PERILS.— ROM a:n^ism. 73 



Methodist and Episcopal bishops took an oath to perse- 

 cute Roman CathoHcs and all others who refuse to 

 accept the standards of their respective churches! If 

 Romanists were persecuted in Protestant countries, 

 would they not demand the religious liberty for them- 

 selves which they refuse to others? Their policy is very 

 frankly stated by M. Louis Venillot, a distinguished 

 French Roman Catholic writer, highly esteemed at 

 Rome, who says : ' ' When there is a Protestant majority 

 we claim religious liberty because such is their princi- 

 ple ; but when we are in majority we refuse it because 

 that is ours." 



Another of our principles closely related to that of re- 

 ligious liberty is Freedom of Speech and of the Press, 

 which is guaranteed to us by the First Amendment to 

 the Constitution. " Congress shall make no laiv .... 

 abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.'' Leo 

 XIII., in a letter, June 17, 1885, said, "Such a duty (obed- 

 ience), while incumbent upon all without exception, is 

 most strictly so on journalists who, if they were not an- 

 imated with the spirit of docility and submission so 

 necessary to every Catholic, would help to extend and 

 greatly aggravate the evils we deplore." A writer for 

 the Catholic Woi^ld^ in an article entitled "The Catho- 

 lics of the Nineteentli Century," shows us what would 

 become of free speech and the freedom of the press in the 

 event of Roman ascendency in the United States. He 

 says: " The supremacy asserted for the Church in mat- 

 ters of education implies the additional and cognate 

 function of the censorship of ideas, and the right to ex- 

 amine and approve or disapprove all books, publications, 

 writings and utterances intended for public instruction, 

 enlightenment, or entertainment, and the supervision of 

 places of amusement. This is the principle upon which 

 the Church has acted in handing over to the civil au- 

 thorities for punishment criminals in the world of 

 ideas." 



'July. 1870. 



