Fifty Years
in the Church
of Rome
by Charles Chiniquy
Charles Chiniquy
1809-1899
CHAPTER 59
When it became evident, in 1851, that my plan of forming a grand colony of Roman Catholic French-speaking people on the prairies of Illinois was to be a success, D'Arcy McGee, then editor of The Freeman's Journal, official Journal of the Bishop of New York, wrote me to know my views, and immediately determined to put himself at the head of a similar enterprise in behalf of the Irish Roman Catholics. He published several able articles to show that the Irish people, with very few exceptions, were demoralized, degraded and kept poor, around their groggeries, and showed how they would thrive, become respectable and rich, if they could be induced to exchange their grog shops for the fertile lands of the west. Through his influence, a large assembly, principally composed of priests, to which I was invited, met at Buffalo, in the spring of 1852. But what was his disappointment, when he saw that the greatest part of those priests were sent by the Bishops of the United States to oppose and defeat his plans!
He vainly spoke with a burning eloquence for his pet scheme. The majority coldly answered him: "We are determined, like you, to take possession of the United States and rule them; but we cannot do that without acting secretly and with the utmost wisdom. If our plans are known, they will surely be defeated. What does a skillful general do when he wants to conquer a country? Does he scatter his soldiers over the farm lands, and spend their energy and power in ploughing the fields and sowing grain? No! he keeps them well united around his banners, and marches at their head, to the conquest of the strongholds, the rich and powerful cities. The farming countries then submit and become the price of his victory without moving a finger to subdue them. So it is with us. Silently and patiently, we must mass our Roman Catholics in the great cities of the United States, remembering that the vote of a poor journeyman, though he be covered with rags, has as much weight in the scale of power as the millionaire Astor, and that if we have two votes against his one, he will become as powerless as an oyster. Let us then multiply our votes;; let us call our poor but faithful Irish Catholics from every corner of the world, and gather them into the very hearts of those proud citadels which the Yankees are so rapidly building under the names of Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Albany, Troy, Cincinnati, ect. Under the shadows of those great cities, the Americans consider themselves a giant and unconquerable race. They look upon the poor Irish Catholic people with supreme contempt, as only fit to dig their canals, sweep their streets and work in their kitchens. Let no one awake those sleeping lions, today. Let up pray God that they may sleep and dream their sweet dreams, a few years more. How sad will their awakening be, when with our out-numbering votes, we will turn them for ever, from every position of honour, power and profit! What will those hypocritical and godless sons and daughters of the fanatical Pilgrim Fathers say, when not a single judge, not a single teacher, not a single policeman, will be elected if he be not a devoted Irish Roman Catholic? What will those so-called giants think of their matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single Senator or member of congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father the Pope! What a sad figure those Protestant Yankees will cut when we will not only elect the President, but fill and command the armies, man the navies and hold the keys of the public treasury? It will then be time for our faithful Irish people to give up their grog shops, in order to become the judges and governors of the land. Then, our poor and humble mechanics will leave their damp ditches and muddy streets, to rule the cities in all their departments, for the stately mansion of Mayor to the more humble, though not less noble position of teacher.
"Then, yes! then, we will rule the United States, and lay them at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, that he may put an end to their godless system of education, and impious laws of liberty of conscience which are an insult to God and man!"
D'Arcy McGee was left almost alone when the votes were taken. From that, the Catholic priests, with the most admirable ability and success, have gathered their Irish legions into the great cities of the United States, and the American people must be very blind indeed, if they do not see that if they do nothing to prevent it, the day is very near when the Jesuits will rule their country, from the magnificent White House at Washington to the humblest civil and military department of this vast Republic. They are already the masters of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Cincinnati, Albany, Troy, Milwaukee, St. Louis, San Francisco, ect. Yes! San Francisco, the rich, the great queen of the Pacific, is in the hands of the Jesuits!
