plottings, that other political church proceeds immediately to tell the Christian Statesman and its “Protestant” allies that Sunday is solely a Roman Catholic institution, and in the matter of the enactment and enforcement of Sunday laws “the Government assumes the right to enforce a religious dogma of the Catholic Church.”
And now after they have made the “proposal of courtship” and the papacy has responded to their adulterous advances, they rise up and with an assumption of immaculate chastity profess to be shocked with the undue liberties taken by that other political church, and assert that they are about to “turn pale with fear and wrath.”
While this political church combination was plotting to gain control of the whole Government of America, and courting that political church, the papacy; the AMERICAN SENTINEL, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church were protesting by voice and pen and telling them that they would one day stand aghast at the ruin they had wrought. While they were picking away at that magnificent break-water, the American Constitution, we exhorted them in the name of American liberty, in the name of humanity, and in the name of Christianity to desist, telling them they were but making a breach through which would flow the angry seas of papal domination and intolerance. But they heeded us not. Now they are turning pale with fear and wrath at the ruin that follows.
And now we continue to stand as faithful watchmen, warning the people of approaching ruin, and calling to them and all men with God’s message of mercy: “Come out of her, my people, that ye partake not of her sins and receive not of her plagues.” Come out of Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. Come out of her daughters, the plotting political churches who have “become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” [338]