Rome Or Moscow-Which?
There are threats facing the American people today that have never been faced before in our history. Our fathers knew tyranny and despots of the past, and we have faced great dangers in our time; but never have we known the day when two great evils demanded that we make a decision as it is now placed before the American people. Our fathers fled the dictatorial demands of the kings of the old world when they came to this land to establish what we know as America. They framed a set of laws that would forever make it possible for man to live and worship in peace in a new world, but today we are faced with Communism and Catholicism. Both are dictatorial; both are anti-American; both are demanding the attention of America. There is no respect for human rights under either, and the American conception of the dignity of man and the freedom of the mind is equally denied by both parties. The old world is drained of its wealth, and the will of the people to fight these evils has been broken. We, of America, must meet this threat to our liberty. Rome or Moscow—which? Shall we choose one, or shall we reject both?
God made a man, and not a machine, when He created Adam. Man was given the freedom of choice. Force was never used by almighty God for the propagation of truth. The New Testament covenant teaches that all men should have the right to express themselves in the matter of religion. This is clearly demonstrated in the life and preaching of our Lord. Many times He came into open combat with the forces of evil and met them in public discussion. The debates and discussions of the apostle Paul with those who opposed the Christian religion in his day fill many pages of the New Testament. It is very clear to those who read the Bible, that Christian people live and work today under a law that provides the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
Article I of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America reads: "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
We are grateful that our fore-fathers saw fit to provide such a constitution for the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of press as is provided in this document.
Aims of the Communist party are set forth by the following statements.
- "The overthrow by force and violence of the republican form of government guaranteed by article IV, section 4, of the Federal Constitution" would be one of the first demands of a Communist controlled America.
- "The substitution of a Soviet form of government based on class domination to be achieved by abolition of elected representatives both to the legislative and executive branches, as provided by article I, by the several sections of article II of the same Constitution, and by the fourteenth amendment."
- "The confiscation of private property by govern- mental decree, without the due process of law and Dom-sensation guaranteed by the fifth amendment."
- "Restriction of the rights of religious freedom, of speech, and of the press as guaranteed by the first amendment." (American Legion, Ism, p. 16)
In this we see the fundamental aims of the Communist Party as presented by testimony take from Earl Browder, one time candidate for president of the United States.
The fundamental aims of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Communist Party are identical. First, let us see the aim of the Roman Catholic Church as it has to do with the state.
"The church is a sovereign power with legislative, executive, and Judicial branches of government claiming the power of coercion." The Pope is a civil ruler, and he claims to rule by divine right. There are only a few such rulers in the world today, one being the Emperor of Japan, and the other, the Pope of Rome. He heads the Vatican State, a 108 acre section in the city of Rome. This state has its own flag, own police system; it issues its own currency, and men and women travel throughout the world on passports issued by the Vatican State. It is a complete autocracy, with its diplomatic corps; it receives and sends ambassadors throughout the world. Our nation is an exception to receiving of ambassadors from the Vatican State, but we are faced with the disgraceful action of the Roosevelt administration in sending Myron C. Taylor, 1939, as a personal representative of the President to the Vatican. This, we all know, was a sop to the Roman Catholic Church, and was used as an ear for the pleas and the demands of the Roman Catholic religion.
In showing the fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church, quotations shall be presented from The Syllabus of Errors, a document issued by sole authority of Pope Pius IX, December 8, 1864; and it "must be regarded now as an infallible and irreformable document, even without the formal sanction of the Vatican Council. It is a negative document, but it indirectly teaches and enjoins the opposite of what it now condemns." Creeds of Christendom, "Syllabus of Errors," page 213.
"The church has not the power of availing herself of force, of any direct or indirect temporal power." This, says an infallible Pope of Rome, is an error.
"The ministers of the church, and the Roman Pontiff, ought to be absolutely excluded from all charge and dominion over temporal affairs." This is a false doctrine says Rome.
