In the allocution of Sept., 1851, Pope Pius IX said: "That he had taken that principle for basis: That the Catholic religion, with all its votes, ought to be exclusively dominant in such sort that every other worship shall be banished and interdicted!
"You ask, if the Pope were lord of this land and you were in a minority, what he would do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you; if expedient, he would imprison, banish you, probably he might even hang you. But be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of your glorious principles of civil and religious liberty." —The Rambler, one of the most prominent Catholic Reviews of England, Sept., 1851.
Lord Acton, one of the Roman Catholic peers of England, reproaching her bloody and anti-social laws to his own Church, wrote: "Pope Gregory VII decided it was no murder to kill excommunicated persons. This rule was incorporated in the canon law. During the revision of the code, which took place in the sixteenth century, and which produced a whole volume of corrections, the passage was allowed to stand. It appears in every reprint of the Corpus Juris. It has been for 700 years, and continues to be, part of the ecclesiastical law. Far from being a dead letter, it obtained a new application in the days of the Inquisition; and one of the latter Popes has declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it atones, and more than atones, for the murder of a Catholic." —The Times, July 20, 1872.
In the last council of the Vatican has the Church of Rome expressed any regret for having promulgated and executed such bloody laws? No! On the contrary, she has anathematised all those who think or say that she was wrong when she deluged the world with the blood of the millions she ordered to be slaughtered to quench her thirst for blood; she positively said that she had the right to punish those heretics by tortures and death.
Those bloody and anti-social laws were written on the banners of the Roman Catholics, when slaughtering 100,000 Waldenses in the mountains of Piedmont, and more than 50,000 defenceless men, women, and children, in the City of Bezieres. It is under the inspiration of those diabolical laws of Rome, that 75,000 Protestants were massacred, the night and following week of St. Bartholomew. It was to obey those bloody laws that Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, caused the death of half a million of men, women, and children, who perished in all the highways of France, and caused twice that number to die in the land of exile, where they had found a refuge.
Those anti-social laws, today, are written on her banners with the blood of ten millions of martyrs. It is under those bloody banners that 6,000 Roman Catholic priests, Jesuits, and bishops, in the United States, are marching to the conquest of the Republic, backed by their seven millions of blind and obedient slaves. Those laws, which are still the ruling laws of Rome, were the main cause of the last rebellion of the Southern States.
Yes! without Romanism, the last awful civil war would have been impossible. Jeff Davis would never have dared to attack the North, had he not had assurance from the Pope that the Jesuits, the bishops, the priests, and the whole people of the Church of Rome, under the name and mask of Democracy, would help him.
These diabolical and anti-social laws of Rome caused a Roman Catholic (Beauregard) to be the man chosen to fire the first gun at Fort Sumter, against the flag of liberty, on April 12, 1861. Those anti-Christian and anti-social laws caused the Pope of Rome to be the only crowned prince in the whole world so depraved as to publicly shake hands with Jeff Davis, and proclaim him president of a legitimate government.
These are the laws which led the assassins of Abraham Lincoln to the house of a rabid Roman Catholic woman, Mary Suratt, which was not only the rendezvous of the priests of Washington, but the very dwelling-house of some of them.
That woman, gifted by God to be an angel of peace and mercy on earth, was changed by those laws into a bloodthirsty tigress; for she had smelt the blood which, everywhere, comes from the robe, the hands, and the lips of the priest of Rome.
Those bloody and infernal laws of Rome nerved the arm of the Roman Catholic Booth, when he slaughtered one of the noblest men God has ever given to the world.
Those bloody and anti-social laws of Rome, after having covered Europe with ruins, tears, and blood for ten centuries, have crossed the oceans to continue their work of slavery and desolation, blood and tears, ignorance and demoralisation, on this continent. Under the mask and name of Democracy, they have raised the standard of rebellion of the South against the North, and caused more than half a million of the most heroic sons of America to fall on the fields of carnage.
In a very near future, if God does not miraculously prevent it, those laws of dark deeds and blood will cause the prosperity, the rights, the education, and the liberties of this too confident nation, to be buried under a mountain of smoking bloody ruins. On the top of that mountain, Rome will raise her throne and plant her victorious banners.
Then she will sing her Te Deums and shout her shouts of joy, as she did when she heard the lamentations and cries of desolation of the millions of martyrs, burning in the five thousand auto-da-fes she had raised in all the capitals and great cities of Europe.
