Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 3
January 24, 1952
NUMBER 37, PAGE 14a

You Hear Strange Things About Catholics

R. Ervin Driskill, Columbus, Georgia

In an ad published some weeks ago by the Knights of Columbus and with the above title we have these words: "Some think Catholics believe the Pope is God . . . that they owe him civil allegiance and that he should have the political power to rule America. It is said Catholics want religious freedom only for themselves ... that they oppose public schools and separation of church and state as evils which should be destroyed." In the last paragraph they offer to mail a pamphlet to let fair-minded people know what the Catholic Church really is and not as it is sometimes mistaken to be.

Here are facts that cannot be successfully denied: "The pope is of so great dignity and so exalted that he is not a MERE MAN (caps mine, R.E.D.), but as it were GOD, and the vicar of God." "Hence the pope is crowned with a triple crown, as KING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH AND OF THE LOWER REGIONS." (Caps mine) "Moreover the superiority and the power of the Roman pontiff by no means pertain only to heavenly things, to earthly things, and to things under the earth, but are even over ANGELS, than whom he is GREATER." Ferraris' Ecclesiastical. Dictionary (Roman Catholic), article "Pope." Again: "We hold upon this earth the place of GOD ALMIGHTY."—Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, "The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII," P. 304. " ... thou art ANOTHER God on earth." History of the Councils," by Labbe and Cossart, Vol. XIV, column 109. When Pope Benedict XV died, his death was officially announced by the papal secretary of state thus: "Our LORD the Pope is dead." The Bible says there is ONE LORD (Eph. 4:5) and that Jesus is that LORD. (Acts 2:36) Catholics teach the pope is LORD. QUESTION! Are Catholics misrepresented or, are these things we hear true? The public can decide.

But, what are the facts of the church-state matter? "Attorney General McGrath in his now infamous speech to the National Catholic Education Association last March 30, . . . declared that the provision of the First Amendment separating church and state was based on the "distorting" of a phrase in a letter of Thos. Jefferson." Converted Catholic Magazine, June, 1951, P. 186. Mr. McGrath is a staunch Catholic and does not believe in separation of church and state (as one can gather from his statement) and that the Catholic hierarchy concur with him in this. Pope Leo XIII set forth this expedient policy in his instructions sent to the bishops of the United States in 1888: "Although on account of the extraordinary political conditions today it may happen that the Church in certain modern countries acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient that they should be permitted, she would in happier times resume her own liberty. (Jan. 1946, issue of The Converted Catholic Magazine) From this we ask: "Does the Catholic Church believe the Pope is due their civil allegiance; do they want religious freedom for themselves ONLY; do they believe in separation of church and state is it the aim of Catholics to rule America?

Have Catholics been misrepresented about the public school? I leave all honest people to decide: "We deny, of course, as Catholics, the right of the civil government to educate; for education is a function of the spiritual society (the Roman Catholic Church), as much as preaching and the administration of the sacraments ... We deny the competency of the State to educate even for its own order, or its right to establish purely secular schools." (Orestes A. Brownson's Views, P. 64. He is a well known Catholic.) "Our first duty to the public school is not to pay taxes for its maintenance." "The first duty of every Catholic father to the public school is to keep his children out of it." (Sept. 20, 1930, issue of America) "This business of teaching every child indiscriminately how to read and write results in nothing more than mass illiteracy. The man who reads and writes badly, as the great majority do today, is more illiterate than the man who does not read at all . . . One heresy breeds another. This indiscriminate 'education' applied to all alike under State systems is the result of the heresy of the EQUALITY of men." (Jesuit magazine AMERICA, Oct. 31, 1931) If Catholics have been misrepresented, in these matters, they are responsible for these are statements from well known Catholics.