"The church has not the innate and legitimate right of acquisition and possession." When we become alarmed at the doctrine of the acquisition and possession of property without the due process of law as taught by the Communist Party, should we not become greatly alarmed at such a doctrine with identical aims as is presented by the Roman Catholic Church in this statement which is called by the Pope an error?
"Ecclesiastical courts for temporal causes, of the clergy, whether civil or criminal, ought by all means to be abolished, either without the concurrence and against the protest of the Holy See." Here we see that the Roman Catholic Church believes that her priests and nuns and officials of the church should be exempt from civil power, and that when a crime or an offense against society is committed by one of her servants that the civil court should have no right to intervene, but that such parties should be tried by ecclesiastical court.
"In the case of conflicting laws between the two powers, the civil law ought to prevail." What more evidence do we need than this clear-cut statement from the Roman Pontiff that in the case of a conflict of laws between the United States government and the Catholic Church, the law of the church should prevail over the law of the United States government. This statement, says Roman Pontiff, is an error.
"The church ought to be separated from the state, and the state from the church." Catholics call this a falsehood; and so the Pope is on record as saying that the state and the church should be joined together. The aims and the plans of good Americans call for a complete separation of church and state, but the Pope would have the two to be joined together.
Consider where the center of Roman Catholic power is located in America. Is it in Boston, Chicago, or New York City, where we have a great Roman Catholic population? No, but it is in Washington, D. C., where political influence is strongest. In that city, the church has her own legal department. A powerful lobby is constantly on duty to support Catholic legislation. And even now, President Truman has made it possible for a Catholic authorities to censor all his speeches so that no offense will be given to the Roman Catholic Church in America.
In Washington is located Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, which graduates a large class each year schooled in diplomacy, and who go forth as diplomats throughout the world carrying with them, of course, the Catholic viewpoint.
The Catholic conception of the church and the state is clearly set forth by Pope Leo VIII in 1885 when he said: "From these decisions of the popes it is clearly to be understood that the origin of public power is to be sought from God himself and not from the multitude; that it is a crime for private individuals and a crime for the states to take no account of duties of religion, or to treat different kinds of religions in the same way; that the uncontrolled power of thinking and publicly proclaiming one's thoughts has no place among the rights of citizens." Letter of Leo VIII, Creeds of Christendom, p. 585. This Pope, of course, was speaking as an infallible pope.
Here we see that the Roman Catholic Church does not believe in the right of man to rule himself, but that all power must be sought from God himself, which, of course, means that if the Roman Catholic Pope is the personal representative of God upon this earth, that the right to rule must be sought from the Roman Catholic authority today. We see, also, from the above statement that it is a crime for a private individual to take no account of the duties of religion or for the state to take no account of the duties of religion, and that it is a crime for the state to treat different kinds of religion in the same way—that the state should have complete control of religion. We see, also, from the statement of Pope Leo VIII, that it is a crime for men and women to have uncontrolled power of thinking and publicly expressing their thoughts, and that such has no place among the rights of citizens today.
Cardinal Gibbons in his book, Faith of our Fathers, says: "All Christians must be in communication with the See of Rome where Peter rules in the person of his successors." This is a clear-cut statement showing that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that all religions not in constant communication with the See of Rome are religions not in communication with God himself. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the church, meaning Catholicism, should be "established, protected, and supported" by the state.
Again we quote from the "Syllabus of Errors." "The church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion." This, says the Roman Pontiff, is an error.
"The church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any direct or indirect temporal power." This statement which is condemned as an error shows that the church believes that she has the right to use force, direct or indirect temporal power, to preach the doctrine of the Roman Catholic religion.
Again: "National churches can be established, after being withdrawn and plainly separated from the authority of the Roman Pontiff." This is condemned as a false doctrine. The Catholic Church is on record as saying that religious organizations in America, in Italy, and throughout the world, have not the right to exist and to be separated from the authority of the Roman Pontiff.