"Be ye not called Rabbi. For one is your Master, even Christ. And all ye are brethren" (Matt. xxiii. 8)
"God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him" (Acts x. 34-35).
"Jesus called them unto Him and said: Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
"But it shall not be so among you: But whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister: And whosoever wil be chief among you, let him be your servant.
"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. xx. 25-28).
"If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John viii. 32).
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor! He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke iv. 18).
"Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. iii. 17).
"And they did not receive Him (Christ) because His face was as though He would go to Jerusalem. And when His disciples, James and John, saw this, they said: Wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?
"But He turned and rebuked them, and said: Ye know not what spirit ye are of.
"For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" (Luke ix. 53-56).
"Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.
"Then Jesus said unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? For all they that take the sword, shall perish by the sword" (Matt. xxvi. 52; John xviii. 10).
It is no wonder that the people of Judea, filled with admiration at these sublime doctrines of equality, fraternity, liberty, and tolerance, should exclaim, "Never man spake like this Man!"
Is it on those admirable principles that the Church of Rome is founded? No! for she has, thousands of times, proclaimed that her mission was to destroy them all, even if she had to wade in the blood of those who support them.
But just as the Catholic Church is not only the very antipodes and the most implacable enemy of those admirable doctrines and principles, so the constitution of the United States is the ripe fruit of this divine seed, sown by the Son of God Himself in the bosom of humanity, eighteen hundred years ago, to save the world.
Yes, in reference to those principles of fraternity, equality, liberty, and tolerance, the constitution of the United States is to the Gospel of Christ what the fruit is to the tree which has given it. And this is the verdict given by the whole world, the Church of Rome excepted.
Why is it that the poor, the bruised, the wounded, and the oppressed from every land, turn their eyes, their hearts, and their steps, towards this country? It is because all the echoes of heaven and earth have told them that the United States Republic is, par excellence, the land of fraternity, fair-play, equality, and liberty, as the Saviour of the world has revealed them.
The Pope of Rome and his Jesuits know this better than any one. Hence their constant and supreme efforts to destroy this Republic. Believing and preaching that it is their duty to exterminate the individuals who differ from them in religion, they assume that it is their duty to destroy the governments and the nations who refuse to submit to their yoke, when they can do it safely.
The mission of Rome being to teach that the inferior, the people, must obey his superior, just as the corpse obeys the hand that moves it, or as the stick obeys the hand which directs it, she knows well that she cannot fulfill her mission and attain her object so long as this government of a free, sovereign people stands; she is, then bound to oppose, paralyze, and destroy that government when she finds her opportunity.
With lynx's eye she watched that opportunity; and with anxiety and rage she spied from her cradle the onward march of this young giant Republic. She knew that it was in the bosom of every true citizen of the United States to propagate those accursed (by her) principles of equality, fraternity, and liberty all over the world. She saw that the irresistible influence of those principles were felt on the most distant nations, as well as on the poor, miserable Irish people, she was keeping under her heavy and ignominious yoke; she understood that there was a real danger for her very existence, if those principles would continue to spread; that her slavery star would go down as the liberty star would rise on the horizon. In a word, Rome saw at once that the very existence of the United States was a formidable menace to her own life. Already she had seen the chains of two millions of her Irish slaves melted at the simple touch of the warm rays of liberty which had fallen from the stars and stripes banners. From the very beginning she perfidiously sowed the germs of division and hatred between the two great sections of this country, and she felt an unspeakable joy when she saw that she had succeeded in dividing its South from the North, on the burning question of slavery. She looked upon that division as her golden opportunity. To crush one party by the other, and reign over the bloody ruins of both, has invariably been her policy. She hoped that the hour of her supreme triumph over this continent was come. She ordered her eldest son, the Emperor of France, to keep himself ready to help her to crush the North, by having an army in Mexico ready to support the South, and she bade all the Roman Catholic bishops, priests, and people, to enroll themselves under the banners of slavery, by joining themselves to the party of Democracy. And everybody knows how the Roman Catholic bishops and priests, almost to a man, obeyed that order. Only one bishop dared to disobey. Above everything, it was ordered to oppose the election of Lincoln at any cost. For, from the very first day his eloquent voice had been heard, a thrill of terror had gone through the hearts of the partisans of slavery. The Democratic press, which was then, as it is still now, almost entirely under the control of the Roman Catholics, and the devoted tool of the Jesuits, deluged the country with the most fearful denunciations against him. They called him an ape, a stupid brute, a most dangerous lunatic, a bloody monster, a merciless tyrant, etc., etc. In a word, Rome exhausted all her resources of language, she ransacked the English dictionary to find the most suitable expressions to fill the people with contempt, hatred, and horror against him. But it was written in the decrees of God that the honest Abraham Lincoln should be proclaimed President of the United States, the 4th of March, 1861.
