The question of Romanism...

Preface

For fourteen years I have made a deep and far-reaching study of Romanism in all its religious, ethical, social and political relations to the human family, and I have found its arrogant boast of being the oldest and only true church, as lacking in historical proof as its claim to Christianity.

The present church or corporation of Rome is less than one thousand years old. It is pure despotism projected for the political conquest of the Western or European world and eventually the entire Earth, through its method of ''subjugation oj the intellecV^ of man, and forced ''unquestioning obedience.''

As our politicians are surrendering our most sacred institutions which are devoted to the mental, spiritual and physical development of the nation, to this corporation of foreigners who are not and never can become American citizens, their relation to the Republic should be thorough4y understood.

The difficulty I encountered in getting authentic, modern history ; the cringing fear expressed, when questioned, by those born into the Romish system but who have renounced it; proved the immediate necessit}^ for a concise, reliable, and up-to-date history of Romanism.

The Roman Hierarchy never enters into discussions, because it cannot, and its profound silence disarms even truth. Therefore, I challenge the world to disprove, historically, a single assertion in this work, which is not religious but a compilation of facts for thinking minds to ponder.

THE AUTHOR.

Contents

Chapter Page

2. Who are Anarchists ? 20

3. Peace ; 29

Appendix

I. Substitution for Marriage , 251

11. Report of the Taft Commission in the Philippine Islands. . 264

III. The Assassination of President Lincoln by Romanists. . . . 294

Chapter I, Fa I s e Labels

While heroic efforts are being made to emancipate the human family from impure and spurious products which are being sold by get-rich-quick corporations, under enticing labels, assuring purity and healthfulness, let us tear the labels from some of the articles of mental and spiritual food marked

''' Holy''— ''Sacred''— '' Religious;'

with which the children of our civilized Republic are being poisoned. Let us draw the veil from the get-rich-easy corporations doing business in the name of religion, and compel them to file articles of incorporation setting forth the object of their incorporation; their receipts and disbursements, with full lists of their members, pupils, finances, etc. Also, statements of the duties and remuneration of those who enter into active relationship with them, that their followers may have a glimpse at the forges where the links are welded to enslave their minds and reduce them to a chain-gang of illiterate laborers upon whom religious grafters feed and fatten. Then, such spectacular fakers, such astounding charletans as Dowie, will be an impossibility.

Dowie studied theology and learned that the masters of the world were those who played with the mysteries of life and death. Being an unprincipled actor, he chose an original role in opening a get-rich-easy partnership with God, and within a few years became a wealthy voluptuary, beyond the possibilities of ''Solomon in all his glory."

The public and the press treated this audacious charletan as an interesting comedy. Had he stolen a watch from a millionaire to get bread for starving children, instead of millions, in the name of God, from confiding creatures whose brains had been hermetically sealed in infancy, by pagan doctrines of men-gods, he would have done time, — long time — , in prison. But his criminal business was labeled religion, which, according to custom licensed him to secret crimes and placed him above the law\

Dowie was a self-centered criminal, with limitations, but there are organized religious criminals penetrating the very heart of every ethical, financial and political center of our great nation, without limitations.

During March, 1894, I went to the Jesuit college in San Francisco, to get a catalogue for a friend, who had written me with a view to sending her son there.

While talking to the priest who received me, a young lady came to the open door of the reception room, and excusing himself, the priest held a few moments' conversation with her, soto voce, during which he handed her some money and she left the building. As if in explanation of the passing of the money, he said:

'^That young lady is going to the other side of the city on some business for me."

I was naturally surprised that a society young lady should be doing errands for a Jesuit priest, but I afterward learned that devout Roman Catholic women of every parish, are working allies of the priests, possibly, not always aware of the value of their services.

''Father, have you read the morning telegrams, of the expulsion of your order from Mexico?" I asked as I was about to take my leave.

"Yes," he answered, looking sternly at the floor.

"Are you not afraid that the time will come when you will meet the same fate in the United States?" I ventured.

"Yes, we expect it," he answered, "but when that time comes, we expect to control the government."

"I can't believe that time will ever come," I answered.

He gave a sharp, quisical glance and asked: "Is France a Republic?".!

"So-called — ," I answered.

"So-called — , he echoed, "but we control the government."

