Part 10 (2/2)

The queen, poor woes, and the sentence was read and translated to her She could not speak the language of France, so her only cry was ”Rome!” And Rome heard her cry of distress, and came to her rescue Innocent III needed the alliance of France in the troubles in which he was engaged with Germany; Innocent III needed the assistance of France for the Crusade; yet Innocent III sent Peter of Capua as Legate to France; a Council is convoked by the Legate of the Pope; Philip refuses to appear, in spite of the sudoe knows no bounds: bishops are banished, his laife is iy of France The barons, at last, appeal against Philip to the sword The king coate, and when Innocent only confir exclai was forced to obey When he asked the barons assembled in council, ”What nes and restore Ingelburgis” And, thanks to the severity of Innocent III, Philip repudiated the concubine, and restored Ingelburgis to her rights, as wife and queen Hear what the Protestant Hurter says, in his life of Innocent: ”If Christianity has not been thrown aside, as a worthless creed, into some isolated corner of the world; if it has not, like the sects of India, been reduced to a mere theory; if its European vitality has outlived the voluptuous effeminacy of the East, it is due to the watchful severity of the Ro care to maintain the principles of authority in the Church”

As often as we look to England, that land of perfidy and deceit, we are reustus We see Cle them as his principles in his conduct towards the royal brute Henry VIII Catherine of Aragon, the laife of Henry, had been repudiated by her disgraceful husband, and it was again to Rome she appealed for protection Clement remonstrates with Henry The monarch calls the Pope hard names Clement repeats, ”Thou shalt not coland from the Church; he does it; still Clement insists, ”Thou shalt not coo to bleed out their life at Tyburn; still the Pope repeats, ”Thou shalt not commit adultery!” Henry had tives at the same time, and, after _them_, took a neife, and killed off his old wife, whenever his beastly passion prompted The enslavement of the people followed Henry lish nation recognize hi the tyrant was death The lish yielded This adulterous beast--this ferocious monster--they accepted as their pope; and their children, following in their steps, accepted his bastard brood--of either sex--as their popes; while the only and true Pope, the successor of St Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, was rejected by theradation do apostate nations fall The firland's loss to the Church It cost the Pope bitter tears, and he prayed to Heaven not to visit on the people of England the crimes of the despot; he prayed for the conversion of the nation; but sacrifice the sanctity, the indissolubility of matrimony, that he could never do--abandon helpless women to the brutality of men ere tired of the restraints of morality--no, that the Pope could never permit If the Court, if the palace of the doe to injured and downtrodden innocence

”One e of the Popes, whenever there was question of defending the laws of God against the powers of the earth; and in thus defending the laws of God, they protected against outrage the personal dignity, the moral liberty and the intellectual freedom of man ”Because there was a Pope,” says a Protestant historian, ”there could not any longer be a Tiberius in Europe, and the direction of the religious and spiritual welfare of man ithdrawn from the hands of royalty” Because there were Popes, the will of Caesar could not any longer be substituted for law; for the Popes made the Gospel the law-book of the nations Now the Gospel teaches that all power con derives his power, to rule in justice and equity for the welfare of his subjects, and that the subjects are bound to obey their rules, for conscience sake Hence, adopting the great principal of action, the Popes have at all times condemned the spirit of rebellion, and have anatheanizations whose aim is, and has always been, to overturn lawful authority and to substitute anarchy in the place of the harovernment In conformity with this rule of action the Popes Cleory XVI, and Pius IX have condemned secret societies, whose object is the overthrow of civil and religious government But at the same time that the Popes required froovernainst the abuse of power, or against the tyranny of unjust rulers In Pagan times it had the appearance as if the people existed for the sovereign, and not the sovereign for the people; but in the days and in the countries where the spiritual suprean idea had necessarily to disappear, for the Popes gave the princes to understand that they existed for the people, and not the people for thenificent spectacle does the Catholic Church present to our admiration, and how does the honest heart of downtrodden nationality yearn that these happy days may once more return! Taken mostly from the middle classes, sometimes even from the most humble ranks of society, the Popes ascended the Chair of Peter; and these men, who had been the sons of artisans and ained a ree could bestow, became the arbiters between nation and nation, between prince and people, always prepared to weld together the chain of broken friendshi+p, and to protect, by their power and authority, the rights of subjects oppressed by tyrannical rulers It was indeed a blessing for Europe that Nicholas I could curb, with an iron hand, the tyranny of kings and nobles It was indeed a blessing, not for Europe alone, but for the world, that there lived a genius on earth in the person of Gregory VII, who kne to protect the Saxons against the wanton lawlessness of Henry, King of Gerround his subjects remorselessly in the dust, and respected neither the sanctity of virginity nor the sacredness of hts of the Church, nor those of the State; whose very existence seemed to have no other aim but that of the leech, to draw out the blood from the hearts of his unhappy subjects What would have become of Germany had there not been a power superior to that of this Godless prince? It was Gregory VII who hurled him froians their independence, not by the power of the sword, but by the scathing power of his anathema The same I may say of Boniface VIII, and of Innocent III There was, happily for Europe, a Court of Appeal, to which even monarchs were forced to bow; and that court was Rome It was to Rome that the nations appealed, when their independence was at stake or their rights were trampled upon And Rome was never deaf to the cry of distress, whether it caland or from Poland, from Spain or from the shores of the Bosphorus

