Watchman And Observer

UnDISGUISED ROMANISM.
Almost simultaneously with our second letter to Dr. Bellinger,
"The Shepherd of the Valley,"a Roman Catholic paper of St. Louis, came out in the sub-
joined article— which renders it altogether un-
necessary to look further for the proof that the
Papal church is essentially intolerant. We
print it just as it is, taking no other privilege
with it than inserting letters by which the para-
graphs may be more readily found, upon which
we may offer some remarks under our editorial
head.
From the Shepherd of the Valley of April 10.
Religious Freedom.
We are informed in the last number of our
respected contemporary of Philadelphia, the
Catholic Herald, that a subscriber to that paper
"residing in Virginia, surrounded by Protes-
tants, not only in his neighborhood, but even in
his own family, has been no little annoyed by
an article which he finds circulating in the pa-
pers of that region." The subscriber revenges
himself upon the annoying article by cutting it
out and forwarding it to our brother in Phila-
delphia, who proceeds, at his request, to cut it
up. The article consists of sentences selected
from recent editorials in the Shepherd of the
Valley, printed as a connected whole, and pre-
faced by a few lines of comment from the editor
of the paper to which they were transferred.
The following are the disjecta membra: —
"The Church, we admit is of necessity in-
tolerant; that is, she does everything in her
power to check, as effectually as circumstances
will permit, the progress of crime and error.
Her intolerance follows necessarily from her
claim of infallibility; she alone has the right to
be intolerant."
"Heresy, she inserts in her catalogue of mor-
tal sins; she endures it when and where she
must, but she hates it and directs all her ener-
gies to effect its destruction.
: . . J .
"If the Catholics ever gain—which they sure-
ly will do, though at a distant day-an immense
numerical majority, religious freedom in this
country is at an end. So say our enemies. So
we believe."
"We have said that we are not advocates of
religious freedom, and we repeat we are not.
The liberty to believe contrary to the teachings
of the Church, is the liberty to believe a lie; the
liberty to think otherwise than she permits, is
the liberty to abuse the mind and pollute the
imagination; from such liberty may we and
those we love at all times be preserved."
Commenting upon these passages, our con-
temporary says:
(a) "We trust it is not inconsistent with our
kind and fraternal relations to our contemporary
to say that we regret their appearance. We
would fain hope that they are not to be consid-
ered as the expression of his deliberate convic-
tions. In the warmth of the moment he has
probably used stronger language than he inten-
ded. In his commendable disposition to be
frank and bold, he has even exceeded the
measure of his real opinions. In his worthy
anxiety to adhere to what he considers the dicta-
of strict logic, he has probably gone even be-
yond what, on cooler reflection he perceives to
be the fulfilment of the demands of the most
rigid orthodoxy and truth."
(b) The first paragraph is the statement of a
fact. The Church is intolerant, and so is our
contemporary, who is a faithful son of the
Church. It is not many years since he "vowed,
promised and swore, so help him God and the
Holy Gospels of God," to condemn, reject and
anathematize every heresy condemned, rejected
and anathematised by the Church, and, more-
over, that he would, to the utmost of his power,
take care that the true faith should be held and
professed by those committed to his care; we
did the same, and so does every recanting here-
tic on his solemn reconciliation. The Catholic
who says the Church is not intolerant, belies
the Sacred Spouse of Christ; the Christian who
professes to be tolerant himself, is dishonest, or
ill-instructed, or both.
The second paragraph is another statement
of a simple truth of Faith. Heresy is a mortal
sin; and he who dies in heresy, is forever de-
prived of the happy vision of God, and con-
demned to the everlasting flames prepared for
the Devil and his ministers.
