The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874 — John Shaqi
The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
The desire for having a state or national church is growing stronger.
German imperialism, or pagan Roman Cæsarism revived, has given an impetus
to it in Europe, in order to create a foreign public opinion to sanction
its own persecutions of the Catholic Church at home. Switzerland has been
moved by the pull of the German wire. Perhaps the same influence is at
work in our republic. Or is it that a certain class of the Protestant
clergy, dreading starvation if left depending on the bounty of flocks that
are losing their Christianity and its generous impulses, envious of the
portly frames and plethoric purses of the foreigners of the European
establishments who lately visited our shores and banqueted at our expense,
long to draw nutriment from the bosom of an established mother, rather
than risk death from marasmus at the breasts of a dry and barren voluntary
system? If this be the cause of the growing “Evangelicalism” of the sects,
of their effort to combine for the purpose of giving us a national church,
let us devoutly pray that the next delegates from abroad will be as spare
in person and purse as our own country parsons. For the sake of our
republican institutions, may his divine and imperial majesty of Germany
and her gracious ecclesiastical majesty of England send hither no more of
their rotund and jocund functionaries, to make the hearts of our
Evangelical clergymen yearn after the flesh‐pots of Egypt!
Or can it be that the venerable heads of our “Evangelical” mayors,
governors, and their compeers, returning in their senility, as is not
uncommon with decaying brains, to their early loves, are striving to
restore the state establishments of the old Puritan colonies? The
recollection that all the original colonies except Catholic Maryland had a
state church has not yet died out among these “Evangelical” ancients. They
remember that so late even as 1793 an attempt was made even in New York to
saddle an Episcopalian establishment on the back of our state, and this,
too, at a time when the members of the Holland Reformed Churches were in
the proportion of fifteen to one Church‐of‐Englander! Perhaps Governor Dix
has an agreeable recollection of this beauteous trait in the character of
his sect. Perhaps he remembers how well she had battened on the flesh and
blood of the Irish people for centuries, though her votaries were not one‐
twentieth part of the Irish population. In 1643, the “orthodox”
Episcopalian colony of Virginia expelled two New England Puritan
ministers; while the New England Puritans, by way of “Evangelical”
retaliation, sent back to Old England two professors of Anglicanism. The
poor Quakers were driven out by all the colonies except Catholic Maryland.
Indeed, even our modern “Evangelicals” had not the courtesy to invite them
to their “Alliance.” In Virginia, the man who refused to have his child
baptized was fined two thousand pounds of tobacco. In the colonies of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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