From the very first days of the discovery of the gold mines of California, the Jesuits had the hopes of becoming masters of those inexhaustible treasures, and they secretly laid their plans, with the most profound ability and success. They saw, at once, that the great majority of the lucky miners, of every creed and nation, were going back home as soon as they had enough to secure an honourable competence to their families. It became then evident, that of those multitudes which the thirst of gold had brought from every corner of the world, not one out of fifty would fix their homes in San Francisco. The Jesuits saw at a glance that if they could persuade the Irish Catholics to settle and remain there, they would soon be the masters and rulers of that golden city whose future is so bright and so great! And that scheme, worked day and night, with the utmost perseverance, has been crowned with perfect success.
The consequence is, that while you find only a few Americans, Germans, Scotch, and English millionaires in San Francisco, you find more than fifty Catholic Irish millionaires in that city. Its richest bank (Nevada Bank) is in their hands, and so are all the street railways. The principal offices of the city are filled with Irish Roman Catholics. Almost all the police are composed of the same class, as well as the volunteer military associations. Their compact unity, in the hands of the Jesuits, with their enormous wealth, make them almost supreme masters of the mines of California and Nevada.
When one knows the absolute, abject submission of the Irish Roman Catholics, rich or poor, to their priests, how the mind, the soul, the will, the conscience, are firmly and irrevocably tied to the feet of their priests, he can easily understand that the Jesuits of the United States form one of the richest and most powerful corporations the world ever saw. It is well known that those fifty Catholic millionaires, with their myriads of employees are, through their wives, and by themselves, continually at the feet of the Jesuits, who swim in a golden sea. No one, if he be not a Roman Catholic, or one of those so-called Protestants who give their daughters to the nuns, and their sons to the Jesuits to be educated, has much hopes, where the Jesuits rule, of having a lucrative office in the United States today.
The Americans, with few exceptions, do not pay any attention to the dark cloud which is rising at their horizon, from Rome. Though that cloud is filled with rivers of tears and blood, they let it grow and rise without even caring how they will escape from the impending hurricane.
It is to San Francisco that you must go to have an idea of the number of secret and powerful organizations with which the Church of Rome prepares herself for the impending conflict, through which she hopes to destroy the schools, and every vestige of human rights and liberties in the United States.
In order to more easily drill the Roman Catholics and prepare them for the irrepressible struggle, the Jesuits have organized them into a great number of secret societies, the principal of which are: Ancient Order of Hibernians, Irish American Society, Knights of St. Patrick, St. Patrick's Cadets, St. Patrick Mutual Alliance, Apostles of Liberty, Benevolent Sons of the Emerald Isle, Knights of St. Peter, Knights of the Red Branch, Knights of the Columskill, The Secret Heart, ect.,ect.
Almost all these secret associations are military ones. They have their headquarters at San Francisco, put their rank and file are scattered all over the United States. They number several hundred thousand soldiers, who, under the name of U.S. Volunteer Militia, are officered by some of the most skillful generals and officers of this Republic.
Another fact, to which the American Protestants do not sufficiently pay attention, is that the Jesuits have been shrewd enough to have a vast majority of Roman Catholic generals and officers to command the army and man the navy of the United States.
Rome is in constant conspiracy against the rights and liberties of man all over the world; but she is particularly so in the United States.
Long before I was ordained a priest, I knew that my church was the most implacable enemy of this Republic. My professors of philosophy, history, and theology had been unanimous in telling me that the principles and laws of the Church of Rome were absolutely antagonistic to the laws and principles which are the foundation-stones of the Constitution of the United States.
1st. The most sacred principle of the United States Constitution is the equality of every citizen before the law. But the fundamental principle of the Church of Rome is the denial of that equality.
2nd. Liberty of conscience is proclaimed by the United States, a most sacred principle which every citizen must uphold, even at the price of his blood. But liberty of conscience is declared by all the Popes and Councils of Rome, a most godless, unholy, and diabolical thing, which every good Catholic must abhor and destroy at any cost.
3rd. The American Constitution assures the absolute independence of the civil from the ecclesiastical or church power; but the Church of Rome declares, through all her Pontiffs and Councils, that such independence is an impiety and a revolt against God.
4th. The American Constitution leaves every man free to serve God according to the dictates of his conscience; but the Church of Rome declares that no man has ever had such a right, and that the Pope alone can know and say what man must believe and do.
5th. The Constitution of the United States denies the right in any body to punish any other for differing from him in religion. But the Church of Rome says that she has a right to punish with the confiscation of their goods, or the penalty of death, those who differ in faith from the Pope.
6th. The United States have established schools all over their immense territories, where they invite the people to send their children, that they may cultivate their intelligence and become good and useful citizens. But the Church of Rome has publicly cursed all those schools, and forbidden their children to attend them, under pain of excommunication in this world and damnation in the next.
7th. The Constitution of the United States is based on the principle that the people are the primary source of all civil power. But hundreds of times, the Church of Rome has proclaimed that this principle is impious and heretical. She says that "all government must rest upon the foundation of the Catholic faith; with the Pope alone as the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law."
I could cite many other things, proving that the Church of Rome is an absolute and irreconcilable enemy of the United States; but it would be too long. These are sufficient to show to the American people that Rome is a viper, which they feed and press upon their bosom. Sooner or later that viper will bite to death and kill this Republic. This was foretold by Lafayette, and is now promulgated by the greatest thinkers of our time. The greatest inventor, or rather the immortal father of electric telegraphy, Samuel Morse, found it out when in Rome, and published it in 1834, in his remarkable work, "Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States". The learned Dr. S. Ireneus Prime, in his life of Professor Morse, says, "When Mr. Morse was in Italy, he became acquainted with several ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome, and he was led to believe, from what he learned from them, that a political conspiracy, under the cloak of a religious mission, was formed against the United States. When he came to Paris and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Lafayette, he stated his convictions to the General, who fully concurred with him in the reality of such a conspiracy."
That great statesman and patriot, the late Richard W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, in his admirable work, "The Papacy and the Civil Power," says, "Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the Church of Rome prevail here, our constitution would necessarily fall. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our government and of all popular government everywhere."
The eloquent Spanish orator, Castelar, speaking of his own Church of Rome, said, in 1869: "There is not a single progressive principle that has not been cursed by the Catholic Church. This is true of England and Germany, as well as all Catholic countries. The Church cursed the French Revolution, the Belgian Constitution, and the Italian Independence. Not a constitution has been born, not a step of progress made, not a solitary reform effected, which has not been under the terrific anathemas of the Church."
But why ask the testimony of Protestants or Liberals to warn the American people against that conspiracy, when we have the public testimony of all the bishops and priests to prove it? With the most daring impudence, the Church of Rome, through her leading men, is boasting of her stern determination to destroy all the rights and privileges which have cost so much blood to this American people. Let the Americans, who have eyes to see and intelligence to understand, read the following unimpeachable documents, and judge for themselves of what will become of this country, if Rome is allowed to grow strong enough to execute her threats.
"The church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy, she endures when and where she must, but she hates it, and directs all her energies to destroy it."
"If Catholics ever gain a sufficient numerical majority in this country, religious freedom is at an end. So our enemies say, so we believe."[*]
"No man has a right to choose his religion. Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself. We might as rationally maintain that two and two does not make four as the theory of Religious Liberty. Its impiety is only equaled by its absurdity."[**]
"The church is instituted, as every Catholic who understands his religion believes, to guard and defend the right of God against any and every enemy, at all times, in all places. She, therefore, does not, and cannot accept, or in any degree favour, liberty in Protestant sense of liberty."[***]
"The Catholic Church is the medium and channel through which the will of God is expressed. While the State has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the Superior Authority, and that authority can be expressed only through the Church."[****]
"Protestantism has not, and never can have, any right where Catholicity has triumphed. Therefore we lose the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intolerance and in favour of Religious Liberty, or the right of any man to be of any religion as best pleases him."[*****]
"Religious Liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic Church." Rt. Rev. O'Connor, Bishop of Pittsburgh.