The third paragraph is a simple expression
of our opinion. As it stands it expresses what
we believe to be a truth, and we are neither
ashamed of it, nor disposed to retract or apolo-
gize for the assertion. It does not stand, how-
ever, as it was written by us. Some Presbyte-
rian, Baptist, or Methodist, parson mutilated it
to suit his views, and it has been returned to us
in this mutilated form, and thus separated from
the context, from Troy, New York, Cincinnati,
Philadelphia, and the Lord knows where be-
sides. This is what we said; we must be ex-
cused for quoting from ourselves:
"The reproach of intolerance, if it be a re-
proach, is shared with the Catholic Church by
all so-called religious bodies throughout the
world. It is not peculiar even to the religious;
Infidel bodies have been, and are, the most in-
tolerant of all. The practical toleration to
which we are accustomed in our age and coun-
try, is not a result of any principle of Protestan-
tism; it is not the consequence of any doctrine-
it has been brought about by the force of circum-
stances; it is owing to the fact, that no denomi-
nation can pretend to exclusive dominion; it will
last only so long as this state of things contin-
ues. If the Infidels, the Mormons, the Presby-
terians or the Catholics, at any future time, gain
a decided superiority it is at an end.
"If the Catholics ever gain,-which they
surely will do, though at a distant day,-an
immense numerical superiority, religious free-
dom in this country is at an end. So say our
enemies. So we believe. But in what sense
do we believe it? In what sense are we the
advocate of religious intolerance? In the sense
in which the enemies of the Church understand
the word? By no means. We simply mean
that a Christian people will not consider the
ridicule of Christianity, the denial of its funda-
mental truths, of the immortality of the soul
and the existence of God; the overthrow of all
religion and morality, matters beneath their
notice and condemnation; that the foundation
will be laid for a legislation which shall restrain
the propagation of certain doctrines; that men
will no longer be permitted to attack dogmas
with which morality is inseparably connected.
.... We avow it as our intimate conviction
that Religious liberty, as at present understood,
is inconsistent with the prevalence of Infidelity
itself."
c) In the fourth paragraph, we assert that
we are not the advocate of religious freedom;
by which we mean,—as is evident when the
paragraph is read in connection with the con-
text, from which it has been maliciously dis-
severed,-that "damnanda omnimodo libertas
conscientiæ," of which Gregory XVI. of im-
mortal memory, speaks in his Encyclical Letter
of June 1834, condemning Lamennais' Paroles
d'un Incroyant, and which, together with the
"exitiose indifferentismi contagione," he con-
demns in another Encyclical Letter of August 15,
1832, wherein he speaks "de frenis injiciendis
evaganti opinionum sermonumque licentiæ."
Is our language stronger than that of the Holy
Father? is it imprudent to repeat the words of
the Vicar of God? or are we advocating any
doctrines ultra or extreme, when we declare our
detestation of a tolerant spirit begot of indiffer-
entism and born of infidelity, the curse of our
country and the shame, not the glory, but the
deep, deep, shame, of our carnal and material-
istic age.
(d) We do not wish to appear uncourteous to
a contemporary whom we respect; but his com-
ments upon us have given us a right to speak
our mind, and we will speak it. We editors
of Catholic Journals, for what do we edit them;
—to please our subscribers and put money in
our purses, or to advance the cause of Catholi-
city in this country, to instruct our brethren,
and to force,—if it be so,—upon the attention
of those outside the Church, the awful truths of
Faith? Surely, it is for this purpose first, and
every thing else is secondary to this. Well
then, is this doctrine of toleration a Christian
doctrine, or is it not; does it come from Heaven
or Hell, from God or the Devil; do we see any
thing of it in the Bible, in the Fathers, in the
actions or writings of the Saints, in the treatises
of the doctors of the Church; was it heard of
before the birth of Protestantism; has it not been
condemned by the Council of Constance and,
repeatedly, by the Supreme Pontiffs; is it any
thing more than a convenient theory, got up
that Catholics living amongst Protestants may
meet with less ill-will; are not the French Phil-
osophers and their disciples its most zealous
advocates; is not Gibbon full of it; has it ever
had any thing more than a theoretical existence,
except where it has been practically impossible
to carry into active operation the principles
which it condemns; was St. Thomas right when
he said that "it is a much worse thing to corrupt
the faith, by which life is given to the soul,
than to falsify money, which is an assistance to
the temporal life;" did he reason correctly from
these premises when he argued that temporal
princes might justly punish convicted heretics?