And when the liberty of a nation was on the verge of destruction, and when ehts, natural and vested, of their subjects, forgetting the sacred trust confided to them, became tyrants, when neither prosperity nor undivided liberty were secure frohts of conscience were set aside with impunity; it was the Popes of Rome who buckled on the armor of Justice, and humbled the pride of princes--even if, as a consequence, they had to say, with a Gregory VII, ”Dilexi Justitiam et odivi iniquitatem; ideo morior in exilio”--”I die in exile because I have loved justice and hated iniquity”

The influence of Catholicity tends strongly to break down all barriers of separate nationalities, and to bring about a brotherhood of citizens, in which the love of our common country and of one another would absorb every sectional feeling Catholicity is of no nation, of no language, of no people; she knows no geographical bounds; she breaks down all the walls of separation between race and race, and she looks alike upon every people, and tribe, and caste Her views are as enlarged as the territory which she inhabits; and this is as wide as the world Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Irish, Gerlish, and American, are all alike to her The evident tendency of this principle is to level all sectional feelings and local prejudices, by enlarging the views ofabout harmony in society, based upon mutual forbearance and charity And, in fact, so far as the influence of the Catholic Church could be brought to bear upon the anomalous condition of society in A the desirable result of causing all its heterogeneous eleeneous nationality

Protestantisether and unites

The Catholic Church is a grand fact in history--a fact so great that there would be no history without it--a fact per into the concerns of all the nations on the face of the earth, appearing again and again on the records of ti, perceived or unperceived, directly or indirectly, socially, morally, and supernaturally, every individual who foranism of human society

Around this Church human society moves like a wheel around its axle; it is on this Church that society depends for its support, its life, its energy, like the planetary systee, a country, a nation deprived of the influence of Catholicity, and I will show you an age, a country, a nation without ion and Science, Liberty and Justice, Principle and Right,” are not eetic existence in the world to the Catholic Church

Such is the power and such is the influence of Catholicity Yet I do not pretend that our Catholic population is perfect, or that in theretted

Certainly in our cities and large towns may be found, I am sorry to say, many so-called liberal or _noion, to the land of their birth, or to that of their adoption Subjected at home, as they were, to the restraints iovern here, that they are loosed fro the obedience they owe to their pastors, to the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over them, they become insubordinate, and live more as non-Catholics than as Catholics The children of these are, to a great extent, sharoithout the siious instruction, and to become recruits to our vicious population, our rowdies and our criminals This is certainly to be deplored, but can easily be explained without prejudice to the influence of Catholicity, by adverting to the condition to which those individuals were reduced before coee land; to their exposure to new and unlooked-for temptations; to the fact that they were by no means the best of Catholics even in their native countries; to their poverty, destitution, ignorance, insufficient culture, and a certain natural shi+ftlessness and recklessness, and to our _great lack of schools, churches, and priests_ The proportion, however, that these bear to our whole Catholic population, is far less than is commonly supposed, and they are not so habitually depraved as they appear, for they seldom or never consult appearances, and have little skill in concealing their vices As low and degraded as this class of our Catholic population may be, they never are so low or so vicious as the corresponding class of non-Catholics in every nation A non-Catholic vicious class is alorse than it appears; a Catholic vicious class is less bad In the worst there is always soerm that, with proper care, may be nursed into life, that may blossom and bear fruit Yet, if we look at the Catholic population as it is, and is every year becoy and progress We will find that population more intellectual, etic than any other

The Catholic population of this country, taken as a body, have a personal freedom, an independence, a self-respect, a conscientiousness, a love of truth, and a devotion to principle, not to be found in any other class of American citizens Their her, and they act more uniformly under a sense of deep responsibility to God and their country They are thepeople The orous, and the hardiest; their virgins are the chastest; their reat majority, act from honest principle, from sincere and earnest conviction, and are prepared to die sooner than in any grave ard as truth and justice They have the principle and the firood report and evil report, whether the world be with the Catholics you will not find the flunkeyis classes of Great Britain, or that respect to , or that base servility to the mob, or public opinion, so common and so ruinous to public and private virtue in the United States

