The Menace

BASIC TRUTH IGNORED
By GILBERT O. NATIONS, President of the Free Press Defense League,
52 Bliss Building, Washington, D. C.

In its wilderness of mendacity and deception popery fools most of the people all the time. It conceals from the public the fundamental issue between the papal hierarchy and modern civilization. That issue is not religious at all. It is purely and distinctively political.

The millions of Roman Catholic laymen do not know this. They are not permitted to know it. The vatican autocrat and his vast oligarchy of enthroned prelates hoodwink and deceive their laity as completely and as brutally as they deceive the general public. Deception and imposition are the quintessence of popery.

The world is little concerned about the papal dogmas and superstitions as such. The only feeling of modern civilization towards those who accept the dogmas of transubstantiation, celibacy, Maryolatry, apostolic succession and papal infallibility is that of pity and compassion.

Though a glance at either history or geography shows the degrading effect of those and the other superstitions of Rome upon the people, they neither effect nor concern the free and intelligent citizens of this or any country.

Militant and determined resistance to the papal system is directed against that system not as a church, but as an empire. Opposition of the twentieth century to the pope is identical in spirit with opposition to the kaisers and the sultan. No form of political despotism can longer oppress the world. Superior skill in deception and secret intrigue has enabled the papal empire to outlive the others, but the cup of its iniquity is equally full. Its days are numbered.

In spite of press censorship and masterful Jesuitical mendacity, truth is leavening and transforming public sentiment. Significance of the papal throne and crown, the canon law everywhere set up in defiance of national law, the papal treaties that extort tithes from unwilling and destitute peoples, more than a hundred prelates of Rome sitting on thrones of arbitrary power in this country and thousands in other lands can no longer be disguised.

Thrones and crowns and involuntary extortions and defiant and arbitrary power are the weapons of empire. No clerical mendacity can give them any place in the church. For a thousand years the papal empire has masqueraded in spiritual robes, but the fierce light of truth now discloses that it is the most autocratic political establishment that ever encumbered the earth.

How long will the papal censorship and dishonesty beguile the American people? How long can the most ruinous political empire of all time hide its guilt under clerical robes? Though a majority of both Protestants and Roman Catholics in this country still regard popery as a religion, a substantial and growing number recognize it as the last surviving empire.

The world is face to face with the problem which this empire presents. What disposition will democratic civilization make of it? Shall its deluded subjects continue to enjoy citizenship and the franchise under other governments? Either the autocratic head of the papal empire must be overthrown or its subjects must be excluded from the ballot box in this great republic.