The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-11-01

lessly under the dominion of the Pope.
Cannot we read history" he says in
one reply to Uncle Jack land do we
not know that popes have claimed au-
thority over king and princes, and
that, as good Papists, you must obey
the Pope?" Those disobeying, he con-
tended, did so at the expense of their
duty as Catholics Continuation of
Conversation VIII begins with Uncle
Jacks rejoinder.]
| CONVERSATION VIII (Continued)
/ well, my patriotic nephew. 1 trust
| that you do not doubt that l am a
| thorough going Papist. Now 1 tell YOU
that between my duty as a Papist
and my duty as a patriot, there is
and can be no conflict | owe no du-
! ties to my country but such as are
prescribed by the law of God; and the
only authority the Pope has over me
as a citizen is his authority as the
| spiritual guardian and judge of that
law as binding on my conscience He,
| at the very lowest, l think, is as likely
to interpret and apply that law justly
as is Franklin Pierce or Chief Justice
! fancy or as / should be- by my own
private judgment My political SOW
ereign has no right to demand my
obedience to any order contrary to tho
! law of God, and he has not been con-
| stituted my judge to interpret author
| itatively that law for me, or for any
one else. He is not my ghostly father
nor my spiritual director Said not our
Puritan ancestors as much when they
dissented from the English church as
| by law established? Said not the
| founders of the Free Kirk of Scotland
the same thing when they refused to
acknowledge the authority of the queen
and parliament in spirituals? My po-
| litical sovereign is not the director of
my conscience. My conscience is ac-
countable to no civil tribunal; it is
accountable to God alone, and is ac-
countable to the Pope even in spiritual
matters only as he is divinely COM
| missioned guardian and administrator
of the law of God, If he tells mo
that he simply as man, or as a
| temporal prince, since I am not under
his temporal jurisdiction, wishes me
! to do this or that, 1 am free to re-
| fuse. If, however, he tells me as
Pope, speaking officially as a judge of
| the law of God, that he commands me
/ to do this, or forbids me to do that,
then indeed. but only then, am I
| bound to obedience. Hence it is clear
that his so much dreaded authority ex-
tends only to the morality, the right
or the wrong, of acts in the temporal
ORDER.
But you forget that is precisely
| what we object to- If the Pope tells
you such a measure, the Nebraska
BILL for instance, is wrong, then you
must opposite it," said Dick.
The Pope can tell me that it is
wrong only in case, as it does not
happen to be, it is repugnant to the
constitution or to the law of Cod and
! if so, l certainly ought to oppose it,
for as a good citizen 1 am bound to
oppose whatever is unconstitutional
and repugnant to the divine law.
Whether in deciding the question of
the constitutionality or morality of
civil measure, L rely on the judgment
of the Pope or on my own judgment, is
no affair of the government, for this
! decision touches conscience, and
neither the government nor my fellow
| citizens have, or ought to have, any
authority over my conscience. If you
| had any conception of true liberty, you
would understand that here precisely
is the foundation. Do you not see, that,
in asserting the freedom of conscience
and denying to the civil power all au-
thority over it, all right to interfere
with it, and resisting the authority of
the state to the sphere within the
limits of the divine law, or if you
please, the moral law, 1 am asserting
the true liberty and erecting the most
formidable dyke to civil tyranny?
You claim to be friends of liberty.
especially to civil liberty? Well, you
know that liberty is impossible where
the authority of the state, the king,
the prince, or sovereign, is absolute
and unlimited. Know you not that
the only way to secure it is to place
an effective check on power, restrain
ing it within certain sphere, GER
tain province, and having sufficient
guaranty. against its coming out of
the sphere or province? Know you
not that government tyrannizes over,
interferes with, the liberty of the SUBJ
ject only when it ,transcends it's proper
sphere, and that whenever it does so
it transgresses the law of God? Well
then, to secure liberty some effective
power is needed by the subject to
protect him in the enjoyment of his
rights against the entertainments of
authority, and to absolve him from
his duty of obedience whenever au-
thority commands him to do that
which is morally wrong? But the in
Is HOl III 0lIIlSSll
enough to find this in his own per-
sonal convictions of right and wrong.
The state can overwhelm him, if he
resists it's orders, however unjust and
oppressive. What, then, is the effect
of this dreaded Papal power? Why,
it simply adds the combined strength
of the church to the individual to
protect him in his rights and to keep
the state within it's legitimate sphere.
AS friend of freedom, you should,
then, support instead of opposing it.
1.-The truth is, my dear Dick, that
you and your friends know not what
you do. You are in contradistinction
with yourselves. You profess to speak
in the name of liberty; you are NOV
ing heaven and earth to extend the area
of freedom and to secure to man the
free and full enjoyment of his rights, in
face of government and society. But, |
on the other hand, you rake UP all |
the objections of corrupt and tyran-
meal courts against the church, and, |
following in the footsteps of the most !
lustful, cruel and tyrannical kings of |
Christendom, labor to establish the alb |
solute and unlimited authority of the !
state, which is the grave of all real I
freedom. You build up with one hand |
what you pull down with the other; |
assert freedom and take away its in |
dispensable conditions; struggle for it |
and insist on opening the way to alb |
solute civil despotism. This is worse
than madness"
Nephew Dick: "All this is very
plausible in theory, but how is it in
practice? If the church is the guar
dian and protector of liberty, how |
happens it that we find her every
where leagued with tyrants and up |
HOLDING deSnOfiSn1 p,