"The Catholic Church numbers one-third the American population; and if its membership shall increase for the next thirty years as it has the thirty years past, in 1900 Rome will have a majority, and be bound to take this country and keep it. There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be the Roman Catholic.
"1st. The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendancy in this country.
"2nd. All legislation must be governed by the will of God, unerringly indicated by the Pope.
"3rd. Education must be controlled by Catholic authorities, and under education the opinions of the individual and the utterances of the press are included, and many opinions are to be forbidden by the secular arm, under the authority of the Church, even to war and bloodshed."[******]
"It was proposed that all religious persuasions should be free and their worship publicly exercised. But we have rejected this article as contrary to the canons and councils of the Catholic Church."[*]
Every one knows that one of the first and most solemn acts of the present Pope, Leo XIII., was to order that the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas should be taught in all the colleges, seminaries, and universities of the Church of Rome throughout the whole world, as the most accurate teaching of the doctrines of his church. Well, on the 30th December, 1880, I forced the Rt. Rev. Foley, Bishop of Chicago, to translate from Latin into English, before the court of Kankakee, and to swear that the following law was among those promulgated by St. Thomas as one of the present and unchangeable laws of the Church of Rome:
"Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them, till, by a second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the church. But those who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated."[**]
After the bishop had sworn that this was the true doctrine of the Church of Rome expressed by St. Thomas, and taught in all the colleges, seminaries, and universities of the Church of Rome, I forced him to declare, under oath, that he, and every priest of Rome, once a year, under pain of eternal damnation, is obliged to say, in the presence of God, in his Breviarum (his official prayer-book), that that doctrine was so good and holy, that every word of it has been inspired by the Holy Ghost to St. Thomas.
The same Bishop Foley was again forced by me, before the same court of Kankakee, to translate from Latin into English, the following decree of the Council of Lateran, and to acknowledge, under oath, that it was as much the law of the Church of Rome today as on the day it was passed in the year 1215.
"We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that exalts itself against the holy orthodox and Catholic faith, condemning all heretics, by whatever name they may be known, for though their faces differ, they are tied together by their tails. Such as are condemned are to be delivered over to the existing secular powers to receive due punishment. If laymen, their goods must be confiscated. If priests, they shall be degraded from their respective orders, and their property applied to the church in which they officated. Secular powers of all ranks and degrees are to be warned, induced, and, if necessary, compelled by ecclesiastical censure, to swear that they will exert themselves to the utmost in the defense of the faith, and extirpate all heretics denounced by the church, who shall be found in their territories. And whenever any person shall assume government, whether it be spiritual or temporal, he shall be bound to abide by this decree.
"If any temporal lord, after having been admonished and required by the church, shall neglect to clear his territory of heretical depravity, the Metropolitan and Bishop of the Province, shall unite in excommunicating him. Should he remain contumacious a whole year, the fact shall be signified to the Supreme Pontiff, who will declare his vassals released from their allegiance from that time, and will bestow his territory on Catholics, to be occupied by them, on condition of exterminating the heretics and preserving the said territory in the faith.[*]
"Catholics who shall assume the cross for the extermination of heretics, shall enjoy the same indulgence, and be protected by the same privileges as are granted to those who go to the help of the Holy Land. We decree further that all those who have dealings with heretics, and especially such as receive, defend and encourage them, shall be excommunicated. He shall not be eligible to any public officer. He shall not be admitted as a witness. He shall neither have the power to bequeath his property by will, nor succeed to an inheritance. He shall not bring any action against any person, but any one can bring action against him. Should he be a judge, his decision shall have no force, nor shall any cause be brought before him. Should he be a lawyer, no instruments made by him shall be held valid, but shall be condemned with their authors."
