The objection to the Catholic Church just now most insisted on in our country is, that she is hostile to our form of government. From all quarters, from the press, the rostrum, the legislative hall, and the Protestant pulpit, we hear it proclaimed, in every variety of tone, that the church ought not to be tolerated in these United States, for she is anti-republican in her spirit and influence, and if once permitted to gain a foothold on our soil, she would destroy our free institutions, and deprive us of the inestimable advantages of self-government. This objection I propose to meet and refute, by showing what really is the relation of Catholicity to republicanism.
I must, however, premise that I am always humbled in my own opinion, when I am called upon to reply to an objection of this sort. It is humiliating in the extreme to be forced to defend the spiritual against objections drawn from the temporal, or religion against objections drawn from politics. Religion, if any thing, is for man the supreme law, and must take precedence of every thing else; and the very idea of a church, is that of an institution founded by Almighty God, for the purpose of introducing and sustaining the supremacy of his law in the government of human affairs. If religion and politics are opposed, politics, not religion, must give way. No man, I care not who he is, whether a Catholic or a Protestant, a pagan or a Mahometan, if he has any conception of religion at all, denies, or can deny, that he should place his religion first, and that all else in his life should be subordinated to it. He who denies that his religion should govern his politics, as well as all his actions, virtually denies morality, denies the divine law, and asserts political atheism. To subject religion to politics, or to object to a religion because incompatible with this or that political theory, is, in principle, to deny the sovereignty of God himself, and to fall below the most degrading form of gentilism.
It is also humiliating, in this nineteenth century, in this free and enlightened country, when most of us profess to be Christians, to be obliged to meet the objections urged by the old carnal Jews against our Lord. Is it not mortifying, after Christianity has been preached for eighteen hundred years, to find one’s own countrymen still back in the gross carnal views of those who crucified its Founder between two thieves? The objection strikes at the very foundation of Christianity itself. The objection is not that Catholicity is hurtful to the soul, or insufficient to secure salvation in the world to come. As a religion, looking to the eternal welfare of the soul, there are few to find fault with it, and the majority even of those who urge the objection, would, no doubt, confess, if man’s chief end was to make sure of heaven, that the Catholic religion, as far as there is any difference, is probably the best. The real character of the objection is not, that our religion is not a good religion for heaven, but that it is a bad religion for this world. It is unfavorable to our worldly interests, to our temporal prosperity, and to our political and social well-being. “We do not like the Catholic religion,” say our non-Catholic friends, “because it neglects this world, and we find in Catholic countries a vast amount of poverty, idleness, and dirt, and a lack of that thrift, that activity, that enterprise, and that industry, whose hammer rings from morning till night, till far into the night, so remarkable in Protestant countries. It does not favor the development of the material resources of a nation, does not extend commerce, manufactures, trade, industry, as does Protestantism, that religion so well adapted to our earthly wants.” So, as man’s business is to make sure of this world, and “jump the world to come,” it is concluded that Protestantism is true, and Catholicity is false!
Examine this objection and you will find that it is at bottom the objection of the old carnal Jews to our Lord. They interpreted the prophecies in a carnal sense, and applied them to this world. They expected a Messiah, but they expected him to come as a temporal prince, to establish a temporal kingdom, and to secure his followers all the riches and pleasures of this world, to enable them to overcome all their enemies, and enjoy an earthly paradise. When he came, not in all the pomp of an earth-born grandeur, not with the retinue and majesty of an earthly monarch, but as a spiritual prince, meek and lowly of heart, followed only by poor fisherman, despised publicans, and a few pious women, promising indeed happiness to his followers in another world, yet in this world only self-denial, persecution, and mortification, they could not recognize him as the expected Messiah; they rejected him, and in the bitterness of their rage cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” The objection against the church now urged in our country is precisely the same, and expressed almost in the same words. “If,” said they, “we let this man go on, the Romans will come and take away our name and nation.” “If,” say our Know-Nothing adversaries, “we let this church go on, get a foothold in the country, the Romans (Roman Catholics) will take away our republic, and reduce us to slavery.”
But though I regard it as a reproach to our age and country that such an objection should be brought, I still feel it necessary, as things go, to meet it, and to meet it fairly; and this I hope to be able to do without recognizing its legitimacy, or in the least subordinating religion to politics. I shall not attempt to meet it by showing what some Catholics may have done, that Catholics have at times resisted the ecclesiastical authority, bid defiance to the pope, and sustained their temporal sovereign against him. I do not propose to meet it by citing instances of liberty or of despotism among Catholics, nor the opinions professed by individual Catholics, because I may be answered, and answered truly, that Catholics do not always obey their religion, or act in accordance with its spirit. I propose, therefore, to show, first, what are the constituent elements of a republic, and secondly, that the church, in order to its salutary working, must be one of them.
(excerpted from chapter 2)