Have we stated any thing rash, erroneous, of-
fensive to pious ears, or savoring of heresy, in
the extracts given above; is our opinion, as to
the consequences of the spread of Christianity
in this country, improbable; may we not expect
the Church and Christian Rulers to act again as
they have acted; is it not our boast that the
Church never changes, and is not her history
an open book, which all may read, which we
cannot close if we would, and of which we are
accustomed to say that we have no cause to be
ashamed?
(e) We are "an exception to the great body
of American Catholics," and we are mercifully
"left to the enjoyment of our opinion." This is
too bad. We have said nothing new or strange.
We are not remarkable for originality; and, if
we have any merit, it is this,— that we are not
ashamed to acknowledge our own weakness;
that we are careful to study the movements of
those whom we can safely trust as guides; that
we are somewhat apt at seizing their principles,
and that we have no shame in abandoning our-
selves to their direction. It is notorious that
the leaders of Catholic Journalism in the Uni-
ted States, have been unanimous, for some time
past, in directing all their energies to the de-
struction of that cowardly system of misrepre-
sentation and concealment, which led English
Catholics, in the unhappy times from which we
are emerging, to attempt,-happily with very
indifferent success,—to throw dust in the eyes
of cotemporary heretics, by disavowing the
practices of their brethren in better days and
other lands. We are by no means the only
Catholic editor in the Union who thinks it bet-
ter to be perfectly frank and honest, than to be
"prudent,"—to use the mildest term we can
find,—and we are not alone in dreading, above
all things, the praise and sympathy and good
will of heretics as such, and coveting, from
them, nothing beyond some portion of that abuse
which they heap upon all good Christians, upon
our pastors, upon the Saints, and upon their
most sweet and Holy Queen.
(f)We will say, however, that we are not in
favor of roasting heretics, and that, if this sort
of work is to be revived,-though in our mis-
erable times it is quite impossible, since men
have no belief which they care to propagate, or
for which they dare endure,if persecution is
to be renewed, we should rather be its victims
than its agents; but we are not, therefore, going
to deny the facts of history, or to blame the
Saints of God and the doctors and pastors of the
Church for what they have done and sanctioned.
We say that the temporal punishment of heresy
is a mere question of expediency; that Protest-
ants do not persecute us here, simply because
they have not the power; and that where we
abstain from persecuting them, they are well
aware that it is merely because we cannot do
so, or think that, by doing so, we should injure
the cause that we wish to serve. We are all
intolerant,-all of us who believe. As the
heads of families, we would punish him who
should dare to teach our children to blaspheme
the sacred truths of Faith, and as rulers on a
more extended scale, we would do what we
could to make our influence felt for the support
of religion, the glory of God, and the salvation
of souls, and this, because we know that there
is a Heaven and a Hell; that time is short and
eternity long, and that all the sufferings endured
by the whole human race from the Creation to
this day, are as nothing compared to that which
will be visited upon the individual who dies in
the guilt of mortal sin,—in ignorance or in con-
tempt of the sole remedy for sin provided for us
by the infinite charity of a God who purchased
Heaven for us all at the price of his own Most Pre-
cious Blood.
(g) For our own part, we love consistency,
and without pretending to be a very acute logi-
cian, we have a sufficient horror of being incon-
sequent. We like to see men carry their prin-
ciples to their last results, it shows that they
have confidence in them and that they are
honest in a certain sense. We hope that we
have a sufficient detestation of Socialism, but
after all, we feel a sneaking respect for unmiti-
gated Socialism which we do not entertain for
Puseyism and Methodism; and have less con-
tempt for M. Cabet and M. Proudhon, than we
entertain for many who affect to hold them and
their doctrines in holy detestation. We know
that the men of our days who oppose the church,
have adopted principles which lead to results
such as these men are honest enough to avow,
and we respect the consistency of so-called
philosophers whose doctrines we abhor. We
know that, if Religion be not all a humbug, but
one system of Religion can be true. If Reli-
gion be a humbug, if there be no God, or,
what is the same thing to us, no Revelation
made and preserved, then we say, and we
have good example for saying it, "Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" then
we are willing to exclaim with Rousseau,
against the inexcusable presumption of those
imbecile mortals who seek to know what
they never can discover. Whether God ex-
ists or not, we will say, is a matter of no
consequence; at least, He exists not for us;
we will despise all creeds and, despising, we
will accept them—as far as such acceptance shall
promote our temporal well being our only aim.
