II. ROME IS THE NATION’S ANTAGONIST BECAUSE IT IS A POLITICAL SYSTEM OF FOREIGN DESPOTISM.

Rome Pagan persecuted the Christians. Rome Pagan became Rome Christian under Constantine and ceased persecuting. Rome nominally Christian became Rome Papal and persecuted more severely than before. The pope controlled the kingdoms of Europe for twelve centuries. How did he gain this power? After the pope became universal bishop he longed to be free from the Byzantine yoke and wield civil power himself. His opportunity came at last to realize his ambition. Here it is. Clovis the Great entered Gaul and destroyed the Roman army in the battle of Soissons in 486. He then established the French monarchy and became the first of the dynasty of Merovingian kings. The Merovingian dynasty continued two hundred and fifty years, when it was superseded by the Carlovingian dynasty. The change came thus: Childeric III was the last of the Merovingian kings, a weak, incapable prince. Charles Martel was “the Mayor of the Palace,” which placed him next to, but not on, the throne. The Saracens invaded France and threatened European civilization. Charles Martel conquered them in a seven days’ battle between Tours and Poitiers in 732, and saved Europe from the scourge of Mohammedanism. The government of France was henceforth practically in his hands. His son and successor, Pepin, wished to remove Childeric III and establish himself on the throne of France, but he must have a legal permit. He appealed to the pope at Rome for such authority. The pope’s opportunity had come. He offered to do as Pepin desired, providing Pepin would free the Holy See from the domination of Byzantium. So Pepin led his army across the Alps and conquered the provinces, entered Rome, made Stephen III a free Prince. The pope became the king of kings in 755. He girded on two swords, one on each side, emblems of temporal and spiritual power. And the pope crowned Pepin King of France. Now, the pope desired to revive the old Roman Empire. In 800 Charlemagne, the son and successor of Pepin, was invited to Rome and crowned by Pope Leo III as “Emperor of the Romans.” In return for this Charlemagne decreed that one-tenth of all incomes must be given to the church on the severest pains of forfeiture. But the pope must have grounds for such assumptions of power. And so the “false decretals” of Isadore, which are now universally considered to have been bold and unblushing forgeries, were promulgated between 847 and 853. And about 858 the “Donation of Constantine,” which is now acknowledged by Romanists to be spurious, was made to do service. These were requisitioned by Pope Nicholas I. The system grew as Innocent III placed the iron crown upon the head of Otho I in 962, as the “King of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans”; as Hildebrand enforced celibacy upon his English clergy in 1073; as Adrian IV granted Ireland to King Henry II in 1156; and as Boniface VIII issued his famous Bull, Unum Sanctum, in 1303, which was quoted by Pope Pius IX in his Encyclical of 1864, and is good canon law today. Here are its contents:

“1. It is necessary to salvation that every man should submit to the pope.

2. This is a necessary consequence of the dogma of papal supremacy.

3. It condemns the assertion by the state of any power over church property.

4. The temporal power of Christian princes does not exempt them from obedience to the head of the church.

5. The material sword is drawn for the church, the spiritual by the church.

6. The material sword must cooperate with the spiritual and assist it.

7. The secular power should be guided by the spiritual as the higher.

8. The spiritual has the pre-eminence over the material.

9. The temporal power is subordinate to the ecclesiastical as to the higher.

10. The temporal power, if it is not good, is judged by the spiritual.

11. To the ecclesiastical authority [that is, to the pope and his hierarchy] the words of the prophet Jeremiah apply: ‘Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root up and pull down and to waste and to destroy; and to build and to plant.’

