WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING by Wm. Penniman

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · June 3, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 23

WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING.

By Wm. Penniman

BY WM. PENNIMAN.

Roman Catholics are wide awake to every scheme by which they can accomplish their objects. In former times, in the days of papal supremacy, they accomplished their plans by wielding the sword of persecution. Now they intend to work on the educational and political levers, till they can raise the church to its former power. But the kind of education they seek to impose upon the people, is not such a mental and moral training as will develop in them a love for the theory and practice of freedom and truth, but one that will lead them to the acceptance of superstition and error.

The Nashville Gazette contains the following on “Father Schacht and the Free Schools of Nashville,” showing the attitude of the church on the subject of education:—

“On the first Sabbath of this month, this Catholic Father commenced his assaults upon the free-school system of this city, to be continued, we suppose, to the end. We have long expected to hear the first note of the Catholic anti-American war in this city sounded. What has been done in every other city, we have expected would be done here. The priesthood and Catholicism in Nashville are imbued with the same spirit here as elsewhere—everywhere at open war with the religion of Christ, the avowed and implacable enemy of republicanism, of civil and religious liberty, and the foster-parent of ignorance, superstition, and intolerance. Our reporter furnishes us with the following extracts from Father Schacht’s charge to the Catholics of Nashville: ‘The Sisters’ school commences in the morning, and I hope every Catholic will send his children. If Protestants ask if they may send their children to the Sisters’ school, tell them, NO! unless they wish their children to become Catholics. It is a Catholic school, and none but Catholics, and those intended to become Catholics, will be admitted. The free school of the city will also be in operation,

and I hope no Catholic child will ever be found in that school. We have a right to send them; you will have to help pay the school tax, but it is better to lose your money than your child’s soul. The honorably begotten and the ill begotten will all meet and mingle at that school, and I hope no Catholic will be found there!’”

This “Father” had the honesty to speak plainly as to their aim in the matter of education. Others, more crafty, keep their object in the back-ground, thus alluring Protestants to send their children to Catholic schools, not thinking they will be educated Catholics. Protestants should remember that “just as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.”

The New York Freeman’s Journal of November 13, 1877, says: “Education is not the work of the State at all. It belongs to families, and should be left to families and to voluntary associations. The school tax, in itself, is an unjust imposition.”

On the 20th of November the same paper said: “First, we will not subject our Catholic children to your teachers! You ought to know why, in a multitude of cases. Secondly, we will not expose our Catholic children to association with all the children who have a right to attend the public schools. Do you not know why?” This would certainly be a plausible pretext, if it could be shown that the average morality of Catholic children is greater than that of Protestant children. The truth of the matter is, they do not want a ray of Protestant Bible light to shine upon them.

Again, in December 11, 1869, this paper said:—

“The Catholic solution of this muddle about Bible or no Bible in schools, is, hands off! No State taxation or any donation for any schools. You look to your children, and we will look to ours. We do not want to be taxed for Catholic schools; we do not want to be taxed for Protestant or godless schools. Let the public-school system go where it came from,—the devil. We want Christian schools, and the State cannot tell us what Christianity is.”

The following is from another Catholic paper, the New York Tablet of Dec. 4, 1874: “We are not opposed to public schools supported by the State, if the State provides schools for us in which we can teach our own religion; but we are opposed to infidel, godless, or purely secular schools.”

Again, the same paper, in its issue of the 25th of December, said:—

“We demand of the State as our right, either such schools as our church will accept, or exemption from school tax. If it will support schools by a general tax, we demand that it provide or give us our portion of the public funds, and leave us to provide schools in our own religion, under the supervision of our own church. We hold education to be a function of the church, and not of the State; and in our own case we do not and will not accept the State as an educator.”

The Catholic Telegraph, a paper published in Cincinnati, Ohio, of large circulation and wide influence, and regarded as the official organ of Bishop Purcell, said: “It will be a glorious day in this country, when, under the laws of justice and morality, our school system shall be shivered to pieces. Until then, modern paganism will triumph.”

In the preceding quotations we can see the workings of a power which, in its papal form, has been in existence about 1342 years. We trace it from its rise in A. D. 538 to 1798, when Berthier, a French general, entered Rome and took the pope prisoner. Then the temporal power was taken away. During the 1260 years of papal supremacy, it was a persecuting power. It has the same disposition yet, and according to prophecy, will continue to possess it till the end.