  The Catholic Church supreme over all authorities—Meddling in Political Contests—Brownson's Review and the Boston Pilot reflecting the sentiments of that Church—Protestants advocating Romanism—The Nashville Union in 1835. The Anti-American, Foreign-loving, Catholic admirers of the Locofoco school of politics, everywhere seek to frighten native Protestant citizens with the bugbear cry of religious proscription. But let Americans and Protestants watch with increased vigilance both the Roman and Locofoco Jesuits around them. To call the damnable and accursed system of political intrigue practised for past centuries by the Roman Church by the term Religion, is a solemn mockery of the hallowed word. Religion teaches love and obedience to God, and the legally constituted authorities of the country. Romanism teaches fear of and obedience to a crowned potentate called the Pope, and opposition to all Protestant governments, as worthy to be cast down to hell! The one tends to free and ennoble the soul: the other to enslave and debauch every faculty of man's nature which likens him to the Almighty! The one is republican: the other is barbaric, and at war with every principle of free government! The American party does oppose and denounce Romanism as a political system at war with American institutions; and we here ask candid men to weigh the evidence we shall adduce to sustain this charge. We shall quote none other than Roman Catholic authority—the organs of Romanism—so as out of their own mouths to condemn them. Brownson's Review is the accredited organ of Romanism in the United States. He ostentatiously parades the names of the Archbishops and Bishops on the cover of his Review, to give it the stamp of authority, and asserts in the work: "I never think of publishing any thing in regard to the Church without submitting my articles to the Bishop for inspection, approval, and endorsement." Let us then look to his pages for an exposition of the doctrines of his Church. In the January number for 1853, he says: "For every Catholic at least, the Church is the supreme judge of the extent and limits of her power. She can be judged by no one; and this of itself implies her absolute supremacy, and that the temporal order must receive its laws from her." The uniform practice of the Church of Rome has been, and still is, to assert her power—not in words, but in deeds—to GIVE OR TAKE AWAY CROWNS—to depose ungodly rulers, and to absolve their subjects from their "horrible" oaths of allegiance! Again, in the July number for 1853, Brownson says: "The Church is supreme, and you have no power except what you hold in subordination to her, either in spirituals or in temporals.... You no more have political than ecclesiastical independence. The Church alone, under God, is independent, and she defines both your powers and hers." "They have heard it said from their youth up that the Church has nothing to do with politics; that she has received no mission in regard to the political order." "In opposing the nonjuring bishops and priests, they believed they were only asserting their national rights as men, or as the State, and were merely resisting the unwarrantable assumption of the spiritual power. If they had been distinctly taught that the political authority is always subordinate to the spiritual, and had grown up in the doctrine that the nation is not competent to define, in relation to the ecclesiastical power, its own rights—that the Church defines both its powers and her own, and that though the nation may be, and ought to be, independent in relation to other nations, it has, and can have, no independence in the face of the Church, the kingdom of God on earth: they would have seen at a glance that support of the civil authority against the spiritual, no matter in what manner, was the renunciation of their faith as Catholics, and the actual or virtual assertion of the supremacy of the temporal power." In the same number, page 301, he says: "She (the Church) has the right to judge who has, or has not, according to the law of God, the right to reign: whether the prince has, by his infidelity, his misdeeds, his tyranny and oppression, forfeited his trust, and lost his right to the allegiance of his subjects; and therefore whether they are still held to their allegiance, or are released from it by the law of God. If she have the right to judge, she has the right to pronounce judgment, and order its execution: therefore to pronounce sentence of deposition upon the prince who has forfeited his right to reign, and to declare his subjects absolved from their allegiance to him, and free to elect themselves a new sovereign." We might multiply authorities of this kind on this point, to an almost indefinite extent, from the debate between Bishop Hughes and Mr. Breckenridge, and the controversy between Hughes and Erastus Brooks, but it is wholly unnecessary. As early as 1844, the Catholics took their stand as a body in the arena of political strife; and the illustrious Clay and the virtuous Frelinghuysen were the victims of their particular hostility. Mr. Frelinghuysen was the President of the Board of Foreign Missions, and this was made the excuse for the bitter animosity of the Catholic press, and of the clergy and membership "He is ambitious, but short-sighted. He is abashed by no inconsistency, disturbed by no contradiction, and can defend, with a firm countenance, without the least misgiving, what everybody but himself sees to be a political fallacy or logical absurdity.... He is no more disturbed by being convinced of moral insensibility, than intellectual absurdity.... A man of rare abilities, but apparently void of both moral and intellectual conscience.... He is, therefore, a man whom no power under that of the Almighty can restrain; he must needs be the most dangerous man to be placed at the head of affairs it is possible to