The Citizen

A NEW ANTI-CATHOLIC WAR

The National League for the Protection of American Institutions. Mr. James M. King, of New York, secretary, has issued what it calls "a petition and a protest against sectarian appropriations for Indian education, and especially against the increase of such appropriations," to the congress of the United States. At first glance this "petition and protest" would seem to be on the line of what is called pure nonsectarianism, but, by examination of the documents courteously furnished by Mr. King, The Citizen is unwillingly forced to the belief that there is a large sized colored gentleman in the woodpile.

The Indian is a creature so essentially different from a Caucasian, or even an Ethiopian, that, in dealing with him, the general policy of our national education must admit an exception. The earliest civilized friends of the red man on this continent were the French Jesuits, and their colaborers of other races. They were, virtually, about the only white people who did not rob the Indian in some form. The success of the Latin Catholic nations in dealing with the Indian problem on both of the American continents is, of itself, a convincing proof that the Anglo-American Protestant nations of this hemisphere have failed utterly in that direction. In fact the only success that has been achieved by this republic of ours in attempting to civilize the Indian has been accomplished by the Catholic missionaries. They have treated the poor savages like human beings, not like wild animals. They have ministered not alone to their spiritual, but also to their material wants. They have had no hand in speculation or jobbery of any kind around the Indian agencies. Every Indian agent, who is not a knave or a bigot, will confess that the Roman Catholic missionaries have achieved more success in dealing with the wild wards of the nation than all the ministers of other creeds combined. The very returns quoted against them by their enemies show this. They get more money from the American government than all the other denominations put together, because they have honestly earned it, and there is where the shoe pinches Mr. King and the other gentlemen of the National League for the alleged protection of American institutions.

The readers of The Citizen are invited to a careful study of the following figures, which show the proportion of appropriations for our Indian schools:

The subjoined table shows the average attendance on these Indian schools under sectarian control for 1890, and the number of pupils allowed for in the grants of 1891:

Mr. King then lets the Know-nothing cat out of the meal sack in the following ingenuous manner:

It will be seen that considerably more than one-half of the amount appropriated by congress to denominational schools among the Indians is given to the schools under the care of one denomination, and this a denomination which has never claimed to represent over one-sixth of the population. Last year in spite of protests three new Roman Catholic schools were specially appropriated for in addition to the already liberal estimates of the department, and it is claimed to be true that although these added schools were not this year found in the Indian Bureau estimates they are expected to be granted. It is also understood that congress will be asked to add still other sectarian schools to the list of those receiving special appropriations.

We make our earnest protest against this misappropriation of public funds. We protest against the legalized friction with the present rational and American theory of the Indian Bureau for common school and industrial education among the Indians with a view of preparing them for self-supporting citizenship, caused by appropriations for sectarian instruction, which in many notable instances has kept the tribes among whom it has prevailed helpless dependents.

The Citizen ventures to assert that if the Roman Catholic denomination were excluded from consideration by the American government, or if any one of the interminable Protestant sects were to stand at the head of the list, there would be no protest made by Mr. King-a gentleman whose abilities are sadly misplaced-and his colleagues. The following legend was once written on the walls of Bandon, Ireland, during the prevalence of that Irish Protestant form of Know-nothingism called Orangism:

Hebrews. Turks and Atheists-
All are welcome here but Papists.

Our Jewish friends have not, so far as we have knowledge, yet attempted to convert the wild red men to the tenets of the Old Testament, but we venture to say that if they had, they would not have found Mr. King's League quite as liberal to them as were even the Bandon Orange men, who only proscribed the Catholics. It is a singular fact that the two great religions from which flow the minor sects of Protestantism-to which, in fact the worship of a personal god in any form owes its being-the Jewish and the Catholic-are the two creeds held in most abhorrence by the products of the so called Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. "Honor thy father and thy mother" was thundered from Sinai when Moses led the Chosen People through the Desert. Does Protestantism in America honor its parents? It does not, we all know. It howls against the Pope without a convincing argument. It howls against Judaism more secretly, because the votaries of that faith are powerful in the realm of finance, and yet it knows, or ought to know, that if Judaism and Catholicism had not existed, there could be no civilization such as that which Protestant America, largely aided by both Jews and Catholics, enjoys today. The Jews preserved intact, down to the days of Titus, the Egyptian civilization and their own, and long centuries of persecution in many countries to which tyranny drove them could not wrest the teachings of Moses and the Prophets from their hearts. The Catholics, the immediate successors of the Jews in point of missionary power, rescued from the brilliant Pagans of Rome, and the fierce barbarians of Northern Europe, who overthrew the Pagan power, much of what was precious in art, in science and in literature. The American Protestants, and the Protestants of all lands, owe the Old Testament to the Jews, and the New Testament to the Catholics. When the British ancestors of Mr. King were stained with ochre and dressed in the skins of animals, if, indeed, they dressed at all, except in very cold weather; the Jewish high priests were preaching in the Temple of Solomon; and when the Angles and the Saxons were mere nomadic tribes, roaming along the shores of the Baltic, as untamed as its waves, the early Catholic missionaries-the immediate successors of the Apostles-were preaching the new dispensation to all nations; and the remnants of what was best and noblest in Roman and Grecian civilization found a sanctuary in the cloister of the monk or the cell of the holy hermit.

The great trouble with American Protestantism is that it thinks it knows everything, whereas it has still almost everything to learn-particularly in the matter of broad toleration. Our great government protects us, poor Catholics, against violent persecutions-we could protect ourselves, perhaps, if forced to it-but it is undeniable that a vehement hatred of Catholicity exists in the bosoms of millions of Protestant Americans, many of them, too, people highly polished, and apparently civilized, on the surface. Mr. King's pamphlet again furnishes evidence of this sad fact. Among the officers of the League we find the once honored name of John Jay, as president. William H. Parsons is vice president, and the list comprises men learned in law, like Wm. Allen Butler, Dorman B. Eaton and Stephen A. Walker. The following names have rather an Orange flavor: James McKeen, George D. Mackay, Peter Donald, James McGee, Peter A. Welch and Alexander E. Orr.

The League, according to Mr. King, proposes to pass a XVI amendment to the Federal constitution, which shall prohibit definitively the appropriation of any money whatsoever to Indian schools of a sectarian character. This would, of course, destroy Catholic influence among the Indians, and the other sects would be able to work the business to suit themselves. The statement, or rather implication, contained in the pamphlet to the effect that the Catholic system of teaching makes the Indians dependent is absurd on the face of it, and will provoke a smile among those who are familiar with life on the frontier. The latter know that the Catholic, or semi-Catholic, Indian is about the only aborigine who is self-supporting in the great west. But bigotry will never look beyond its nose.

Among those who have signed the petition for the passage of the XVI Amendment The Citizen finds the names of D. F. Appleton, Edwin Booth, James B. Colgate, Washington E. Connor, Austin Corbin, A. Cleveland Coxe-Grover's cousin, the bishop of Western New York; Howard Crosby, George William Curtis champion mugwump; Charles P. Daly-the Catholics of New York know him; Cyrus W. Field-the very British cad who erected a monument to the spy, Andre, at Tarrytown, which some patriotic American subsequently blew sky-high, for which God bless him; Henry Ward Beecher Garrett; Frederick D. Grant son of the late General of that name, and now American minister to the Catholic court of Austria: