We have seen that Romanism teaches religious intolerance instead of religious liberty. We have seen that Rome demands the censorship of ideas and of the press, instead of the freedom of the press and of speech. We have seen that she approves the union of church and state instead of their entire separation. We have seen that she is opposed to our public school system. Manifestly there is an irreconcilable difference between papal principles and the fundamental principles of our free institutions.
Popular government is self-government.
To place one's conscience, therefore, in the keeping of another, and to disavow all personal responsibility in obeying the dictation of another, is as far as possible from self -government, and, therefore, wholly inconsistent with republican institutions. It is the theory of absolutism in the state, that man exists for the state. It is the theory of absolutism in the church that man exists for the church. But in republican and Protestant America it is believed that church and state exist for the people and are to be administered by them. Our fundamental ideas of society, therefore, are as radically opposed to Vaticanism as to imperialism, and it is an inconsistent with our liberties for Americans to yield allegiance to the Pope as to the Czar.