If our lot cast us amongst Pagans, we will sac-
rific to Jove, to Mars, to Priapus and Venus; in
Egypt, we will revere the sacred reptiles, in
Phœnicia, we will send our sons and daughters
through fire to Moloch; at Constantinople, we
will swear by the beard of the Prophet; and, at
Rome, we will kiss the Cross on the slipper of
the Father of Christendom. All Religions shall
be alike to us, and we will hold to that in
which chance has cast us, and have perfect
charity for all mankind, but those who make
Religion a pretext for disturbing the peace of
families, for severing the ties of brotherhood and
checking the prosperity of nations.-But, if
Religion be true, if the Christian,—and by the
Christian we mean the Catholic Religion be
what it claims to be, then we declare it indis-
pensable to salvation, we curse indifferentism
and abhor toleration, as we love our own soul
and the souls of those who surround us. If God
has revealed to men truths necessary to salva-
tion, we say that there exists, on the part of
man, a strict obligation of believing those truths:
for God had better have kept silence, if He
spoke and yet left men free to reject the truths
which He revealed. Our toleration, then, be-
comes the tolerance of the Apostles and first
preachers of Christianity, of a St. Paul, who
curses those who preach another Gospel, com-
pares false doctrine to a loathsome disease, and
classes heresy with murder, fornication and un-
natural crimes; of a St. Peter, who calls asso-
ciations of schismatics, Sects of perdition; of a
St. John, the beloved Apostle, who forbids the
faithful Christian of his day to admit a heretic
into his house or to bid him God-speed.
(h) This may be illiberal, but we have yet
to learn that we may be liberal with what is not
our own,—that it can be charitable to lie, or
conceal the truth, in matters such as these.—
Religious toleration, in our view, is only anoth-
er name for religious indifferentism, which,
again, is but a euphemism for Infidelity or
Atheism. No Catholic can be tolerant of here-
sy, and no Catholic has a right to trifle with the
truths of Faith, and to expose others to the im-
putation of being rash, imprudent, or desirous
of singularity, for saying what they are as much
bound by their Religion to say, as they are to
assert that God became man or that He died on
the cross for our salvation.
i)Religious toleration and civil toleration,
are, however, we admit, things perfectly dis-
tinct. The first, every Christian is bound to
condemn; the second, he will and must approve
wherever it is expedient. For our own part,
when men who believe assure us that they would
never persecute, under any circumstances, if
they had their way, we take leave to doubt their
word, as we are perfectly sure that every Protes-
tant who has brains and books at his command,
will doubt them too. All men who are in earn-
est will persecute their opponents when they
hope by doing so to serve their cause; and we,
at least, shall never blame them for it. We
blame heretics, not for persecuting, but for per-
secuting the Church; for holding a false creed
instead of a true one; for having a perverted
conscience, not for obeying its dictates. St.
Paul would have been right enough in "breath-
ing threatenings and slaughter against the disci-
ples of the Lord," had the Lord been, as he
supposed, a cunning impostor; and the Emper-
ors under whom the early Christians suffered
most, were really the most conscientious of the
rulers of Pagan Rome, Lactantius with his De
Mortibus Persecutorum, to the contrary not-
withstanding. Civil toleration, however, is right
enough, when the times demand it, and such is
certainly the case with us Americans, here and
now. Of course, the State does not tolerate the
Catholic Church, any more than it tolerates
God; the founder and preserver of the Church;
the Church is free by right, and not by conces-
sion. Sects, however, have no inherent right
to be, and exist and propagate themselves by
concession on the part of the State, which is not,
in all cases,certainly not in our own,—bound
to support them, any more than it is bound to
interfere to prevent the commission of many
actions grievously sinful, but not directly inter-
fering with the peace of the Commonwealth.—
The State has no spiritual functions, is not
bound to preach the Gospel, or direct the con-
sciences of her subjects, and is justified, we
think, in interfering to protect the true, or sup-
press a false, Religion, only when the interests
of society clearly demand such interference,
which is not the case with us, or rather, the re-
verse of which is the case with us. Ours is
not a Catholic Government; it does not recog-
nise the Church as an infallible spiritual author-
ity, or even as a spiritual authority at all; it
does not recognize infidelity as a social offence.
and can only interfere to check a Sect when its
propagation,-as in the case of the Mormons,-
seems to aim immediately at the peace or well
being of the Commonwealth;—when the Sect is
an organised institution for encouraging such
crimes against society as the civil authorities
are competent to check.
