THE PAPACY AND CIVIL POWER

by R.W.Thompson

It has come to be an axiom among all the advocates of free government, that "error ceases to be dangerous when reason is left free to combat it." But those who support the cause of imperialism [dictatorship] maintain the opposite of this - that the public mind and conscience are enlightened only in proportion as they are submissive to some superior governing power, sufficiently strong to hold them in obedience.

The contest between these opposing theories is one between intelligence and ignorance. In the one case, society is recognized as being entitled to govern itself by laws of its own enacting-founded upon its own will. In the other, this right is entirely denied, and it is regarded as being fitted only for that condition of inferiority which shall reduce it to an unconsciousness of its degradation.

The civil institutions of the United States are constructed upon the former of these theories [freedom]. Wheresoever civil institutions have existed in obedience to the dictation of the papacy, they have been constructed upon the latter [dictatorship]. Protestantism, with all its elevating tendencies, is the legitimate offspring of the [first] one. Decrepitude, decay, and disruption have been the natural fruits of the other. These considerations must be kept in mind, in examining the claims now set up in behalf of the papacy, in order that we may have a clear view of what we are required to surrender, and understand the character of the millennial feast to which we are invited.

When Pope Pius IX, in 1867, convened all "the prelates of the Catholic world" in Rome to witness the ceremony, of canonizing saints and assigned as one of the reasons for the convocation "the extreme peril which threatens civil, and, above all, sacred things," (1) thoughtful men wondered why so much expense should be incurred, and so much labor performed, for an object which would, of itself, confer no good upon Christianity or the Church. But when the late Vatican Council enacted the decree which made papal infallibility, for the first time, a dogma of religious faith, and threatened with anathema all who should refuse to recognize the pope as incapable of all error in matters of faith and morals, all further disguise was thrown aside, and the world was awakened to the fact that these measures were but the inauguration of a deliberately concerted effort to make the papacy a power so absorbing and omnipotent that all nations and peoples should be held by it in abject, passive, and humiliating subjugation.

It would be an unjust reflection upon the acknowledged intelligence and sagacity of the papal hierarchy in the United States to suppose that they did not understand, from the beginning, the end the pope had in view, and the object he desired to accomplish. Their relations to him, and their dependence upon him for their official positions and dignity, require that there shall be no concealment between them. The kind of obedience they pay him renders it necessary that they shall furnish him with the most undoubted assurance that they are always ready to execute whatsoever he shall command, in the domain of faith and morals, without stopping to inquire what human laws or institutions are in the way, except so far as it may be necessary to contrive some method to evade or overleap them. (2)

These American prelates took the earliest occasion, after the appearance of the Syllabus, to show, not only that they fully comprehended its meaning, but that the pope's reliance upon their fidelity to him was not misplaced. In this extraordinary document it is asserted, with dogmatic brevity and terseness, that it does not appertain " to the civil power to define what are the rights and limits within which the Church may exercise authority;" that its authority must be decided upon by itself, that is, by the pope, and exercised "without permission and assent of the civil government;" and that, "in the case of conflicting laws between the two powers, the laws of the Church must prevail over those of the State.(3) Here, every thing is plain-nothing equivocal. The subordination of the State to the Church, and the substitution of the papal hierarchy for the people in enacting and enforcing such laws as the pope may think necessary for the Church, are distinctly and emphatically asserted. There is no room for misconstruction of the language. And it must be observed that the pope is speaking alone of civil "rights and limits," and the authority which "the Church may exercise" in reference to them; that is, over that class of temporalities holding the Church to be, in these respects, above the state, and having the right, as its superior, to command and enforce obedience. It requires but a moderate share of intelligence to see that the principle here asserted is in direct antagonism to the theory of American government, and that, if established, it would violate one of the cherished provisions of the Constitution of the United States and of the Constitution of every State in the Union. The American hierarchy understood this perfectly well. Whosoever else may shelter themselves behind the plea of ignorance, they can not. And yet this knowledge imposed no restraint whatever upon them, in the expression of their submissiveness and obedience to the pope. They considered themselves as owing their first and highest allegiance to him, as the representative of "the royalties of St. Peter," and did not hesitate to avow it: of all this, they have themselves furnished the most satisfactory evidence.

