The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1878-01-24

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sscute. With the open pages of history
telling us of the active part catholics
took in the signing of the Declaration
of Independence and of the blood they
shed profusely on the battle fields in
the warfare for the same we now find
violently prejudiced dissenters pio-
claiming aloud that the only dangers
now threatening the liberties OF
America are from the catholic people
and their essentially despotic
church !! !" Any impartial spectator
can perceive that the catholics ofto.day
love the liberties of America as well
as, if not more than, their protestant
neighbors and did necessity require 1t
would now, as in the past, spill their
blood as freely.
For the intolerance and thumb
screw and auto de fe'' Of our Protes-
tant neighbors-they alone practice it
now-a-days--look to New Hampshire,
look to the old "Blue Laws" of Con-
necticut in the past in contrast with
that of the Catholic Colonists of Mary
land. And what now has the German
government been doing, that govern
ment that our Thanksgiving Rev.
orator said attempts to protect all? 1t
has undertaken to limit the clergy
and hierarcy of the church in regard
to the exercise of every power and
function which their Divine Commits.
sion comprehends. Priests and
Bishops are prohibited under grevious
penalties from discharging any duty
or function whatever without permis-
sion from the government. The re-
ligious orders of the catholic church
have been banished. Her bishops are
prohibited from ordaining priests or
appointing them to parishes, and the
clergy from discipling the laity ex-
cept under conditions that imply alb
solute, unconditional submission to
the State in matters spiritual as we'll
as civil Their salaries, deriyed from
church property tyrannica1ly taken
from the church by the State, are
withheld unless this submission Is
made, submission no christian can
make consistently with his belief in
divine religion. Thousands of catho-
lies are deprived of any place of
worship, their churches have been
taken from them and turned over to
little squads of so called "old catho-
lics' consisting in many instances of
Jews, Intidels and persons who
habitually do not attend any religious
services. Catholics cannot even build
with ther own money new church
edifice without government pernlis-
sion; no priest or Bishop is allowed,
by the new ecclesiastical laws of the
German Government, to teach the
doctrines of the catholic faith as the
church defines them &C., &c. Look
through all the protestant countries
and if you do not find bloody perse-
cution, you will at least in some form.
Compare them with catholic
countries and where then do we now
find the "thumb screw and auto de
fe," which indeed were never used
with the sanction of the catholic
church, even in the Spanish Inquisi-
tiOn, as letters of the then reigning
Popes prove, urging the spanish gov
ernment to mjldness with dissenters.
Coming home to our own America,
with all its boasted freedom, and we
find religious freedom deprived in al
most all our government Institutions.
and just now we learn that Bill,
brought up before our State Legisla-
ture at Harrisburg few days ago by
our honorable and worthy representa-
tive, c. II. Farley, to provide for free
religious liberty of the inmates of all
State institutions, is about to meet
strong opposition ! Liberty, things are
now so changed, thy name is intoler-
ance!
The many truths embodied in this
article may CRATE harshly to those
heretofore unacquainted with them,
but such must remember the charact.
eristics of truth--like the operations
of the physicians-hurt the diseased
before curing. AS Mark Twain says
we must "speak the truth unblush-
ingly," ''facts are facts and facts are
terrible things"
A CATHOLIC.
Ridgway Pa. Jan. 10th 1878.