(k) We have no desire, certainly, to introduce
political intolerance into a country in which we
should be the first to suffer from its introduc-
tion; into a country which is not Catholic; in short,
into our own. We are satisfied that the Church
is free, that is enough; she soon will rule; she
may be persecuted,ten years of persecution
will do more for her than twenty years of peace;
meanwhile, we rejoice at the blessings that we
enjoy, and, on the whole, are not disposed to
complain that we are not fined and imprisoned
for hearing Mass, nor racked for being found
with our beads in our pocket, nor exposed to
danger of death for saying that God is supreme,
and that the Church is the only exponent of
God's will to man. We think that most Pres-
byterian and Methodist parsons will die in their
beds, and we wish them all the grace of conver-
sion and a happy death; we entertain no designs
upon their lives or possessions, and cordially
desire that they may enjoy happiness in this
world and the next; we would not touch one
hair of their head; burn one of their bibles; shut
up one conventicle, or abolish one Sabbath
school, were we as absolute as Louis Napoleon.
We are disposed to grant them and all heretics,
in this and most other countries, the most un-
bounded toleration. We declare that there is
no parallel between the case of apostates, and
that of those who brought up in her heresy
and we believe that the circumstances under
which it may become lawful and right to inflict
temporal punishment for heresy, in countries of
which the civil regulations differ from our own,
are of very rare occurrence, whilst we assert
that such circumstances have occurred, and
may occur again,-nay,—are occurring, and are
reported, with more or less malicious exaggera-
tion,from time to time.
Our brother in Philadelphia may think it
rash for us to speak thus. We differ from him,
and we will tell him why. He has been a Pro-
testant himself, and he knows well enough,
that few real thorough-going Protestants believe
one word a Catholic says in self-defence. They
look upon us all as a set of consummate liars
and hypocrites, when there is question of our
faith, and believe that we think a pious fraud
for the good of Mother Church, at all times,
a commendable act. We gain nothing by de-
claiming so earnestly against the doctrine of
the civil punishment of spiritual crimes. Our
enemies will not believe that we are better
than our Church, and,-for her,-her history is
before them; they know what she sanctioned du-
ring the Middle Ages, what she did then, and
does now where she can; they know, too, what
they would do, were they in power; they judge
us by themselves. They can reason besides,
and when we say twoand two, they will add make
four, whatever we can do to stop them. Heresy
is a mortal sin, kills the soul,sends the entire
man, body and soul, to Hell; it is besides a conta-
gious disease, and affects the interest of unborn
millions. Christian kings, believing this, will
crush it in the shell. Christian States, know-
ing this, will drive it from their bodies when
they can. Protestants are not fools; it is not
well to make them think that we are. Let them
hate us if they will, but let us compel them to
respect us, too.
We like to have the good will of Protestants,
when we can get it honestly; but we have faith,
and we prefer the good will of the Saints to
theirs. We will not, in thought or word, blas-
pheme St. Alphonsus and St. Ignatius, St.
Thomas and St. Dominic, St. John and St. Paul,
into whose society we hope one day to be mer-
cifully received, not for our merits, but through
their prayers and the grace of their Lord and
ours.
Undisguised Romanism.

It may seem superfluous to make any comment upon the article on the first page which we have transferred entire from 'the Shepherd of the Valley.' But it contains so full, and so bold, and, we may add, so truthful an exhibition of the Spirit of Romanism; and withal so complete a vindication of ourselves from the re-iterated charge of thirty years standing, that we were the slanderers of the Papal Church, as to call for a notice, chiefly to direct attention to the testimony of one of her most zealous witnesses. The letters in parentheses will enable the reader more easily to find the paragraphs in which this testimony is contained.

