The Faith of Our Fathers Part 21

The Church has not only respected the conscience of the people in embracing the religion of their choice, but she has also defended their _civil_ rights and liberties against the encroachments of temporal sovereigns. One of the popular errors that have taken possession of some minds in our times is that in former days the Church was leagued with princes for the oppression of the people. This is a base calumny, which a slight acquaintance with ecclesiastical history would soon dispel.

The truth is, the most unrelenting enemies of the Church have been the princes of this world, and so-called Christians princes, too.

The conflict between Church and State has never died out, because the Church has felt it to be her duty, in every age, to raise her voice against the despotic and arbitrary measures of princes. Many of them chafed under the salutary discipline of the Church. They wished to be rid of her yoke. They desired to be governed by no law except the law of their licentious pa.s.sions and boundless ambitions. And as a Protestant American reviewer(302) well said about forty years ago, it was a blessing of Providence that there was a spiritual Power on earth that could stand like a wall of bra.s.s against the tyranny of earthly sovereigns and say to them: "Thus far you shall go, and no farther, and here you shall break your swelling waves" of pa.s.sion; a Power that could say to them what John said to Herod: "This thing is not lawful for thee;" a Power that pointed the finger of reproof to them, even when the sword was pointed to her own neck, and that said to them what Nathan said to David: "Thou art the man."

She told princes that if the people have their obligations they have their rights, too; that if the subject must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, Caesar must render to G.o.d the things that art G.o.d's.

Yes; the Church, while pursuing her Divine mission of leading souls to G.o.d, has ever been the defender of the people's rights.

St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, affords us a striking instance of the strenuous efforts made by the Catholic Church in vindicating the interests of the citizen against the oppression of rulers.

A portion of the people of Thessalonica had committed an outrage against the just authority of the Emperor Theodosius. The offence of those citizens was indeed most reprehensible; but the Emperor requited the insult offered to him by a shocking and disproportioned act of retribution, which has left an indelible stain upon his otherwise excellent character. The inhabitants were a.s.sembled together for the ostensible purpose of witnessing a chariot race, and at a given signal the soldiery fell upon the people and involved men, women and children in an indiscriminate ma.s.sacre, to the number of about seven thousand. Some time after the Emperor presented himself at the Cathedral of Milan; but the intrepid Prelate told him that his hands were dripping with the blood of his subjects, and forbade him entrance to the church till he had made all the reparation in his power to the afflicted people of Thessalonica.

People affect to be shocked at the sentence of ex-communication occasionally inflicted by the Church on evil-doers. Here is an instance of this penalty. Who can complain of it as being too severe? It was a salutary punishment and the only one that could bring rulers to a sense of duty.

The greatest bulwark of civil liberty is the famous _Magna Charta_. It is the foundation not only of British, but also of American const.i.tutional freedom. Among other blessings contained in this instrument it establishes trial by jury and the right of _Habeas Corpus_, and provides that there shall be no taxation without representation.

Who were the framers of this memorable charter? Archbishop Langton, of Canterbury, and the Catholic Barons of England. On the plains of Runnymede, in 1215, they compelled King John to sign that paper which was the death-blow to his arbitrary power and the cornerstone of const.i.tutional government.

Turning to our own country, it is with no small degree of satisfaction that I point to the State of Maryland as the cradle of civil and religious liberty and the "land of the sanctuary." Of the thirteen original American Colonies, Maryland was the only one settled by Catholics. She was, also, the only one that raised aloft over her fair lands the banner of liberty of conscience, and that invited the oppressed of other colonies to seek an asylum beneath its shadow.

Lest I should be suspected of being too partial in my praise of Maryland toleration, I shall take most of my historical facts from Bancroft, a New England Protestant clergyman.

NOTE-The first edition of Bancroft's History was published in 1834. From that date till nearly half a century afterward upwards of twenty editions were issued, all of which retain the pa.s.sages I have cited on Maryland toleration. Early in the 80s a new edition was given out, which omits or abridges some of the pa.s.sages quoted in this chapter. I may add that all of Bancroft's eulogies of Lord Baltimore's benevolent administration are borne out by the original doc.u.ments, and by McMahon, Bozman and McSherry, and other historians of Maryland.

