OUR AMERICAN LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 9386, 7 May 1894, Page 3

OUR AMERICAN LETTER.

Keokuk (lowa, U.S.A.), March 22, 1894.

ARCHBISHOP IRELAND AN AMERICAN CHURCHMAN.

During the last few years there has been a most remarkable revival of anti-Catholic organisations—organisations the main object of which is the proscription of Catholic citizens. That these organisations should become numerous and wide-spread is not an evidence of the common sense or intelligence of the people. The leaders and managers of them have, in many places, resorted to crooked methods and amazing falsehoods in order to make converts. They have forged papal encyclicals, which alleged the ordering of an uprising on a certain day to massacre the Protestants. They have forged pastoral letters of bishops; assert that Congress is under papal control, and that all legislation must be submitted to Cardinal Gibbons’s inspection before it can be approved by the President. This sort of madness and wickedness will run out, as did the anti-Masonic craze and knownothingism of half a century ago. It would die out much sooner if zealous bishops, priests, and sycophant editors would keep quiet, possess their souls in patience, give up talking about division of school funds, and of their ultimate domination of this country under the Pope of Rome. That can never be. Romanism as an ascendent force is past y it has had its day, and must retire as a dark shadow before the rising sun of general education and civil and religious liberty. Archbishop Ireland, from his pulpit in St. Paul’s, gave his people sensible advice. He said that Catholics and foreigners who come to this country must become Americans, and added : The Catholic Church, so far as she wears a national aspect, must be American in America. To make her Irish is to make her unfit for the country. In Catholic works, in the direction of the government of the church, Catholics as such arc to be considered and not otherwise. Catholics of Irish descent must be on their guard not to harm religion by linking with the church Irish national ideas or customs, or to give a supremacy to Irish control, or so acting in any manner as to induce the belief among Americans that the Catholic Church is not thoroughly American. The church has suffered from lack of Americanism. One nationalism is and must be supreme in our civil and social matters, and that is American nationalism. On this condition has America admitted foreigners to citizenship. No political segregation of citizens on foreign lines can be allowed. It is wrong to have a so-called Irish-American vote. No one should vote as an Irishman and seek an office as an Irishman.

There have been instances foreign know nothingism ; there have been instances of Catholic meddling in politics and in public school matters; there have been instances of foreign clannishness to an extent that has become offensive. If there were no evidences of the lack of Americanism the present agitation would very soon die out. The truth is that the Catholic Church in America is becoming more and more American.

TUE POPES, PAST AND PRESENT,

Cardinal Gibbons, in speaking of the Pope the other day, said: “ He has uo standing

armies,to enforce his mandates .like temporal sovereigns. He has no police nor civil magistrates to coerce refractory subjects. He has no in which to cohfine the. violators of the law. He has recourse only to moral sanctions and spiritual penalties for the maintenance of the Gospel dispensation. The only, weapon that he wields is the sword of the Spirit, which is thd Word of God.’,’ The Pope himself on January 28 delivered, in St. Peters, Rome, an address to an audience of twelve thousand persons. The New York * Sun ’ gives a translation of it, from which I take the following extract: — The present occasion gives us fresh proof of the devotion of the Roman people, to _ whom we wish all blessings. In view of this, it is easy to understand our bitterness when we think of the trying conditions in Rome, which are aggravated by the general state of the peninsula. Lot us hope, however, that the present disasters can be repaired, and order can be restored in those districts which are now troubled.' We cannot ou this occasion omit to recall the past, when the prescience of the Popes gave Rome, not merely for years, but for centimes, glorious, tranquil prosperity. That prosperity was the outcome of neither chance nor the institutions of man. It was rational, and sure of the morrow. Lifq was, then calm and well-ordeied. Nothing was wanting for the well-being of the people; The opposite is true of the present.. If we wopld profit by bitter experience let us trace the evils to tlieir origin and seek an effectual remedy. The religious ruin, invoked and designed, has brought moral and material ruin. Not only justice, but also political expediency, must demand the return of the nation to the religion of its fathers, with mutual confidence <md affection, and without suspicion of the Pope, whose preaching of the life eternal fenders even mortal life happy and prosperous. The American cardinal speaks of the Pope’s destitution of temporal power as though it were a virtue; but it will be seen that His Holiness submits to this privation very reluctantly and most ungraciously. The Pope has either forgotten or imagines that the world has forgotten the history of Italy under the Popes. The kind of peace they gave to a suffering people was the peace of despotism. When any man dared to think for himself and made it known he wiis first ostracised, then suppressed, imprisoned, and executed. Peace indeed —the peace of enforced silence and nominal acquiescence. All other than this was the peace of the chained and gagged. It is not necessary to go back far into the medieval period to find instances. All this has been seen by men now living. If all the American hierarchy had the good sense, the courage, and loyalty of Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland anti-Catholic societies would soon disappear. Take the church out of politics, let it quit meddling with the public schools, relegate green flags to the rear, and be Americans, then the American protective associations would soon be a thing of the past. THE SALVATION ARMY", There is no class of people, high or low, rich or poor, learned or illiterate, cultured or ignorant, to whom the Salvation Army do not present their claims. The position they occupy in religious affairs is unique, and at the same time important. While there is a great majority of the religious people of the country who do not like many of tlieir methods, and while many of their practices outrage our ideas of reverence and propriety, whatever may he said in criticism of the church in this or other countries, it does not do the work that the Salvationists are doing. If the business men and cultured men in all the churches would abandon their secular pursuits and give all their time, talents, and energy to religious work I do not believe they could do what the Salvation Army are doing. No one can reach the people who live in the slums of large cities but those who have a knowledge of the people they try to rescue and their needs. Any one of the staff captains can go down into the slums and preach more effective sermons than any ten of the leading clergymen.