More than once I felt as if I were in the presence of an old prophet, when listening to his views about the future destinies of the United States. In one of my last interviews with him, I was filled with an admiration which it would be difficult to express, when I heard the following views and predictions:—
"It is with the Southern leaders of this civil war, as with the big and small wheels of our railroad cars. Those who ignore the laws of mechanics are apt to think that the large, strong, and noisy wheels they see, are the motive power, but they are mistaken. The real motive power is not seen; it is noiseless and well concealed in the dark, behind its iron walls. The motive power are the few well concealed pails of water heated into steam, which is itself directed by the noiseless, small, but unerring engineer's finger.
"The common people see and hear the big, noisy wheels of the Southern confederacy's cars, they call them Jeff Davis, Lee, Toombs, Beauregard, Semmes, etc., and they honestly think that they are the motive power, the first cause of our troubles. But it is a mistake. The true motive power is secreted behind the thick walls of the Vatican, the colleges and schools of the Jesuits, the convents of the nuns, and the confessional-boxes of Rome.
"There is a fact which is too much ignored by the American people, and with which I am acquainted only since I became President; it is that the best, the leading families of the South, have received their education in great part, if not in whole, from the Jesuits and the nuns. Hence those degrading principles of slavery, pride, cruelty, which are as a second nature among so many of those people. Hence that strange want of fair play, humanity; that implacable hatred against the ideas of equality and liberty, as we find them in the Gospel of Christ. You do not ignore that the first settlers of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, South California, and Missouri, were Roman Catholics, and that their first teachers were Jesuits. It is true that those states have been conquered or bought by us since. But Rome had put the deadly virus of her anti-social and anti-Christian maxims into the veins of the people before they became American citizens. Unfortunately, the Jesuits and the nuns have, in great part, remained the teachers of those people since. They have continued, in a silent but most efficacious way, to spread their hatred against our institutions, our laws, our schools, our rights, and our liberties, in such a way, that this terrible conflict became unavoidable between the North and the South. As I told you before, it is to Popery that we owe this terrible civil war.
"I would have laughed at the man who would have told me that before I became the President. But Professor Morse has opened my eyes on that subject. And now I see that mystery, I understand that engineering of hell which, though not seen or even suspected by the country, is putting in motion the large, heavy, and noisy wheels of the state cars of the Southern Confederacy. Our people are not yet ready to learn and believe those things, and perhaps it is not the proper time to initiate them to those dark mysteries of hell; it would throw oil on a fire which is already sufficiently destructive.
"You are almost the only one with whom I speak freely on that subject. But sooner or later, the nation will know the real origin of those rivers of blood and tears, which are spreading desolation and death everywhere. And then those who have caused those desolations and disaster will be called to give an account of them.
"I do not pretend to be a prophet. But though not a prophet, I see a very dark cloud on our horizon. And that dark cloud is coming from Rome. It is filled with tears of blood. It will rise and increase, till its flanks will be torn by a flash of lightning, followed by a fearful peal of thunder. Then a cyclone, such as the world has never seen, will pass over this country, spreading ruin and desolation from North to South. After it is over, there will be long days of peace and prosperity; for Popery, with its Jesuits and merciless Inquisition, will have been for ever swept away from our country. Neither I nor you, but our children, will see those things."
"Though the heretics who repent must always be accepted to penance, as often as they have fallen, they must not in consequence of that always be permitted to enjoy the benefits of this life. When they fall again they are admitted to repent. But the sentence of death must not be removed." (St. Thomas, vol. iv., page 91).
"When a man is excommunicated for his apostacy, it follows from that very fact that all those who are his subjects are released from the oath of allegiance by which they were bound to obey him." (St. Thomas, vol. iv., page 91).
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