The s considered, is far more remarkable than that of our non-Catholic countrymen; and, in proportion to their numbers and means, they contribute far more than any other class of American citizens to the purposes of education, both co fro numerous schools of their own, they are forced to contribute their quota to the support of those of the State

Thus, to take a single illustration, the public school-tax in Cincinnati for last year amounted to 810,000 Of this the Catholics--such is their proportion in that community--contributed 230,000, or e suement and formation of schools which the Catholics of Cincinnati are debarred, by their consciences, fro They have therefore their own schools, which they have built, and support entirely at their own expense, without any assistance whatever froive is known to be excellent; but it is based on religion, and is not controlled by the State and paid officials The consequence is, that not only are they not encouraged, but they are actually taxed by the State

Thus, for instance, the Cathedral School is obliged to pay to the State an annual tax of 120, and the schools of another parish 200 The Catholics of the Cathedral Parish have not only to pay the State school-tax, and the heavy tax laid on their school-buildings, but they have to find 3,500 annually to meet the current school expenses All this has to be collected by the clergy as best they can

The non-Catholic has no conception of the treasure the Union possesses in these thirteen millions of Catholics, humble in their outward circuh-toned, chivalric national character will be forenerated and sustained in proportion as the force of Catholicity is brought to bear upon our American people, and the life of practical Catholics falls into the current of American life

Catholics have their faults and shortcos, yet they are the salt of the American community, and the really conservative element in the American population In a few years they will be the Americans of the Alorious work of sustaining A the hopes of the founders of our great and growing Republic

It must, then, be evident to every true lover of the Republic, that the State, were it at liberty to favor any particular portion of the community, should favor its conservative ele Catholics of millions of dollars, to continue, by Godless education, the impious work for the increase of the number of enemies of the Republic; it should rather supply Catholics with theup their children in the spirit of true freedom--in the spirit of devotedness to republican institutions But as the State is neither Catholic nor Protestant, it should at least act justly and impartially; it should not favor its own enelorious Constitution; it should no longer play the usurper and the robber; it should no longer continue digging its own grave; it should not tax Catholics any longer to support infidel institutions--nurseries of all kinds of crimes--and thus continue to violate most atrociously the very letter and spirit of the Constitution, and to coe on the most sacred convictions of Catholics

It is the well-instructed practical Catholic that is alone capable of appreciating and realizing true freedohts of God, ever careful to trench on the rights of his fellow-creatures, he is, for all this (and precisely _because_ of this), well aware of his own rights and dignity as a enerated son of God--and, knowing his rights and dignity, he dares ainst Godless education as a volcano that is destined to bury law and authority, and bring about universal anarchy, and prepare and establish the reign of antichrist We eneration in a religious atmosphere, and imbue them with the principles of Christianity All those who oppose any longer the denominational system, in any manner whatsoever, are traitors to the Republic and the worst eneeance of God will not be slow to overtake them On the contrary, he ill be first and fore this noblest of objects--the establishment of denominational schools--may truly be called the _saviour_ of the Republic,--the _father of his country_; he will be as great, nay, even greater, than Washi+ngton his of heaven will descend in superabundance, and his naeneration

FOOTNOTES:

[G] By ”An Act to restore to Rohts in respect to Separate Schools,” passed May 5, 1863, they provided that ”the Roman Catholic separate schools shall be entitled to a share in the fund annually granted by the legislature of the province for the support of common schools, and shall be entitled also to a share in all other public grants, investments, and allotments for common school purposes now made or hereafter to be e nu such school, as co schools in the sae or townshi+p”--Cap 5, sec 20

CHAPTER XIII

THE CATHOLIC PRIEST ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

So far I have spoken as an American citizen I have shown to all my fellow-citizens the tree with its fruits--the Public School systeht All who call themselves Christians, or who consider themselves men of common sense, and warree withthat the Public School system is a tree of which wein the ood and evil thou shalt not eat For in what day soever thou _shalt eat of it thou shalt die the death_”--(Gen ii 17) It is now time for me to speak as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church It is the duty of the Catholic priest to teach the children of the Catholic Church the language of their spiritual Mother--the Church This language is no other than that of the Supree of the Vicar of Christ in regard to Godless education is very plain and unmistakable

Jesus Christ, our Divine Saviour, has said: ”What doth it profit a ain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”--(Matt xvi 26) What will it profit you or your children to gain all knowledge, and to attain the greatest success in this world, if, through your fault, and through your exposing theer of evil education, they suffer the loss of that faith, without which ”it is i of the Syllabus_