The second National Council of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of the United States met at Baltimore in October, 1866 - nearly two years after the Encyclical and Syllabus were issued. It was composed of seven archbishops and forty bishops, besides a number of the superiors of religious orders, and was presided over by Archbishop Spalding, of Baltimore, as "apostolic delegate" representing the pope, and thus going to the assembly as much weight and influence within its jurisdiction as if the pope had been personally present. In theory it represented the great body of the Roman Catholic laity in the United States; practically, it took no note of them or of their opinions. It was assembled for a special work - to respond to the Encyclical and Syllabus; and it did it, to the "great comfort and consolation" of the pope. It would have been unnatural for him to have felt otherwise at thus seeing the ranks of the papal arms closing up, and at knowing how well he had succeeded in inaugurating a conflict between the imperial dogmas of the papacy and the fundamental principles of American government.

In the pastoral letter issued by this Council, the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to the government and laws of this country is discussed. There is a tone of ecclesiastical authority and command employed by its authors which tends to show an impression existing in their minds that they were addressing an papacy not accustomed to question their authority or controvert their propositions. Hence, they proceed, without indirection, to lay it down as an axiom in the science of all government, not to be disputed, that the civil power is never absolute or independent. Inasmuch as "all power is of God," there must exist some delegated authority upon earth, which, representing God, must constitute the tribunal of last resort. Upon this tribunal alone all absolute power is conferred, no matter what the form of government. If it be a monarchy, the king must be held in subjection to it; and if a democracy, the people must be taught that it is above them.

Founding their theory of government upon this idea, they proceed to show how differently the principle operates in "the Catholic system" and in the Protestant system. In the latter, according to them, "the individual is the ultimate judge of what the law of God commands or forbids;" while in the former, "the Catholic has a guide in the Church, as a divine institution, which enables him to discriminate between what the law of God forbids or allows;" so that when the Church shall instruct him that any particular law of the state is contrary to God's law, he is thereby forbidden to pay obedience to it. According to the Protestant system, in their opinion, the state is exposed to disorder and anarchy, because the authority by which it is governed has no warrant for its character as divine. The reverse they insist to be the case in the "Catholic system;" and, therefore, because it has this divine authority in the Church and not in itself, "the state is bound to recognize" the Roman Catholic Church as the sole depository of the delegated power to decide what laws shall be obeyed and what disobeyed.

It requires no pause for reflection to see how directly a "Catholic system" of government, thus constructed, would conflict with the existing civil institutions" of the United States. Nor do we need a prophet to tell us that the establishment of such a system here would be followed by the immediate destruction of our cherished Constitutional institutions. To permit a church - any church - to decide upon the validity or invalidity of our laws after their enactment, or to dictate, beforehand, what laws should or should not be passed, would be to deprive the people of all the authority they have retained in their own hands. Further, such action would make such church the governing power, instead of them. Yet, understanding this perfectly well, and, evidently, contemplating the time when they might possibly be able to bring about this condition of affairs these papal representatives directly assail a principle which has been universal in all our State governments, from their foundation that which regulates by law the holding of real estate by churches and other corporations, and requires them to conform, in this temporal matter, to the statute-laws of the States. To this there could be no reasonable or just objection, had they invoked the rightful power to change, alter, amend, or even to abrogate the obnoxious laws for this would have been only the exercise of the admitted right of free discussion secured as well to them as others. But they, manifestly, had no such idea in view, inasmuch as, according to them, that method of procedure belongs to the Protestant and not the "Catholic system" of government. To exclude the impression that they design to look to any other authority than that of the papacy for the relief they seek, they take especial pains to say that they "are not as yet permitted legally to make those arrangements for the security of church property which are in accordance with the canons and discipline of the Catholic Church!" That is, the canons and discipline of their Church, issued from the Vatican at Rome, by the pope and Roman curia, are not permitted to override and nullify the laws of the United States! The plain import of this is, that all the laws of the States concerning the rights of the Roman Catholic Church, and regulating the manner in which it shall hold and enjoy property, have "no claim on the obedience" of the Roman Catholic citizen, because they are not "in accordance with the canons and discipline of the Catholic Church" and the papal decrees. Such a system of government, put into practical operation, would amount to this, that conformity to the "canons and discipline" of that Church would be the test of all laws, and none would be binding except those pronounced obligatory by the pope. The "divine right" of the pope to govern the people, through his hierarchy, would be fully recognized, and the right of self government would be at an end.