Cardinal Manning, speaking in the name of the Pope, said: "I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; and I claim more than this. I claim to be the supreme judge and director of the conscience of men of the peasants that till the fields, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the household that lives in the shade of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for kingdoms I am sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong. Moreover, we declare, affirm, define, and pronounce it to be necessary to salvation to every human creature, to be subject to the Roman Pontiff!!"[**]
"Undoubtedly it is the intention of the Pope to possess this country. In this intention he is aided by the Jesuits, and all the Catholic prelates and priests."[*]
"For our own part, we take this opportunity to express our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant chapel in Rome. This may be thought intolerant; but when, we ask, did we profess to be tolerant of Protestantism, or to favour the question that Protestantism ought to be tolerated. On the contrary, we hate Protestantism. We detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray our aversion for it may never decrease."[**]
"No good government can exist without religion, and there can be no religion without an Inquisition, which is wisely designed for the promotion and protection of the true faith."[***]
"The Pope has the right to pronounce sentence of deposition against any sovereign when required by the good of the Spiritual Order."[****]
"The power of the church exercised over sovereigns in the middle ages was not a usurpation, was not derived from the concessions of princes or the consent of the people, but was and is held by divine right, and whoso resists it rebels against the King of kings and Lord of lords."[*****]
The Council of Constance, held in 1414, declared, "That any person who has promised security to heretics shall not be obliged to keep his promise, by whatever he may be engaged."
It is, in consequence of that principle that no faith must be kept with heretics, that John Huss was publicly burned on the scaffold, the 6th July, 1415, in the city of Constance, though he had a safe passport from the Emperor.
"Negroes have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."[******]
"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Catholic clergy." Lafayette.[*******]
"If your son or daughter is attending a State School, you are violating your duty as a Catholic parent, and conducing to the everlasting anguish and despair of your child. Take him away. Take him away if you do not wish your deathbed to be tormented with the spectre of a soul which God has given you as a secret trust, surrendered to the great enemy of mankind. Take him away, rather than incur the wrath of his God, and the loss of his soul."
All the echoes of the United States, are still repeating the same denunciations against our public schools made by Mgr. Capel, a prelate attached to the household of the Pope. That Roman Catholic dignitary has not only passed again the sentence of death against the schools of the United States, but he has warned the Americans that the time is not far away when the Roman Catholics, at the order of the Pope, will refuse to pay their school tax, and will send bullets to the breasts of the government agents, rather than pay it. "The order can come any day from Rome," said the prelate. "It will come as quickly as the click of the trigger, and it will be obeyed, of course, as coming from God Almighty Himself!"
The Catholic Columbian, edited under the immediate supervision of the Right Rev. Bishop of Columbus, Ohio, says: "Secular (government) schools, are unfit for Catholic children. Catholic parents cannot be allowed the sacraments, who choose to send their children to them, when they could make use of the Catholic schools."
"The absurd and erroneous doctrines, or ravings, in defense of liberty of conscience, are a most pestilential error, a pest of all others, to be dreaded in the State."[*]
"You should do all in your power to carry out the intentions of his holiness the Pope. Where you have the electoral franchise, give your votes to none but those who assist you in so holy a struggle."[**]
"Catholic votes should be cast solidly for the democracy at the next election. It is the only possible hope to break down the school system."[***]
"It is of faith that the Pope has the right of deposing heretical and rebel kings. Monarchs so deposed by the Pope are converted into notorious tyrants, and may be killed by the first who can reach them.
"If the public cause cannot meet with its defense in the death of a tyrant, it is lawful for the first who arrives, to assassinate him."[****]
"See, sir, from this chamber, I govern, not only to Paris, but to China; not only to China, but to all the world, without anyone knowing how I do it."[*****]
"A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope may be killed anywhere, as Escobar and Deaux teach, because the Pope has an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things, as all the Catholics maintain, and as Suarez proves against the King of England."[******]
The Roman Catholic historian of the Jesuits, Cretineau Joly, in his Vol. II., page 435, approvingly says: "Father Guivard, writing about Henry IV., King of France, says: 'If he cannot be deposed, let us make war; and if we cannot make war, let him be killed.'"
