The record-union., 1894-05-14
REV. KOEHNE'S SERMON.
He breaches the Fifth of His Series
Last Night.
His Subject "The Priest and the Flags
His Comparisons and the
View He Takes.

Rev. J. B. Koehne preached last night
to house crowded to overfowing at the
Congregational Church on the subject,
1.-THE Priest and the Flag"
He said that the American flag was an
emblem of our educational system. a
symbol of freedom, not only of person.
but of thought. There was not slave in
the old days who did not carry the
Declaration of Independence engraved
in his heart; there is not an American
citizen who does not do so to-day. The
Pope is more absolute than any monarch,
because he claims that he can make no
mistake, he is infalllble. Every man be-
lieves he has a right to govern himself,
to think for himself. He believes that 1t
is his heaven given right, but the priest
says TO him, "You must believe what |
tell you.v He does not tell the people to
think for themselves as Catholics and
American citizens, but to think as be
dictates.
The two great parties, he said. shout
when successful, I'VE have won
glorious victory" but if they will look
they will see that on either ticket there
all Democrats. many of them are Repub-
licans, but they always win. He found
no fault with anyone on account OF his
religion. He knew many good and sim
cere Catholics, but their allegiance was
elsewhere than to this country. Ii 1t be
not so, why does the Archbishop tell
them to remember they are Catholics?
There is much feeling with some peo-
pie against immigration. They say that
those not born in America are not Ameri-
cans. Some who are not born here are
better than some who are Americans.
We should not shut the gates on account
OF birth, but against those who are under
the dominion of foreign potentate or
pontih. They are not Americans. Some
men who are born here have foreign
1deas-Italian ideas. He repeated that it
was not their religion that he found
fault with, but their allegiance.
If our Protestant business men are
asked to contribute toward building a
church or raising mortgage on it, they
say, "Oh, you are always begging" but
If asked to contribute to build a cathedral
their contributions flow freely No one
ever, on the contrary, heard of a Catholic
aiding TO build a Protestant church.
He cited a United States History which
gave twenty lines to Lincoln, thirty to
Archbishop Hughes, twenty to Wash
ington and forty to Prior ID. Smith. A
resolution passed by Catholics, he said,
denounced the A. p. A. as reasonable be-
cause it loved Lincoln more than Hughes
and Washington more than Smith.
OF the great problems of the day, he
said the Catholic Church would solve the
immigration problem by making them
all Catholics. The educational problem,
according to Archbishop Ireland, pre-
sents three points of interest-the
negroes, the Indians and the public
schools. Make the negroes and Indians
Catholics, and through them abolish the
public schools. The labor question the
church would solve, he said, by giving all
the work to Catholics. The majority of
those at work in the shops and on the
streets, he said, showed what the pressure
accomplished.
lie paid his respects to the newspapers,
saying that their hands were bound and
the hand OF the Catholic Church was
OH their mouths. They would give
columns to the ordination of bishop,
and few lines to the memory or work Of
the most eminent Protestant divine.