The right of holding real estate and accumulating large wealth, after the manner of the Roman Catholic Church and monastic orders of Europe, the American hierarchy regard as of so much importance to the success of their ecclesiastical organization, that this Baltimore Council declared that to withhold it is to deprive their Church "of a necessary means of promotion the end for which she has been established." They declare that "she can not accept" the principles upon which the American laws are based "without departing from her practice from the beginning," because "they are the expression of a distrust of ecclesiastical power." And, to leave no doubt whatever about their meaning, they insist that the States have no more right to impose on their Church "a system of holding her temporalities, which is alien to her principles," than they have to "prescribe to her the doctrines she is to teach;" and they solemnly enter their "formal protest" against all such legislation, notwithstanding the laws they protest against exist in all the States, and embody a principle deliberately considered and approved by the American people.(4) It is incompatible, they say, "with the full measure of ecclesiastical or religious liberty," to deprive them of the right of holding whatsoever amount of real or other property they may acquire in the United States, by purchase, devise, or gift, and of governing it by laws of the pope's or their own enacting, independently of the laws of the States, to which all Protestant churches and people pay cheerful obedience; thus showing that they would have each archbishop within his episcopate, and each bishop within his diocese, and each priest within his parish, a temporal prince, with the sceptre of royalty in his hands, although he might not wear its crown upon his head.

One would expect to see, in a document of this kind, a statement of some serious grievance against which relief was sought, something that would at least excuse, if not justify, the attempt to introduce into our government a foreign element of authority above the people. But the only "practical results" complained of are, first, the taxation of their church property; and, second, an attempt made by the State of Missouri, after the end of the rebellion, "to make the exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry depend on a condition laid down by the civil power;" that is, by requiring them to conform to the laws of the State, in furnishing evidence of their loyalty to the Government. From the nature of these complaints, it would seem that they were only employed as a pretext, merely affording them an opportunity of making known to the pope how cheerfully they responded to the doctrines of his Encyclical and Syllabus, and with what confidence he might rely upon them in doing their share of the work necessary to arrest the progress and advancement upon which this country had entered.(5)

The intentions of men are frequently made known far more satisfactorily by their surroundings, the contemporaneous events with which they are identified, the parties to which they are attached, and their connection with other individuals, than by the language they use. By reference to these we are furnished with a rule of interpretation which does not often mislead, although it is not altogether infallible. Therefore, when it is considered that these prelates who assembled at Baltimore recognize, to the fullest possible extent, their obligation of obedience to the pope; and when it is remembered that the pope had, but a little while before, announced his views of the relations which should exist between the Roman Catholic Church and civil governments, the conclusion is unavoidable that they desire the adoption, in this country, of their theory of government, based upon their ideas of the "Catholic system." To assign to them any other motive, after the distinct and emphatic avowals they have made, would be an impeachment of their integrity and sincerity which is not designed. It is supposed that they occupy ground cautiously and deliberately selected by them, and are fully prepared to take all the consequences which attach to their position. There is, at all events, no misunderstanding what they desire to accomplish. Nor should there be any misconception of the immense power they wield over multitudes of men in this country, in moving them backward or forward, to the right or left, as the pope shall direct.