The great Roman Catholic theologian, Dens, puts to himself the question: "Are heretics justly punished with death?" He answers, "St. Thomas says: Yes! 2.2. Question 11, Art. 3. Because forgers of money, or other disturbers of the State, are justly punished with death; therefore, all heretics who are forgers of faith and, as experience testifies, grievously disturb the State. This is confirmed, because God, in the Old Testament, ordered the false prophets to be slain, and in Deuteronomy it is decreed that if any one will act proudly, and will not obey the commands of the priests, let him be put to death. The same is proved from the condemnation of the 14th Article of John Huss in the Council of Constance."[*]
"That we may in all things attain the truth. That we may not err in anything, we ought ever to hold, as a fixed principle, that what I see white, I believe to be black, if the superior authorities of the church define it to be so."[**]
"As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every point, in execution, in will, in intellect, doing which is enjoined with all celerity, spiritual joy, and perseverance; persuading ourselves that everything is just, suppressing every repugnant thought and judgment of one's own,in a certain obedience, should be moved and directed under Divine Providence, by his superior, just as if he were a corpse (Perinde acsi cadaver esset) which allows itself to be moved and led in every direction."[***]
"If the Holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imagination and the sublime attainments of human understanding."[****]
"No more cunning plot was ever devised against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of mankind than Romanism."[*****]
The principle and most efficacious means of practicing obedience due to superiors, and of rendering it meritorious before God, is to consider that, in obeying them, we obey God Himself, and that by despising their commands, we despise the authority of the Divine Master.
"When, thus, a Religious receives a precept from her prelate, superior, or confessor, she should immediately execute it, not only to please them, but principally to please God, whose will is known by their command.
"If, then, you receive a command from one who holds the place of God, you should observe it as if it came from God Himself. It may be added that there is more certainty of doing the will of God by obedience to our superiors than by obedience to Jesus Christ, should He appear in person and give His command.
"St. Philip used to say that the Religious shall be most certain of not having to render an account of the actions performed through obedience, for these, the superiors only, who command them, shall be accountable."[*]
"In the name and by the authority of Jesus Christ, the plentitude of which resides in His Vicar, the Pope, we declare that the earth is not the centre of the world, and that it moves with a diurnal motion, is absurd, philosophically false, and erroneous in faith."[**]
In consequence of that infallible decree of the infallible Pope, Galileo, in order to escape death, was obliged to fall on his knees and perjure himself, by signing the following declaration on the 22nd of June, 1663:
"I abjure, curse and detest the error and heresy of the motion of the earth around the sun."
In obedience to that decree, the two learned Jesuit astronomers, Lesueur and Jacquier, in Rome, only a few years ago, made the following declaration: "Newton assumes in his third book, the hypothesis of the earth moving round the sun. The proposition of that author could not be explained, except through the same hypothesis; we have, therefore, been forced to act a character not our own. But we declare our entire submission to the decrees of the supreme Pontiff of Rome against the motion of the earth."[***]
"A Catholic should never attach himself to any political party composed of heretics. No one who is truly, at heart, a thorough and complete Catholic, can give his entire adhesion to a Protestant leader; for in so doing, he divides his allegiance, which he owes entirely to the church."[****]
"Would he (the priest) be warranted in withholding any sacrament of the church from a man by reason of his preferring one candidate to the other! Absolutely speaking, he would; because a priest is not only warranted, but bound to withhold, the sacraments from a man who is disposed to commit a mortal sin!!"[*]
"Our business is to contrive:
"1st. That the Catholics be imbued with hatred for the heretics, whoever they may be, and that this hatred shall constantly increase, and bind them closely to each other.
"2nd. That it be, nevertheless, dissembled, so as not to transpire until the day when it shall be appointed to break forth.
"3rd. That this secret hate be combined with great activity in endeavouring to detach the faithful from every government inimical to us, and employ them, when they shall form a detached body, to strike deadly blows at heresy."[**]
Henry IV., King of France, after being wounded by an assassin sent by the Jesuits, said: "I am compelled to do one of these two things: Either recall the Jesuits, free them from the infamy and disgrace with which they are covered, or to expel them in a more absolute manner, and prevent them from approaching either my person or my kingdom.
