WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING by William Penniman

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 24, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 56, No. 1

WHAT ROMANISM IS DOING.

By William Penniman

BY WILLIAM PENNIMAN.

How to prevent the encroachments of the religious power of the papacy on the secular domain, is a question which has agitated modern Christendom for ages. The question whether the governments of Catholic countries and the Romanists of Protestant ones shall be under the power of the civil arm of the respective countries, or under the control of a hierarchy deriving its existence and receiving infallible direction from a priest living at Rome, may yet be decided by the wager of battle. The flames of civil war, and the fires of the inquisition were kindled by the agitation of this question in former times. It is estimated that from fifty to one hundred millions were slain during the papal supremacy.

The root of the evil is not yet exterminated. The embers of those awful conflagrations are slumbering, and the winds of strife may yet fan them into a fresh conflagration. According to prophecy, the papacy is not destined to regain its former power. The word of God says, “But the Judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.” Dan. 7 : 26. Although it cannot regain its former power, yet it is determined to make trouble, and in a certain sense is already making it. While this power seems to be waning in Europe or in the East, it is evidently, as facts show, wonderfully increasing in the United States. It is no doubt the policy of this hierarchy to keep Protestants ignorant, as far as possible, of the official positions which are held by Catholics in this country. It has been stated that fifty per cent of State, including army, officers, are Catholics. But this percentage is no doubt too high. It will be safe to say that a large percent are.

Some may inquire, How shall we combat this widespread and growing evil? The only answer is, Not by carnal weapons,—for Paul says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,”—but by the “sword of the Spirit,” which is the word of God. This word, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, and which, in the days of Luther, gave the papal beast a severe wound, can in the hands of God’s servants wound it again. In fact, the papal power is every day receiving wounds by the same sword, and its influence is thus held in check till the work of God’s people is accomplished in the earth. This sword, which is a “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and which opens and exposes the corruptions of the papal system to the very core, Romanists have long tried to destroy; but—

“Truth crushed to earth will rise again; The eternal years of God are hers.”

The Bible is the foundation of civil and religious liberty. If this obstacle could be removed, priestcraft would reign triumphant. The Roman clergy know that intelligence is the life-blood of liberty. Political parties are mere tools in their hands, by which they manipulate legislation in their favor. They will form an alliance with any party which will enable them to accomplish their sectarian purposes. The great object of the Roman Catholic secret oath-bound societies is to hold the ignorant dupes of popery where the Roman clergy can most easily control them.

“’Tis ignorance mainly binds the people in chain, ’Tis this the empire of folly maintains; Vice shrinks from instruction like darkness from light, And despots shun noontide, and covet the night.”

We will next give a few specimens of Romish intolerance, quoting first from a Catholic paper published at St. Louis. The Shepherd of the Valley has not forgotten the cardinal and long-cherished doctrines of Romanism, as the following extract shows: “Protestantism of every kind, Catholicity inserts in her catalogue of mortal sins; she endures it when and where she must; but she hates it, and directs all her energies to effect its destruction. If the Catholics ever gain—which they surely will do—an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country is at an end.”

The Shepherd subsequently, as proof of the approval of its sentiments, added: “Amongst our Catholic contemporaries, the Catholic Herald was almost alone in its strictures; others, as the Pilot, copied our article and indorsed what we said. The character of our journal was not called in question, and no editor, we think, has ever ventured to make our own character the subject of debate. We told the truth, and nothing but the truth; and it is not fair to sacrifice us to the prejudices of ill-instructed and timid Catholics, or of heretics whose delicate nerves a bold statement of Catholic doctrine may happen to shock.”

This was published in the Shepherd, and fully indorsed by the archbishop, in the following words: “The Shepherd of the Valley is published with my approbation, and I recommend it to the support of the Catholics of this diocese. “† PETER RICHARD, “July 7, 1853. Archbishop of St. Louis.”

The bishop says again, “Heresy and unbelief are crimes; that is the whole of the matter. And in Christian countries, as in Italy and Spain, for instance, where all the people are Catholic, and where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the law of the land, they will be punished as other crimes.”

A few years ago the Protestant chapel in Rome was suppressed, and the worshippers were threatened with the tortures of the Inquisition. The Pittsburg Catholic Visitor, referring to its suppression, gives us another specimen of its intolerance, as follows: “For our own part, we take this opportunity of explaining our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant chapel in Rome. This may be thought intolerant, but when, we would ask, did we ever profess to be tolerant to Protestantism, or to favor the doctrine that Protestantism ought to be tolerated? On the contrary, we hate Protestantism, we detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray that our aversion to it may never decrease. We hold it meet that in the Eternal City no worship repugnant to God should be tolerated, and we are sincerely glad the enemies of truth are no longer allowed to meet together in the capital of the Christian world.”

How long would it be before Protestant chapels would be suppressed in this country, had popery the power? Brownson, the great apostle of American popery, who had the indorsement of twenty-five bishops and Pope Pius IX., said: “The liberty of heresy and unbelief is not a natural right. . . . All the rights the sects have, or can have, are derived from the State, and rest on expediency. As they have in their character of sects hostile to true religion [popery], no rights under the law of nature or the law of God, they are neither wronged nor deprived of liberty if the State refuses to grant them any rights at all.”—Brownson’s Review, October, 1853, p. 456.

Then intolerant sentiments are taught on both continents. We give these specimens to show what the papacy is about to do, or, at least, what it is trying to do.