conceive." The Boston Pilot, another Catholic organ, published under the eye of the Bishop, discloses the same plot, in its issue for the 31st of October, 1844, only six days before the election! Here is what this organ said: "We say to all men in the United States, entitled to be naturalized, become citizens while you can—let nothing delay you for an hour—let no hindrance, short of mortal disease, banish you from the ballot-box. To those who are citizens, we say, vote your principles, whatever they may be—never desert them—do not be wheedled or terrified—but vote quietly, and unobtrusively. Leave to others the noisy warfare of words. Let your opinions be proved by your deliberate and determined action. We recommend you to no party; we condemn no candidate but one, and he is Theodore Frelinghuysen. We have nothing to say to him as a Whig—we have nothing to say to Mr. Clay or any other Whig, as such—but to the President of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the friend and patron of the Kirks and Cones, we have much to say. We hate his intolerance—we dislike his associates—and shudder at the blackness and bitterness of that school of sectarians to which he belongs, and amongst whom he is regarded as an authority." Protestants! do you hear that? Old Line Whigs! do you hear that? If so, do you think that Americans are warring upon civil and religious liberty, when they take an oath that they will rebuke such infamous sentiments? These appeals of Brownson, Hughes, and the Pilot, had the effect to defeat the Clay ticket in New York, and that State lost him his election. The Catholics were all at the polls, and voted for Polk and Dallas. On the 9th of November, 1844, Frelinghuysen wrote to Mr. Clay as follows: "More than 3,000, it is confidently said, have been naturalized in this city (New York) alone since the first of October. It is an alarming fact that this foreign vote has decided the great questions of American policy, and contracted a nation's gratitude." And after they achieved the victory of 1844, Brownson came out with this avowal: "Heretofore we have taken our politics from one or another of the parties which divide the country, and have suffered the enemies of our religion to impose their political doctrine upon us; but it is time for us to begin to teach When Gen. Cass made his speech in the Senate, in 1852, in favor of free worship and the rights of conscience for Americans abroad, reflecting on the Catholics by name, Brownson came out in his October number, and said: "We are glad to see Gen. Cass laid on the shelf, for we can never support a man who turns radical in his old age." In the same number, Brownson continues: "The sorriest sight to us is a Catholic throwing up his cap and shouting, 'All hail, Democracy!'" This too at the very time he was supporting the Democratic party in the Presidential contest! He would sooner have heard the cry, "All hail, Catholicism!" and he was only using Democracy as an instrument to advance his primary wish! We offer no comments on the foregoing extracts, of our own, but leave every reader to judge for himself. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We apply the remark to religious as well as civil liberty. All we ask of the people is to be vigilant. Do not support men at the ballot-box who are in league with these enemies of our Republic, and of the Protestant religion! Behold the enemy is at our gates! A foreign priest has been lecturing here in Knoxville, within the last ten days, avowing sentiments similar to these, and claiming that this country would ultimately become a Catholic country! The crisis is approaching! Rouse up, Americans, and hasten to your country's salvation! Not a moment is to be lost! God and our country, must be the watchword of every Christian and patriot, of every political party in the land. America expects us all to do our duty! And is there no cause for alarm? Eighteen months ago, a Protestant minister, Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian, might expose Romanism, and warn his congregation against its corrupting influences, for hours at a time—come down out of his pulpit, and his congregation would, without distinction of party, say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" But let him now dare allude to Romanism—he offends one-half of his congregation—he is preaching politics—they will hear him no more; or forsooth, which is more common, they will withhold his support and starve him out! Are not these signs alarming? But here in Tennessee, Protestant Tennessee, on the 15th of "A Church that can boast of an existence of thirteen centuries—passing through all the various vicissitudes of her eventful career unscathed, can certainly show, with all her atrocious barbarity, many bright spots which may be placed in favorable contrast with the Protestant Church, with its thousand and one wrangling sects. Men are beginning to see through the transparent gauze that veils this Know-Nothing movement. They are beginning to ask 'What has Protestantism done for the world? What has she done to alleviate and elevate the down-trodden? Is the race any better off for having accepted her faith? These REVEREND HYPOCRITES—these scribes and pharisees, are treading on a terrible volcano. They will find their treasonable schemes and infernal plotting against the liberties of man tried and condemned by the pure light of God's own truth and love, which shines and throbs in every pulsation of humanity's heart. If Protestantism prove recreant to her high trust, she will have to pass the ordeal of enlightened public opinion and be consigned to her merited obscurity. "Popery, with all its crimes against God and man, adapts itself to the times and to the circumstances, and thus saves itself from being absorbed in the mass of conflicting elements." |
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