Leonard Calvert, the brother of Lord Baltimore and the leader of the Catholic colony, having sailed from England in the _Ark_ and the _Dove_, reached his destination on the Potomac in March, 1634.

"The Catholics took quiet possession of the little place, and religious liberty obtained a home, _its only home_ in the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name of St. Mary."(303)

"The foundation of the colony of Maryland was peacefully and happily laid.

Within six months it had advanced more than Virginia had done in as many years.... But far more memorable was the character of the Maryland inst.i.tutions. Every other country in the world had persecuting laws; but through the benign administration of the government of that province, no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ was permitted to be molested on account of religion. Under the munificence and superintending mildness of Lord Baltimore, a dreary wilderness was soon quickened with the swarming life and activity of prosperous settlements; the Roman Catholics who were oppressed by the laws of England were sure to find a peaceful asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake; and there _too, Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance_. Such were the beautiful auspices under which Maryland started into being.... Its history is the history of benevolence, grat.i.tude and toleration."

"Maryland was the abode of happiness and liberty. Conscience was without restraint. A mild and liberal proprietary conceded every measure which the welfare of the colony required; domestic union, a happy concert between all the branches of government, an increasing emigration, a productive commerce, a fertile soil, which heaven had richly favored with rivers and deep bays, united to perfect the scene of colonial felicity. Ever intent on advancing the interests of his colony, Lord Baltimore invited the Puritans of Ma.s.sachusetts to emigrate to Maryland, offering them lands and privileges and free liberty of religion; but Gibbons, to whom he had forwarded the commission, was so wholly tutored in the New England discipline, that he would not advance the wishes of the Irish Peer, and so the invitation was declined."(304)

On the 2d of April, 1649, the General a.s.sembly of Maryland pa.s.sed the following Act, which will reflect unfading glory on that State as long as liberty is cherished in the hearts of men.

"Whereas, the enforcing of conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it has been practiced, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and unity amongst the inhabitants, no person whatsoever within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be anyways troubled or molested for his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof, nor anyway compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against his or her consent."(305)

Upon this n.o.ble statute Bancroft makes the following candid and judicious comment: "The design of the law of Maryland was to protect freedom of conscience; and some years after it had been confirmed the apologist of Lord Baltimore could a.s.sert that his government had never given disturbance to any person in Maryland for matter of religion; that the colonists enjoyed freedom of conscience, not less than freedom of person and estate, as amply as ever any people in any place of the world. The disfranchised friends of Prelacy from Ma.s.sachusetts and the Puritans from Virginia were welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political rights in the Roman Catholic province of Maryland."(306)

Five years later, when the Puritans gained the ascendency in Maryland, they were guilty of the infamous ingrat.i.tude of disfranchising the very Catholic settlers by whom they had been so hospitably entertained. They "had neither the grat.i.tude to respect the rights of the government by which they had been received and fostered, nor magnanimity to continue the toleration to which alone they were indebted for their residence in the colony. An act concerning religion forbade liberty of conscience to be extended to 'Popery,' 'Prelacy,' or 'licentiousness of opinion.' "(307)

I shall also quote from "Maryland, the History of a Palatinate," by William Hand Browne.(308) Mr. Browne was a graduate of the University of Maryland. For several years he was editor of the Maryland Archives, and of the Maryland Historical Society. He became afterward Professor of English Literature in the Johns Hopkins University. He devoted his long life to the Colonial history of Maryland, and is justly recognized as a standard authority on that subject. I may add that he cannot be suspected of undue partiality, as he was not a member of the Catholic Church.

Speaking of Calvert, the Proprietary of the Maryland Colony, the author remarks that "while as yet there was no spot in Christendom where religious belief was free, and when even the Commons of England had openly declared against toleration, Calvert founded a community wherein no man was to be molested for his faith. At a time when absolutism had struck down representative government in England and it was doubtful if a Parliament of freemen would ever meet again, he founded a community in which no laws were to be made without the consent of the freemen.

