WANING POWER | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 28, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 17

WANING POWER.

Not only in the Old World, but in some portions of the New, the prophecy respecting the waning power of the papacy just before the end, is meeting its fulfillment in a very striking manner. While according to the prophecy respecting our own government, papal influence is here to increase till there is some degree of collision between it and this nation which is to go so far as to make an image to it; in other portions of the western hemisphere, the case is very different. The New York Herald points out the fact that the bonds between the Vatican and almost every Spanish American nation in both North and South America, are greatly loosened. In Uruguay several ecclesiastics have been arrested on account of conflict with the government on the civil marriage laws. In the Argentine Republic, the Papal Legate has been banished; trouble,—the public school system. In Chili the Papal Nuncio has been expelled, and it is proposed to disestablish the Church; trouble,—a bitter contest over the civil marriage question. In Ecuador there is conflict between the Church and government over the tithing question. In Venezuela the civil power has been put in complete ascendency over that of the Church. And in Mexico the government has confiscated Church property. Thus it seems that the hold of the Romish Church on the governments in this part of the world which have heretofore been completely under its control is greatly loosened, and the loosening process is rapidly going forward.