The Catholic Herald of Philadelphia regrets (a) that his brother of St. Louis had probably used stronger language than he intended in the paragraphs against religious toleration which had been culled from his editorials, and published to the annoyance of some faithful son of the church in Virginia. But this regret seems to arise less from any error in the positions of the 'Shepherd,' than from his open avowal of them. The Herald is only more chary than the Shepherd, and this is the chief if not the only difference between them. The Catholics of Philadelphia and the Catholics of Charleston are not just now prepared openly to proclaim their principles and their purposes, as it is done at St. Louis. But the feelers which they have put out clearly show them to be of one mind—and that an uncompromising hostility to every thing—Protestant—to every thing which is favorable to religious or civil liberty. But the Shepherd at once (b) re-iterates the intolerance of the church; states it as a matter of fact, and cites in part the oath which the Herald himself took, binding him to be intolerant also. And it might well be said that if they 'swore terribly in Flanders,' it cannot bear a comparison with the swearing which is exacted of every Official in the Papal communion. Again the Shepherd positively avers (c) that he is 'not the advocate of religious freedom,'—that the doctrine of toleration (d) is not a Christian doctrine—that it came from hell, not from heaven; and says (e) that he is not going to 'throw dust in the eyes of contemporary heretics by disavowing the practices of his brethren in better days and other lands,' alluding to those better days, and those other lands in which the Papal church exercised with a vengeance her power to persecute, waste and destroy. Still our Shepherd is (f) 'not in favor of roasting heretics.' His brethren in better days and on other lands did so, and they did well. He thinks it better to be frank and honest and openly avow the principle of a civil punishment of spiritual crimes, inasmuch as the history of the Romish church is before the heretics, and they cannot be deceived about it. So he says: 'We are not going to deny the facts of history, nor to blame the saints of God, and pastors of the church, for what they have done and sanctioned. We say that the temporal punishment of heresy is a mere question of expediency; that Protestants do not persecute us here, simply because they have not the power—and that where we abstain from persecuting them, they are well aware that it is merely because we cannot do so, or think that, by doing so, we should injure the cause that we wish to serve.' And he moreover (g) 'loves consistency'—bears less aversion to unmitigated Socialism than to Puseyism or Methodism, in which he seems to include Protestantism in all its forms; and lest it should be forgotten he again positively asserts (h) that 'no Catholic can be tolerant of heresy.' Thence he proceeds (i) to draw a distinction between religious and Civil toleration—the first to be condemned, and the second approved only for the sake of expediency. In the present state of affairs in this country civil toleration cannot be avoided—must be submitted to. But the time is coming and that very soon (k) when the church shall rule—when Catholics will be the numerical majority, and have the physical power, and what then? Power as they have ever used it. And finally (l) the Shepherd rebukes his fellow laborers of the Catholic Press for writing as though Protestants were fools, and could be made to believe a word they said in their defence when the facts of history so palpably convicts them of being a persecuting church from first to last.

In this running notice we have omitted much that needs dissection, and have only to say that it seemed to us a work of supererogation to apply the knife to it at all. And we would here leave it to the inspection of friend or foe, with this additional remark, that in all its features it bears the marks of Anti-christ. The God whom we worship is himself tolerant—doing good to the evil and unthankful, sending rain upon the just and the unjust and manifesting his amazing forbearance towards a lost and guilty world. His dear and well beloved Son who is the brightness of his Father's glory and to whom all power was given in heaven and on earth was tolerant: and he authorized his disciples to use no sword but the sword of the Spirit—the word of God—when he sent them forth to subdue the nations to himself. The whole teaching and spirit of the gospel, are in diametrical opposition to the teaching and spirit of our 'Shepherd of the Valley,' and of the church which he represents; See the Parable of 'the Tares,'—see how the zealous friends of the house holder would root them up from among the wheat—just as Roman Catholics would root out what they call heresy. But were they not rebuked? Were they not commanded to wait till the harvest? So we Protestants are willing to wait God's own time for the destruction of the 'Man of Sin.'