The _Ark_ and the _Dove_ were names of happy omen. The one saved from the general wreck the germs of political liberty; and the other bore the olive branch of religious peace."(309)

When the rule of the Catholic Proprietary was overthrown and the Puritans had gained the ascendency in the Province, the new Commissioners issued writs of election to a general a.s.sembly-writs of a tenor hitherto unknown in Maryland. No man of the Roman Catholic faith could be elected as a burgess, or even cast a vote. The a.s.sembly obtained by this process of selection, justified its choice. It at once repealed the Toleration Act of 1649 and created a new one, more to its mind, which also bore the t.i.tle: "An Act concerning Religion," but it was toleration with a difference. It provided that none who professed the Popish religion should be protected in the Province, but were to be restrained from the exercise thereof.

For Protestants it provided that no one professing faith in Christ was to be restrained from the exercise of his religion, "provided that this liberty be not extended to Popery, or Prelacy, nor to such as under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness. That is, with the exception of the Roman Catholics and churchmen, together with the Brownists, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other miscellaneous Protestant sects, all others might profess their faith without molestation."(310)

After the overthrow of the Puritan authority, and the advent to power of the members of the Church of England, the second act of the a.s.sembly was to make the Protestant Episcopal Church the established church of the Province.

The Act imposed an annual tax of forty pounds of tobacco per poll on all taxables for the purpose of building churches, and maintaining the clergy.

In 1702 it was re-enacted with a toleration clause: "Protestant Dissenters and Quakers were exempted from the penalties and disabilities, and might have separate meeting-houses, provided that they paid their forty pounds per poll to support the Established Church. As for the 'Papists,' it is needless to say that there was no exemption nor license for them."(311)

The author then sets before us the three kinds of toleration, like three portraits, so that their distinctive features appear in bold relief.

"We may now," he says, "place side by side the three tolerations of Maryland."

The toleration of the (Catholic) Proprietaries lasted fifty years, and under it all believers in Christ were equal before the law, and all support to churches or ministers was voluntary.

The Puritan toleration lasted six years, and included all but Papists, Prelatists and those who held objectional doctrines.

The Anglican toleration lasted eighty years, and had glebes and churches for the Establishment, connivance for Dissenters, the penal laws for Catholics, and for all, the forty per poll.

In fact, an additional turn was given to the screw in this year; the oath of "abhorrency," a more offensive form of the oath of supremacy, being required, beside the oath of allegiance, and for one thing, no Catholic attorney was allowed to practise in the Province.(312)

When the members of the Const.i.tutional Convention declared in 1787, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," it is worthy of note that they were echoing the sentiments, and even repeating the language of the Maryland a.s.sembly of 1649, which declared that "No person whatsoever within this Province, professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any ways molested for his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof."

We may therefore affirm that Lord Baltimore's Toleration Act of 1649 was the bright dawn that ushered in the noon-day sun of freedom in 1787. And we have every reason to believe that the Proprietary's charter of liberty with its attendant blessings, served as an example, an incentive, and an inspiration to some at least of the framers of the Const.i.tution, to extend over the new Republic, the precious boon of civil and religious liberty.

It is proper to also observe that the Act of 1649 was not a new declaration of religious freedom on the part of Lord Baltimore's administration, but was a solemn affirmation of the toleration granted by the Catholic Proprietary from the beginning of the Settlement in 1634.

I will close this subject in the words of a distinguished member of the Maryland Historical Society: "Higher than all t.i.tles and badges of honor, and more exalted than royal n.o.bility is the imperishable distinction which the pa.s.sage of this broad and liberal Act won for Maryland, and for the members of that never-to-be-forgotten session, and sacred forever be the hallowed spot which gave it birth."(313)

What shall I say of the prominent part that was taken by distinguished representatives of the Catholic Church in the cause of our American Independence? What shall I say of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who, at the risk of sacrificing his rich estates, signed the Declaration of Independence; of Rev. John Carroll, afterward the first Archbishop of Baltimore, who, with his cousin Charles Carroll and Benjamin Franklin, was sent by Congress to Canada to secure the co-operation of the people of that province in the struggle for liberty; of Kosciusko, Lafayette, Pulaski, Barry and a host of other Catholic heroes who labored so effectually in the same glorious cause? American patriots without number the Church has nursed in her bosom; a traitor, never.