12. When the temporal power goes astray it is judged by the spiritual.

13. For obtaining eternal happiness, each one is required to submit to the pope.

14. The supremacy of the pope even in temporal things is to be enforced.

15. The pope recognizes human authorities in their proper place, till they lift their will against God.”

The Holy Roman Empire reached its climax in 1164 when Hadrian IV trod on the neck of Frederick of Barbarossa, and went out of commission in 1806, when Napoleon Bonaparte compelled Joseph II to abdicate. When Victor Immanuel II entered Rome in 1870 and made the Quirinal the capital of United Italy, the pope called himself “the Prisoner of the Vatican” and issued one of the most shocking excommunications against the conqueror: “By the authority of the Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and of the holy canons and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and nurse of our Saviour, and of the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubim and seraphim; and of all the holy patriarchs and prophets, and of the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who, in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song; and of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins and of the saints, together with all the holy and elect of God; we excommunicate and anathematize him, and from the threshold of the holy church of God Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented in eternal excruciating sufferings, together with Dathan and Abiram and those who say to the Lord God, ‘Depart from us, we desire none of Thy ways!’ And as fire is quenched by water, so let the light of him be put out forever more. May Father, Son and Holy Ghost curse him. May he be damned wherever he may be; whether in the house or in the field, whether in the highway or in the byway, whether in the wood or water, and whether in the church. May the Virgin Mary, St. Michael, St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul, the choir of the holy virgins, curse him. May he be cursed in living and dying, in eating and drinking, in fasting and thirsting, in slumbering and sleeping, in watching and walking, in standing or sitting, in lying down or walking, and in blood-letting. May he be cursed in his brain; may he be cursed in all his faculties; may he be cursed inwardly and outwardly; may he be cursed in his hair; may he be cursed in the crown of his head; in his temples, in his forehead and his ears; in his eyebrows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils; in his foreteeth and his grinders; in his lips and in his throat; in his shoulders and in his wrists; in his arms, his hands and his fingers. May he be damned in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and in all the viscera of his body. May he be damned in his veins and in his groin and in his thighs, in his hips; in his knees; in his legs, feet and toe-nails. May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of his body. From the top of his head to the sole of his foot may there be no soundness in him. May the Son of the living God, with all the glory of His majesty, curse him; and may heaven with all the powers that move therein rise up against him, curse him, and damn him! Amen. So let it be. Amen.”

But while the pope was pouring out the vials of his wrath, the Prussian army was sweeping the French at Sedan and Napoleon III surrendered and the German Empire became a firm union. The pope ex-communicated the German prelates who refused to accept the dogma of the pope’s infallibility. They refused to vacate their parishes and the Ultramontanes attempted to force them out. The Germans interfered and the iron Chancellor, Bismarck, declared in the Parliament, “We are not going to Canossa, either physically or spiritually,” and on July 4, 1872, the German Reichstag passed a law expelling the Jesuits from the Empire. France has later followed in separating Church and State and banishing the monastic orders. Spain has followed the same example and Portugal is doing likewise. But Great Britain and the United States persist in flirting with the great whore of the Tiber. The coronation oath of King George V was modified and “Home Rule” is voted to Ireland to please the Vatican. In the United States they have 11,000,000 and control 1,500,000 votes of the city governments of Boston, New York, Chicago and others and have ninety-five per cent of the municipal offices filled by Rome. The press of the country is censored by Roman Jesuits. The government at Washington went to Canossa when the President sent Judge Taft to Rome to consult the pope about the friars in the Philippines, the only difference being, Henry IV went in a coarse sackcloth and barefoot in the snow, standing at the gate three days, while Taft went in a swallow-tailed coat and white vest and shoes on his feet, and was received at once. But he bargained to pay the pope 7,500,000 for claims not worth 1,000,000 in the Islands; then 406,000 for damages to church property in quelling a rebellion provoked and fostered by the friars themselves. The solid Roman vote is a menace in our national elections. The Roman hierarchy owns 300,000,000 in America. They have a parochial school system and clamorously demand a share in the public school fund. Their policy is the refinement of duplicity. They join the Jews, infidels and skeptics in driving the Bible from our public schools, on the ground that the State is only a secular corporation and has no right to teach morals and religion. Then they turn with hypocritical distress and exclaim: “The public schools are godless, their education is dangerous because secular and an education without morals and religion is incomplete and vicious: we have built and equipped our parochial schools that our children may have an education in which morals and religion have their proper place and due share of attention; therefore we demand as a matter of fairness that the public school funds be shared with us to lighten this burden which we are forced to carry.” But the answer which the organic people should return is: “This is a Christian State; the public school system is its agency for building up a Christian citizenship; morals and religion, so far as they are essential for discharging the functions of Christian citizenship, shall be taught in our public schools; and the school funds shall not be divided.” While Cardinal Gibbons can have President Taft and his cabinet, the Judges of the Supreme Court, Senators and Representatives attending mass in the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Washington, the great political parties bidding for the solid Roman vote in national elections, and our national policy in the Philippines dictated by the Vatican, Rome may reasonably expect to capture our public schools through the Philippine educational policy. But our blessed Lord is upon the throne and His cause shall prevail.

THE FUNDAMENTALS: A TESTIMONY TO THE TRUTH

---

← 21. Is Romanism Christianity? · Contents · 23. The True Church →