Monsignor John A. Ryan, makes this statement: "The state must not only have care for religion, but recognize the true religion practiced by the Catholic Church. The state should officially recognize the Catholic religion as the religion of the Commonwealth. It should recognize and sanction the laws of the church." Then what of other religions, we might ask, in a predominantly Catholic state? "They may be carried on within the family circle if in such an inconspicuous manner as to be an occasion neither of scandal nor of perversion to the faithful." "Error," says the Roman Catholic Church, "has not the same right as truth." This explains why that in such Catholic states as Spain and Italy today it is very difficult for those who do not preach the Catholic theory to proclaim that which they believe to be truth in public.
We again quote from the "Syllabus of Errors." "The entire direction of public schools, in which the youth of Christian states are educated, except (to a certain extent) in the case of Episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the taking of degrees, or the choice and approval of the teachers." This, says the Roman Catholic Church, is a false doctrine. How then would America like to live under a system where the arrangement of studies, the taking of degrees, and the choice and approval of teachers is all the problem and the work of Roman Catholic authorities?
"The best theory of civic society requires that popular schools open to the children of all classes, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophy, and for conducting the education of the young, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, government, and interference, and should be fully subject to the civil and political power, in conformity with the will of rulers and the prevalent opinions of the age." When the church stamps its endorsement of this as being a false statement, it clearly shows that the church today, because this is an infallible statement of a Roman Catholic Pontiff, does not believe in the freedom of education and the free public school system that we know in America.
"This system of instructing youth, which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith and from the power of the church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural things and the earthly ends of social life alone, may be approved by Catholics." Here we have clear evidence that the Roman Catholic Church does not endorse any Roman Catholic citizen giving his approval to a free education system.
It is a well known fact that Catholics avoid and abuse the public school system as much as possible. They resent the payment of taxes for the support of public schools; they demand that taxes be given to support their own parochial schools. They demand free transportation from the tax money of citizens for the transportation of their boys and girls to their church schools. Paul Blakely, in a tract with the Imprimatur of Cardinal Hayes, says, "The first duty of every Catholic is to keep his child out of public school." William McManus, in 1947, is quoted as saying, "The school, particularly the private school, is the battleground between the forces of totalitarianism and those of freedom and democracy. In the totalitarian nation, the government is the teacher; the government controls all the schools which it uses for the mental enslavement of the people. In the free nation, the government refrains from direct educational activities." The Roman Catholic theory, then, is that America is a totalitarian nation.
There are some who resent a comparison between Catholicism and Communism because they have been led to believe that the Roman Church is the foe of Godless Communism and is the standard bearer for the sanctity of the home. We are reminded that the Catholic Church does not issue a divorce and immediately many are impressed. What are the facts about Rome and divorce? What is the Roman conception of the bonds of matrimony when one of her faithful seeks to break a marriage union? An insight into the Roman Catholic value of marriage and annulment is revealed in a news story from Rome, January, 1949. Tyrone Power married Linda Christian in a Catholic ceremony and afterward received a Papal blessing. The ceremony was performed eight hours before his divorce from Catholic Annabella had been terminated in a Los Angeles court. The annulment had been granted on the ground that the first marriage was not legal because it had not been performed by a Catholic priest. We can see, then, that on the least pretext, for people who are important, the church sets aside the marriage vows and grants an annulment without hesitation. The true doctrine of the church does not recognize marriages unless they are solemnized by the church. Where then does this leave the marriages of the world outside of the Catholic Church? If Tyrone Power lived in an adulterous union with his first wife, it also makes every other person in such a union if the ceremony was not performed by a priest. It is very noticeable that this annulment arrangement works so well in favor of the rich and important people of the Catholic Church.
To those who study both Rome and Moscow and their claims, a great similarity can be seen. Neither has any place among the free lives of American people. Let us pray God that our fair nation will be delivered from both. Moscow has a precarious foothold and lives a life among the shadows, but Rome walks with the very great of the land and threatens the liberties of us all.