The Father of his Country was not unmindful of these services. Shortly after his election to the Presidency, replying(314) to an address of his Catholic fellow-citizens, he uses the following language: "I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution, and the establishment of their government; or the important a.s.sistance they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed."

And the Catholics of our generation have n.o.bly emulated the patriotism and the spirit of toleration exhibited by their ancestors. They can neither be accused of disloyalty nor of intolerance to their dissenting brethren. In more than one instance of our nation's history our churches have been desecrated and burned to the ground; our convents have been invaded and destroyed; our clergy have been exposed to insult and violence. These injuries have been inflicted on us by incendiary mobs animated by hatred of Catholicism. Yet, in spite of these provocations, our Catholic citizens, though wielding an immense numerical influence in the localities where they suffered, have never retaliated. It is in a spirit of just pride that we can affirm that hitherto in the United States no Protestant house of wors.h.i.+p or educational inst.i.tution has been destroyed, nor violence offered to a Protestant minister by those who profess the Catholic faith. G.o.d grant that such may always be our record!

It is just because the Church has ever resisted the tyranny of kings, in their encroachments on the sacred rights of conscience, that she has always been the victim of royal persecution. In every age, in the language of the Psalmist, "the kings of the earth rose up, and the princes a.s.sembled together against the Lord and against His Christ."(315) The brightest and most thrilling pages of ecclesiastical history are those which record the sufferings of Popes and Prelates at the hands of temporal sovereigns for conscience' and for justice' sake.

Take, for instance, St. John Chrysostom, the great Archbishop of Constantinople in the fifth century, and the idol of the people. He had the courage, like John the Baptist, to raise his eloquent voice against the lasciviousness of the court, and particularly against the Empress Eudoxia, who ruled like another Jezabel. He was banished from his See, treated with the utmost indignity by the soldiers, and died in exile from sheer exhaustion and ill-treatment.

Witness Pope Gregory VII., the fearless Hildebrand, in his life-long struggle with the German Emperor, Henry IV. Gregory directed all the energies of his great mind towards reforming the abuses which had crept into the church of France and Germany in the eleventh century. In those days the Emperor of Germany a.s.sumed the right of naming or appointing Bishops throughout his Empire. This sacred office was commonly bestowed on very unworthy candidates, and very often put up at auction, to be sold to the highest bidder, as is now the case with the schismatic Greek church in Turkey.

These Bishops too often repaid their imperial benefactor by pandering to his pa.s.sions and by the most servile flattery. The intrepid Pope partially succeeded in uprooting the evil, though the effort cost him his life. The Emperor invaded Rome and drove Gregory from his See, who died uttering these words with his last breath: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile."

For the same cause Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was slain at the altar by the hired a.s.sa.s.sins of Henry II., of England.

Observe how Pius VII. was treated by the first Napoleon in the beginning of the present century. The day-dream of Napoleon was to be master of Europe, and to place his brothers and friends on the thrones of the continent, that they might revolve, like so many satellites, around his throne in France. Napoleon makes two demands on the venerable Pontiff: First-That he dissolve the marriage which had been contracted between the Emperor's brother, Jerome, and Miss Patterson, of Baltimore. His ostensible reason for having the marriage dissolved was because Miss Patterson was a Protestant, but his real motive was to secure a royal bride for his brother instead of an American lady. Second-That he close his ports against the commerce of England, with which nation Napoleon was then at war, and make common cause with the Emperor against his enemies.

The Pope rejected both demands. He told the Emperor that the Church held all marriages performed by her as indissoluble, even when one of the parties was not a Catholic; and that, as the common father of Christendom, he could close his port against no Christian power. For refusing to comply with this second demand the Pope was arrested and sent into exile, where he lingered for years.

At this very moment the old conflict between the Church and despotic governments is raging fiercely throughout Europe. The scene enacted by John and Herod is today reproduced in almost every kingdom of the old world. It is the old fight between brute force and the G.o.d-given rights of conscience.