The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-23
A SERMON ON THE A. P A
Rev. Father Ferguson of St
Patrick'S Church Speaks
Plainly.
Joining Issue With Those Who Are
Denounclng Members of the
Catholic Church.

At the morning service of st. Patrick s
Church yesterday Father James P. Fer
guson delivered sermon directed
against those whom he regards as perse-
cutors of the Catholic Church, and ex-
pressed regret that strife should be stirred
up among the different denominations He
said: The founders of the republic put
themselves on record as opposed to any
thing savoring of the bigotry that the
A. P. A. are now propagating. They had
bitterly experienced the evils of persecu-
ton in the countries from which they had
emigrated. That persecution was not
Catholic. With its evils wildly impressed
upon their minds, the Catholics of Mary
land, the Puritan of New England and the
Quaker of Pennsylvania declared in the
first Congress that no man should be dis
eliminated against because of his religious
belief. 1t is now more than hundred
years since this principle was embodied in
the organic law of the land.
To-day set { bigots seek to nullify it.
They ignore the spirit and trample On the
letter of the constitution. They seek to
revive prejudices which it was the mission
of Americas institutions to destroy. They
would open controversies which have been
dom after centuries of bloodshed.
free press and free speech are the
watchwords they employ to deceive their
dupes. What Catholic is opposed to
either? Without them ne would have no
security against the calumnies circulated
by his enemies. The Catholic is shut out
from fair hearing in papers controlled by
the A. P. A. Their only conception of a
free press is the freedom for themselves to
abuse and Willy Catholics, The freedom
of the press, in its largest and best sense,
has no greater enemies than the members
of the A. p. A. have proved themselves to
be. They are goaded to madness when
the Catholic side of the question finds an
entrance into the columns of the press.
Through that part of the press-over
which they have no control-came the ex-
posure of their spurious encyclicals and
their silly rants about arms stored in the
Easements of churches.
Senator Hoar took occasion in a speech
the other day to praise the gallantry of
the Catholic Union soldier, Plunkett, who
on the parapets of Vicksburg, with both
arms shot away, chung with the stumps to
Old Glory, and thus saved it from capture
Forgiving this just need OF praise to a
hero who had fought and bled for the
Union, these lovers of free speech have
vowed in solemn conclave to infiict politi-
cal death upon the senior Senator of Massa-
chusetts The services he has rendered the
Nation and his native State in legislative halls
will not save him from prescription. The bal
lot will be invoked to drive him from public
life.
The speaker said that 1t was no wonder that
the soul of honest Abe Lincoln revoited at the
thought that such persons spring into life on
the free soil of America He said that the
Know Nothing Society was similar to the A. P.
A. of the present. Their cry forty years ago
was patriotism. They too professed the great
est reverence for Uncle Sam. Yet Lincoln ex-
pressed what the speaker considered the senti-
ment of an honest man when he said he
wanted to emigrate to Russia and take des-
potism pure and unalloyed the day their prln-
ciples triumphed. The speaker said the warn
ing which Josiah Quincy, the Massachusetts
orator, addressed to his countrymen forty
years ago will not pass unheeded. The doom
of the republic is sealed when the bats take the
lead of the eagles. The eagles are the Wash
ingtons and CAROLS, the statesmen of the
the A. P. A. in view when they declared that
a religious test should never be the measure of
a mans fitness for holding Office, public or
private
The bats are the narrow-gauge politicians.
Deluded by these designing leaders, the rank
and file of the A. P. A. are not aware that in
advocating the religious prescription of their
fellow citizens they are antagonizing the SUI
preme law OF the land. But the country is
awakening to the real danger which menaces
1t from this society. The time Is drawing near
when all Americans true to their noble tradi-
tons will be one in opposition to intolerance
and bigotry.