"But, then, we will drive them to despair and to the resolution of attempting my life again, which would render it so miserable to me, being always under the apprehension of being murdered or poisoned. For those people have correspondence everywhere, and are so very skillful in disposing the minds of men to whatever they wish, that I think it would be better that I should be already dead."[***]
"Let us bring all our skill to bear upon this part of our plan. Our chief concern must be to mould the people to our purposes. Doubtless, the first generation will not be wholly ours; but the second will nearly belong to us; and the third entirely."[****]
"The state, is, therefore, only an inferior court, bound to receive the law from the superior court (the church) and liable to have its decrees reversed on appeal."[*****]
"The Jesuits are a military organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is: Power. Power in its most despotic exercise. Absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms; and at the same time the greatest and the most enormous of abuses."[*]
"The general of the Jesuits insists on being master, sovereign, over the sovereign. Wherever the Jesuits are admitted they will be masters, cost what it may. Their society is by nature dictatorial, and therefore it is the irreconcilable enemy of all constituted authority. Every act, every crime, however atrocious, is a meritorious work, if committed for the interest of the Society of the Jesuits, or by the order of its general."[**]
In the allocution of September, 1851, Pope Pius IX. said:
"That he had taken that principle for basis: That the Catholic religion, with all its votes, ought to be exclusively dominant in such sort that every other worship shall be banished and interdicted!
"You ask if the Pope were lord of this land and you were in a minority, what he would do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you; if expedient, he would imprison, banish you, probably he might even hang you. But be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of your glorious principles of civil and religious liberty."[***]
Lord Acton, one of the Roman Catholic peers of England, reproaching her bloody and anti-social laws to his own church, wrote: "Pope Gregory VII. decided it was no murder to kill excommunicated persons. This rule was incorporated in the canon law. During the revision of the code, which took place in the 16th century, and which produced a whole volume of corrections, the passage was allowed to stand. It appears in every reprint of the Corpus Juris. It has been for 700 years, and continues to be, part of the ecclesiastical law. Far from being a dead letter, it obtained a new application in the days of the Inquisition; and one of the later Popes has declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it atones, and more than atones, for the murder of a Catholic." In the last council of the Vatican, has the Church of Rome expressed any regret for having promulgated and executed such bloody laws? No! On the contrary, she has anathematized all those who think or say that she was wrong when she deluged the world with the blood of the millions she ordered to be slaughtered to quench her thirst for blood; she positively said that she had the right to punish those heretics by tortures and death.
Those bloody and anti-social laws, were written on the banners of the Roman Catholics, when slaughtering 100,000 Waldenses in the mountains of Piedmont, and more that 50,000 defenseless men, women and children in the city of Bezieres. It is under the inspiration of those diabolical laws of Rome, that 75,000 Protestants were massacred, the night and following week of St. Bartholomew.
It was to obey those bloody laws that Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, caused the death of half a million of men, women and children, who perished in all the highways of France, and caused twice that number to die in the land of exile, where they had found a refuge.
Those anti-social laws, today, are written on her banners with the blood of ten millions of martyrs. It is under those bloody banners that 6,000 Roman Catholic priests, Jesuits and bishops, in the United States, are marching to the conquest of this Republic, backed by their seven millions of blind and obedient slaves.
Those laws, which are still the ruling laws of Rome, were the main cause of the last rebellion of the Southern States.
Yes! without Romanism, the last awful civil war would have been impossible. Jeff Davis would never have dared to attack the North, had he not had assurance from the Pope, that the Jesuits, the bishops, the priests and the whole people of the Church of Rome, under the name and mask of Democracy, would help him.
These diabolical and anti-social laws of Rome caused a Roman Catholic (Beauregard) to be the man chosen to fire the first gun at Fort Sumter, against the flag of Liberty, on the 12th of April, 1861. Those antichristian and anti-social laws caused the Pope of Rome to be the only crowned prince in the whole world, so depraved as to publicly shake hands with Jeff Davis, and proclaim him President of a legitimate government.
