St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-09-23
is A CONFLICT COMING?
A Solid Rome to Be Feared Rather
Than a Solid South.

Rev. W. J. LhamOn, at the Church of
Christ yesterday morning, preached
upon "ROmanism and the Public
Schools" DR.. Josiah Strong, he said,
quotes Lafayette as saying: IF the
liberties of the American people are
ever destroyed, they will fall by the
hands of the ROmish clergy" A dis
tinctiOn must be made between Cath
lies. as religionists, and the ROmiSh
hierarchy, with its pretensions. Many
Catholics are loyal Americans. and
with such individually no one can rea-
sonabIy find fault. But Romanism as a
system is a very different thing from
the Catholic worshiper. Roman
Catholics are controlled by the
priests, and the priests by the pope.
The pope claims political authority, and
hence the danger to our institutions.
Our Catholic population is about $780,
600, and is being rapidly increased by
foreign immigration. Statistics differ
slightly, but there are in the United
States about 5000 priests, 81 Catholic
seminaries, 124 colleges, $40 academies,
and about 5000 parOchial schools. All
this is what Orestes Brownson, himself
a Catholic, calls "a foreign colony" in
our nation, representing a civilization
in many respects inferior to our own"
The danger from Romanism to our in
situations is not so much i'll their num-
bers as in their unity. With politicians
solid vote is big count. and solid
Rome is more to be feared than the
solid South. ROmanism is necessarily
antagonistic to our government. for it
makes the state subject to the church
and puts the pope above the HpreSident.
A papal encyclical says: 1.-The RomiSh
church has right to interfere in the
discipline of public schools and in the
arrangement of the studies of the public
schools, and in the choice of the teach
ers for these schools
Rome seeks to drive the Bible from
the public schools, not because she is
opposed to the Protestant Bible in par
tfcular, but to the Bible and the schools
i'm general. We must remember that
the Bible is under the ban of that
church. We owe the Bible in our Ver-
Dacular to Luther and the PrOtestants.
A Bible-reading people will not be a
priest-ridden people, and Rome knows
it. The Catholic Telegraph, of Cincin-
natl, onceksaid: sit will be glorious
day for the Catholics in this country
when. under the blows of justice and
morality, the common school system
will be shivered to pieces"
Indirectly, the Catholics attack the
public school system through their
parochials. They have already more
than half million children in these
schools, and are asking for division OF
the public school fund. In New York
city they are practically getting it. In
that city S1O,000,O0O was paid out of the
public treasury in the seventeen years
Immediately preceding the year 1885
for distinctively Catholic education.
The time may come when Catholics will
refuse to pay taxes to the common school
fund: if so. the state would have to sell
their property and riots would ensue.
! In Mexico, Chill, and the ATgen-
/ tine Republic Catholic parOchials have
been suppressed for their disloyal teach
! ing. They should at least be under
/ state supervision here. If we are not
/ Jealous of OuI liberties the question may
| vet be, not whether we shall turn the
| Bible out of the public schools, but
/ whether we shall turn the constitution
| out of the United States. OF that result
! Catholics are more sanguine than we
are fearful. To that result they are
seeking to salt the fountains of our land
with a bitter Roman salt, and if the
fountains are bitter the stream will be.