WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING by Wm. Penniman

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 10, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 24

WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING.

By Wm. Penniman

BY WM. PENNIMAN.

We have quoted quite largely from Catholic authorities to show that their opposition to the common-school system is wide-spread, if not universal, and that they are fully determined, to educate the people in their own way.

The Catholic Columbian, edited under the immediate supervision of the Right Reverend Bishop of Columbus, Ohio, says:—

“Our judgment of purely secular schools is, that they are unfit for Catholic children, and that Catholic parents cannot be allowed the sacraments, who choose to send their children to them when they could make use of Catholic schools.”

Again, the Tablet says:—

“The organization of schools, their entire internal arrangement, the choice and regulation of studies, and the selection, appointment, and dismissal of teachers, belong exclusively to the spiritual authority.”

The Boston Advertiser affirms:—

“Catholics would not be satisfied with the public schools, even if the Protestant Bible and every vestige of religious teaching were banished from them.”

The Western Tablet, of Chicago, declares:—

“It is a principle of the Catholic Church, laid down and enforced by several of her councils, and especially by the Council of Trent, that her pastors are to direct and watch over the education of the children of her communion. This principle has ever been maintained and acted upon. Religion is by the Catholic Church considered an essential branch of education, and without religion she conceives no real education possible.”

The Celt, the Catholic paper of Buffalo, said:—

“Better languish and die under the red flag of England, than to live and beget children of perdition under the flag of a proselytizing Republic.”

Brownson, “the great apostle of American popery,” said:—

“Our enemies rely upon godless schools, State education, as a means of checking the progress of Catholicity. We must admit they have laid their plans with infernal skill. The result will not meet their anticipations, however. The attention of the Catholic world has been directed to this subject by those whom God hath sent to rule over us, and a struggle which will end in victory for the church, has begun between Catholicity and the State, to see who shall have the child.”

One more extract of more recent date, and we are done with this part of the subject. The St. Louis Globe Democrat, of Dec. 2, 1879, represents Father Scully in his violent denunciation of the public-school system as saying:—

“Remember that this school [referring to the parochial school of Boston] has the blessing of our Holy Father the Pope, that it has the sanction of him who is the representative of Jesus Christ upon the earth; that he is watching over it and praying for it to-day. We are stronger now than we ever were; if our school was strong a few days ago, it is immensely stronger now; if it was a power the other day, it is a still greater power to-day. It is time, my friends, that the children of the Catholic Church should receive their rights and their inheritance to the faith, and they should be brought up in the arms and hands of their holy mother, the Catholic Church. She is the one that will frame them to be better citizens by far—ten thousand million times—than they will by going to the public schools. Where there is education without God, there is a death-blow struck, not only at the child, but at the home and the country, and time will tell all; time will change everything. There is an old saying, ‘Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamus in illis,’ which is, Times change, and we change with them. That is what you in this country will find out. It is history, and you will have to rejoice yet, because you will see the day when that which I am doing here for you now, the same plan will be adopted in other parishes and carried out, not only for the good of the individual parish, but for the good of the whole country.”

Quotations might be multiplied to an indefinite extent to show the opposition of popery to our common schools. This opposition pervades the entire Catholic priesthood of America. Absolution is refused to parents who patronize the common schools; and this, according to the Catholic creed, consigns them to endless perdition. A Latin work of thirty-two pages, indorsed by eleven bishops, has been published as a guide to the priests in these matters. Romanism teaches that perjury, falsehood, equivocation, and even stealing, are admissible, and may be practiced for the benefit of the Roman Catholic Church.

Popery is corrupting the sources of intelligence by perverting history. This has been done in the schools in New York. An edition of Appleton’s Cyclopedia, by the work of a Jesuit priest, has been made to favor popery. “Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” has not escaped their hands.

There are now in the United States 5,989 priests, 24 Catholic seminaries, 663 colleges and academies, 1,136 ecclesiastical students, and 2,246 parochial schools, containing 405,234 pupils. The diocese of Baltimore has 84 parochial schools, with 15,000 pupils; Cincinnati 140, with 25,000 pupils; St. Louis 106, with 25,000 pupils; New York 83, with 33,000 pupils. The estimated Catholic population of the United States is 6,143,222. (See Saddler’s Catholic Directory for 1880, p. 22.)

Joseph Cook, in his lecture on the political power of Romanism in American cities, published in the New York Independent of Feb. 26, 1880, says:—

“In the parochial schools the children among the 6,000,000 of the American population will receive only such an education as will leave them fit to become political and ecclesiastical tools of the Romish priesthood. America cannot allow Vaticanism through parochial schools to cripple and degrade 6,000,000 of her population without suffering severely in other members of the body politic. I am no alarmist, and I do not think Rome is destined to conquer the United States, but she may conquer one limb of our body politic, and thus give trouble to our whole organization.”

These admissions in regard to the increasing power of Romanism from one who no doubt advocates the doctrine of a temporal millennium, tell on the side of truth. It seems, however, that Mr. Cook has some reason to be alarmed, as the increase of the Roman Catholic population in this country in the last twenty years has been about 2,800,000; that of the priests, 3,754; that of the churches and chapels, 4,022. The gain in priests and churches still continues. (See New York Witness of May 20, 1880.)