We are not left in any doubt about the nature of the terrible struggle now going on between the modern nations and the papacy. These hierarchs at Baltimore comprehended it fully, when they entered upon an explanation of the difference between the Protestant system of government, with the people as the source of civil power, and the "Catholic system," with the pope as its only source. Having voluntarily yielded to the papal pressure by the frank avowal of their preference for the latter; and having no excuse, on the plea of ignorance, for not understanding what it has hitherto done for the world, they must be considered as desiring to see the Christian nations, including the United States, carried back to the condition they were in when the papacy was at the zenith of its power; when kings were ignoble enough to lay their crowns at the feet of the pope; when popes disposed of kingdoms at their pleasure, by imposing or releasing the obligation of allegiance as the reward of fidelity to themselves, in the one case, or of disobedience, in the other; and when ignorant fanaticism and superstition were so universal that the Christian world dreaded nothing so much as the terrible thunders of excommunication.

Therefore, it is proposed that the Roman Catholic citizen of the United States shall be carried along step by step, in the following process of training the duties of citizenship: he shall be brought to recognize his Church as the only custodian of God's law; that the pope is infallible and therefore as the vicegerent of God, has plenary and sole power to interpret that law, and can not err in its interpretation; that he shall find his only "guide in the Church" in deciding whether he shall obey or disobey the civil laws of the state that the pope is the infallible representative of all truth in the world, and infallibly employs all the power and authority of the Church; that, as he can not err in any thing concerning faith and morals, he must, in their domain, be implicitly obeyed; that, as the pope is infallible as the chief instructor in doctrine and duty, his prelates are also infallible as his subordinate workers; that the pope as he shall speak through the mouths of these prelates, must be obeyed absolutely and uninquiringly - all his utterances being taken as the voice of God, coming directly from his throne in the heavens; and that infamy in this life and eternal damnation in that to come will be the inevitable doom of all who shall impiously reject these teachings.

With this achieved, the hierarchy would be far along upon the road that would lead them to their final triumph-the mastery-over the people. The pope, as the source of all authority in the Church, would put forth his royal edicts and decrees in regard to their church property in this country, prescribing how they should acquire, hold, and enjoy it, and these edicts and decrees would take the place of all our State statutes upon that subject! This would build up at Rome an imperialism that would reach out further over the world than did that of the Caesars, and might become far greater and more injurious to mankind.

Therefore, the idea he intended to convey was this: that the religion which had received a "nets impulse" in the United States was that which taught the subordination of all civil governments to the Church and the papacy! It was not the true religion which was exemplified in the life and example of Christ, and which has its foundation in universal charity and love; but that which places the pope above all kingdoms and peoples, and requires every human being to pay him homage and fidelity.

Shall the tide of retrogression, thus arrested in Italy, by a Roman Catholic population, be permitted to set in again in the very heart of the Protestant nations? The reason assigned for the preference of the "Catholic system" over the Protestant is the incapacity of the people to govern themselves, and to take care of their own civil affairs - an argument as old as tyranny. The issue is a plain one - easily perceptible to the most ordinary comprehension. The two systems stand in direct antagonism with each other. The Protestant has separated the State from the Church; the papal proposes to unite them again. The Protestant has founded its civil institutions upon the will of the people; the papal proposes to reconstruct and found them upon the will of the pope. The Protestant secures religious freedom; the papal requires that every man shall give up his conscience to the keeping of ecclesiastical superiors. The Protestant develops the faculties of the mind by inciting the spirit of personal independence and manhood; the papal crushes out all this spirit by its debasing doctrine of passive obedience and submission. The Protestant has put the world upon a career of progress and prosperity; the papal desires to arrest this career, and turn it back into those old grooves which have led so many nations to wreck and desolation. The issue is made, between these systems in so bold and manly a manner, that, its authors are entitled to that consideration which the possession of high moral courage always excites in generous minds.

They can, therefore, have no just cause to complain of either intolerance or persecution if, finding ourselves in the possession of free and popular institutions which we have solemnly declared to be inalienable, we shall employ like courage in their defense; or even if, in maintaining their integrity, it shall become necessary to point out the contrast between these opposing systems to the extent of showing that the Protestant and popular system was necessary to lift the world out of the corruption and degradation into which the papacy had plunged it.

