New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1894-05-30

character of the Catholic creed is can
appeal to the abandoned ways of anti
guilty." His testimony gathered from
the past is sensible and clear; mine
"sounds much like the raving of un-
settled minds," although it comes from
the same source. Minds 1 quoted from
are dead 1900 years. Therefore they
are unreliable. Minds he quoted from
are dead, some of them, 5000 years.
They are reliable. Oh, yes, my friend,
consistency is a.jewe),
And if inconsistency is manifest in
reference to his treatment of my histori-
cal argument it is still more manifest in
reference to the Catholic Faith of the
Middle Ages. My: friend states: "If
your faith be the same now that it was
in the dark ages, you would not be toll
Grated IN civilized community" His
proof of the change is drawn from
change of conduct. Because Catholics
burned and tortured for Religious sake,
his inference . is that the Catholic Faith
commanded burning and torture, clause
to that effect must stand written in the
Catholic Faith or Catholic creed of that
time. Is there such clause? Look
over the Chatholic creed of the dark ages
and no such article of belief will be found
in it, -.
The question, therefore, arises Was
the Catholic Church responsible for all
the persecution of those times or did
Catholics burn and torture and persecute
in spite of the creedl which they pro-
fessed? Religion gave men pretext
for venting their savage n ,ture; religion
was made the cloak for ambitious and
cruel Ecclesiastics, behind which they
hid their real motive personal aggrand-
izement. But Catholic Belief, the Cath
olic faith never sanctioned the shedding
of one drop of blood-never, never. I
concedc to you that Catholics burned
and tortured, and did so in the name Of
Religion. But they acted according to
the brutal instincts of that dark age,
instincts which nothing; could control,
and they acted against the spirit and
precept and written law of their Church
You may quote .mes Of Bishops, Card
iuals, men high in Church circles if you
wilt argues nothing against the stub =
born fact that the Catholic creed was tn E
same in those ages as it is to day, and
that then as now the Catholic. .creed never
sanctioned the shedding of drop of
blood to advance the cause Of Religion.
Catholic prelates have sanctioned it;
Catholic men have done it; but the
Catholic creed-never.
1t is the mark of fair and enlightened
minds to discriminate between things
that differ and to ascribc effects to their
proper causes. It is due to our intelIi-
gence to see things not as prejudice or
bias paints them, not as we would wish
to have them. but as they are. The
Greeks were noted for seeing things as
they are. Scientists are thus noted. They
leok a physical fact full in the face.
Why can we not look at religious fact
in the same way.
In history we have three religious
facts: TheCatholics burned their fellow
men; the Protestants burned their tel
lowmen; the Infdels burned their fel-
lowmen. For proof of the first fact take
the 1nquisition or acknowledgements day;
for proof of the second fact take Serve
tus or Moore.or the butcheries of scrupu-
lous King Henry the Sth or the Virgin
Queen Elizabeth, or the 600 villages
wiped out in France by the Hougenots,
or the wholesome murders in Sweden by
the Protestant king Of Denmark; for
proof cf the third fact take the Infidel
Commune in France, 1898. Now there
Is not word in the Catholic. Protestant
or lntidel creeds about making these out
rageous murders. No religious creed
has such an article. Therefore we must
in all candor aecribe these butcheries to
another cause; we must ascribe it to the
savage, brutal nature of which man is
heir. We must ascribe it to lack of
civilization. No matter what creed men
professed then, they would have been
slain and murdered. A proof Of this is
the fact that all creeds professed now,
were professed then, and history tells
that it made very little difference so far
as blood-letting was concerned. Protes-
tants We'd with Catholics in cutting off
heads. French Infdels worked the epuil-
lotine to advantage. Sometimes relig-