Were the Catholic prelates, in the Sixties,
setting themselves above the laws made by
American States?
No: they did not do so until after the Easter
of 1908, on which date the Trentine law, made
in Italy in the 16th century, was put into
effect in these United States.
If it was a good law in all those bygone
years, why did they never dare to bring it
into our country during the Colonial Period?
Or during the period of the Revolutionary
War? Or during the ante-bellum period?
During the Know Nothing agitation, the
American Catholics exhausted the vocabulary
of patriotism, calling Heaven to witness that
their church had no law antagonistic to ours.
They bitterly declared that the Know Noth
ings lied about their church, when charging
that the laws of their church would one day
rise in rebellion against the laws of this
country.
Even so late as ten or twelve years ago,
Cardinal Gibbons published a lengthy article
in The North American Review, asserting in
the strongest terms the absolute loyalty of
American Catholics to American laws.
In sermons preached in Baltimore and
widely circulated. Cardinal Gibbons repeated
those assurances, saying that there was not a
single law or institution of the United States
that did not command the allegiance and
obedience of Roman Catholics.
What has happened since? What has
plowed a line, of division between Catholics
and Protestants? What is it that has alienated
the one class from the other, and which now
tends to embitter their social, political, and
business relations?
Those are fair questions: can Mr. Knight
answer ?
If Protestants and Catholics once lived
amicably together, and do not now do so, the
effect must surely lie traceable to some cause.