He must be stone-blind who does not see, in the light of these and other facts occurring almost daily, that Protestantism has been formally arraigned by its vindictive and unrelenting enemy; that it has been put upon its trial before the civilized world; that judgment of condemnation has already been pronounced against it; and that the arm of the executioner is only stayed until the limbs of the victim can be so tightly bound as to make its resistance unavailing. Its open adversary and accuser is the papacy, which, unwilling to submit to the necessity that has wrought on its own defeat among those who are most, familiar with its enormities and oppressions, now assails it courageously; but impudently, in the citadel of its greatest strength. Claiming to be clothed in the robes and with the authority of divinity, he demands, in the name of Deity; that we shall bow down before him in passive submission, and accept his commands as if uttered by a voice from heaven. We, who believe that Protestantism is sheltered by Divine care, must not remain unresisting under an attack so immediate and formidable, nor sit still while a judgment may be taken, by default, against us. A commanding sense of duty requires that we should look this haughty and imperious adversary full in the face, understand his machinations, strip him of his disguises, unravel his plots, and meet him at every point of attack. If we shall remain insensible to any of the obligations of this duty, now that the battle-cry is sounding in our ears, it may be too late after the storming party has mounted the walls of our fortress, pulled down our flag, and planted that of papal and ecclesiastical absolutism upon the grave of popular institutions.

What does Protestantism mean? What necessity gave it birth? What has it done for mankind? What would be the condition of the world if it were destroyed? These are questions we should not fear to discuss, and which we are bound to discuss, now that it is denounced, in our very faces, as heresy and infidelity, and we are insolently told that duty and man requires its total extermination, and the erection of a "Holy Empire" wheresoever its principles prevail and its institutions exist. We must not sink into indifference, nor permit the fear of consequences to slacken our exertions in a cause of such transcendent importance to ourselves and our children. If our fathers had been easily intimidated, we should have had no such government as we now possess. If we shall prove less courageous than they the heritage they have left us may not pass to many generations of our descendants. Some of the proudest governments of the earth have already fallen; there are none that may not fall.

Cutting Edge Note: Since the Pope has been selected as the global leader of the coming New World Order Religion, we know he will rule the world religiously. However, Malachi Martin makes it very clear in his book, "The Keys of This Blood" that John Paul II is not content with only ruling religiously. Rather, the Virgin Mary has assured him he will rule religiously AND politically, after the New World Order is established. The Pope will know when the time has arrived for him to make his great power grab. That time will come when the Virgin Mary causes her apparition to occur all over the world. At that moment, the Pope is to cause a coup to occur, and try to seize total control.

What will be the reaction of the occult political leaders of the New World Order? The Bible tells us exactly what their reaction will be. " The ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." [Revelation 17:16-17]

When I saw the "White Magic" practitioner, Alice Bailey, threaten the Roman Catholic Church with nuclear annihilation [page 548, "The Externalisation of the Hierarchy"], I understood that this was one more example of Biblical prophecy being fulfilled! You see, the Protestants are not the only people persecuted by Rome over the centuries. In about 600 A.D., Rome began the Inquisition by killing anyone who followed the Hermetical "arts", which is a fancy way of saying the Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian Mysteries. Today, we would call these people New Age.

Therefore, the current leadership of the global drive to the New World Order are descendents of the Hermetics who were so vigorously killed by Rome! They have given the global leadership of the New World Order Religion to the Pope because they recognize his ability to tie all religions together. But, they distrust the Pope, based upon history, and will be watching his actions carefully. When they see he is up to his old historic tricks, and is attempting to seize political control of the New World Order, they will react vigorously, to attack and destroy him. But, this time, they control all the armies, navies, and airforces of the world, and are not afraid of his supposed power to excommunicate them.

They just might destroy him and his Rome with nuclear fire. If this occurs, Biblical prophecy will have been fulfilled.

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