These are the laws which led the assassins of Abraham Lincoln to the house of a rabid Roman Catholic woman, Mary Surratt, which was not only the rendezvous of the priests of Washington, but the very dwelling-house of some of them.
That woman, gifted by God to be an angel of peace and mercy on earth, was changed by those laws into a bloodthirsty tigress; for she had smelt the blood which everywhere comes from the robe, the hands, and the lips of the priest of Rome.
Those bloody and infernal laws of Rome nerved the arm of the Roman Catholic, Booth, when he slaughtered one of the noblest men God has ever given to the world.
Those bloody and anti-social laws of Rome, after having covered Europe with ruins, tears, and blood for ten centuries, have crossed the oceans to continue their work of slavery and desolation, blood, and tears, ignorance and demoralization, on this continent. Under the mask and name of Democracy they have raised the standard of rebellion of the South against the North, and caused more than half a million of the most heroic sons of America to fall on the fields of carnage.
In a very near future, if God does not miraculously prevent it, those laws of dark deeds and blood will cause the prosperity, the rights, the education, and the liberties of this too confident nation to be buried under a mountain of smoking and bloody ruins. On the top of that mountain, Rome will raise her throne and plant her victorious banners.
Then she will sing her Te Deums and shout her shouts of joy, as she did when she heard the lamentations and cries of desolation of the millions of martyrs burning in the five thousand auto-da-fes she had raised in all the capitals and great cities of Europe.
Foot Notes
CHAPTER 59
[*] The Shepherd of the Valley, official Journal of the Bishop of St. Louis, Nov. 23, 1851.
[**] New York Freeman, official journal of Bishop Hughes, Jan. 26, 1852.
[***] Catholic World, Arpil, 1870.
[****] Catholic Review, June, 1865.
[*****] Catholic World, July 1870.
[******] Father Hecker, Catholic World, July, 1870.
[*] Pope Pius VII, Encyclical, 1808
[**] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, Vol. iv. p. 90
[*] Latin
[**] Tablet, Oct. 9, 1864.
[*] Brownson's Review, May, 1864.
[**] Pittsburg Catholic Visitor, July 1848, official journal of the Bishop.
[***] Boston Pilot, official journal of the Bishop.
[****] Brownson's Review, 1849.
[*****] Brownson's Review, June 1851.
[******] Roman Catholic Chief-Justice Tany, in his Dred Scot Decision.
[*******] Western Tablet, official paper of the Bishop of Chicago.
[*] Encyclical Letters of Pope Pius IX., August, 15, 1854.
[**] Daniel O'Connell.
[***] Taledo Catholic Review.
[****] Suarez, Defensio Fidei; Book VI. c. 4, Nos. 13, 14.
[*****] Tamburini; General of the Jesuits.
[******] Busembaum. - Lacroix, Theologia Moralis, 1757.
[*] Latin
[**] Spiritual Exercise, by Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.
[***] Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercise.
[****] Pope Gregory XVI., Incyclical, August 15th, 1832.
[*****] Gladstone, Letter to Lord Aberdeen.
[*] Saint Liguori, The Nun Sanctified.
[**] Decree of Pope Urban XIII.(signed) by Cardinals Felia, Guido, Desiderio, Antonio, Belligero, and Fabricius.
[***] Newton's Principia, by Fathers Lesueur and Jacquier, vol iii, p. 450.
[****] Univers, the official Catholic paper of the Bishop of France, March 28th, 1868.
[*] Bishop Vaughan's address to the Catholic Club at Salford, England, January 2nd, 1873.
[**] Secret Plans of the Jesuits, revealed by Abate Leon, p. 127.
[***] Sully's Memoirs, tom. ii. chap. iii.
[****] The Secret Plan, pp. 127-128
[*****] Brownson's Essays, pp. 282-284.
[*] Memorial of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, by General Montholon, vol. ii. p. 62.
[**] Memorial of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, vol. ii. p. 174.
[***] Rambler, one of the most prominent Catholic papers of England, September, 1851.