Mrs Ballington Booth a short time ago went to Vassar College, one of the swell female institutions of the country, and fifteen students and teachers from among the most aristocratic have donned the colors of the Army and become members of the Auxiliary League. The obligations which such membership imposes, while not severe, are such that will require courage and self-denial to carry out. They must wear the badge bearing the legend “Blood and Fire,” and whereever they chance to be. must attend the services of the Army and take part in them. As they belong to wealthy and aristocratic families in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and other cities, these simple duties will expose to ridicule all who arc out of sympathy with the Army or their work.

It may be doubted whether the Army will gain much by reaching into the domain of regular church work. They have prospered wonderfully in their own chosen field, where there is ample room and opportunities for the energies of all their members. No right-minded person would limit their efforts iu any direction, but it seems to be reasonable that to incorporate in the organisation an element not in hearty accord with its methods, and whose training and education unfit them for efficient work in it, will not strengthen the organisation, however well they may agree as to the aim, purpose, and necessity for the work.

lOWA AND PROHIBITION

Just as I was about to close this letter for the mail it is announced that a compromise Liquor Bill has been agreed upon and passed by the lowa Legislature. lam not able at the moment of writing to give the provisions of the Bill, but I understand that it gives the border counties that do not enforce the law, as it now stands, power to tax the liquor business, and prescribes stringent regulations that will be as hard to enforce as those of the original law. The position of the Democratic party regarding the liquor law appears to be that of determined opposition to any law that does not permit the manufacture of liquors in the State. This demand is made, they say, in the interest of the farmer, but really in order to catch the rural vote. lowa raised last year 200,221,000 bushels of corn, and a bushel of coni makes about 4igal of spirits. The corn crop of lowa in 1893 would have made 900,994,500 gal of spirits. The gross product of Bourbon whisky and alcohol combined in the entire United States that year was only 53,086,253ga1. It is apparent that lowa corn would have made all the Bourbon whisky and alcohol that was made in the whole United States, and 847,908,247 gal besides, approximating the entire product of the world. Now, all the corn in the entire United States that went into the manufacture of liquors last year was 19,770,559 bushels, and if lowa had supplied the whole of it it would only be about 10 per cent, of the corn crop of the State. In 1880, before the enactment of the Prohibition law, distilleries were in full blast, and in that year the product was 230,400 gallons, valued at 288,000d01, and the product of 52,000 bushels of corn. These significant facts show the hollowness of the democratic demand to establish distilleries in the interest of the farmer in opening a market for his surplus corn.

THE BUSINESS OUTLOOK.

There is no particular change in the industrial outlook of the country. The factories remain closed, and numbers of workmen are uneriiployed, while depression hangs over us as a pall. Ulvsses.