The words of the Jesuit sank deep in my patriotic soul, and I determined to learn more of these men, who had renounced all natural laws to live unnatural lives. As I passed the cathedral which adjoined the college — the door being open, I entered. The intens3 stillness within the great pile of masonry and the mellow lights from the stained glass windows added to the awe-inspiring pictures on the walls, of the agonies of the cross; the altar with its crosses; glittering candelabra, images and gew-gaws used as a means of approach and commvmion with the Great Creator of this wonderful world, and the infinitude of worlds about us, filled me with a sense of shame at the gross sacrilege; the pagan dumbness — ; the spiritual blindness of the masses in this age called Christian Civilization, who, through priestcraft, are spiritually in the childish imbecility of nursing rag dolls. And to this low level of mentality, the Jesuit boasted they would reduce the United States!

Over the confession boxes were the names of those who officiated in them. One was Irish, and the rest were all Italian. For instance — Father Martini — which in plain English is Father Martin. Who is Father Martini* The family origin, the real name of these men of mystery are not known out of their close corporation. They are masqueraders iiLTeligious garbs, who enter nations with pantherlike silence, bent upon the destruction of everything which does not yield to their own system of debasement, enslavement and greed. Although this order is only three hundred and sixty-eight years old, it has been driven from the various countries of the world eighty-one times for treasonl The United States being the only exception.

"We expect to control the government," said the wily Jesuit, and I thought that the news of the morning, with regard to the expulsion of his order, for the fourth time from Mexico, had thrown him off his guard, but I learned that the conquest of the United States was an open boast from their altars, and through the Romish press; that Archbishop Ireland had stated before the consistory at Rome, in 1891:

"We can have the United States in ten years. I give you three pointers; the Indians, the colored race and the public schools."

The Indian question was considered settled when Congress passed a law declaring that no government money should be appropriated for sectarian purposes. The withdrawal of the nation's miUions for the support of Jesuit Indian schools, 'gave the government the opportunity of making them citizens of a Republic, instead

I of foreign subjects of an Italian pope, but the Jesuits have found a friend in Mr. Roosevelt in evading the laws of Congress.

The large sums of money accumulated by treaty, for the lands that belonged to the Indians, is held by the government and the interest thereon is or should be, distributed equally yearly or semi annually, to all the Indians interested in that fund, yet Mr. Roosevelt, through his unquestioned power as President of the United States, withdrew $100,000 of that community money for the "Roman Catholic Indians,^' in utter disregard to the Indians of the Government.

The colored people are an emotional race, too fond of taking active part in their religious devotions, to be deeply appealed to, through silent worship and mumbling of Latin masses. But our diylomatic statesmen have so little moral responsibility with regard to the children of the nation, that the Italian Jesuits haA^e Irish Jesuits working among the colored people, with this result; after thirty years of political agitation; the sacrifice of over a million lives and millions of dollars, to free the negroes from bondage; they are enticed into the Roman Church, and through saintly promises, enveigled as life slaves into their "religious corporations.^' No slave in the South ever worked as hard as the lay-brothers and lay-sisters, in the cellars of these ''holy" corporations.

The Rev. J. B. Slattery, Founder and Superior Emeritus of the St. Joseph's Society for Negro Missions in Baltimore, contributed an article to the Independent Magazine of September, 1906, entitled: ''How My Priesthood Dropped from Me." He says, in part:

"My work among the negroes may be termed the sloughing off. I can say that I know the negro Missions. If anything in this world is certain, it is that the stand of the Catholic church toward the negroes is sheer dishonesty. The negroes have suffered at her hands. In the white heat of the abolition movement, Kendrick, Primate of the church, justified slavery in his 'theology.' Just before the civil war the Jesuits sold their Catholic slaves to a Protestant, once governor of Louisiana. The unfortunate wretches, so I was assured in Louisiana, were seventeen j^ears without mass."

The conflict for sixty years over the public school question, has been practically settled by the highest, best and cultured Romanists, who know as little about the under-current of Jesuit machinations, as Protestants. They repudiate parochial schools.

The rapid changes of this kaleidoscope age have made these questions past history, and the resourceful Jesuits are now using all I their strength toward centraUzation of government power. With city charters which place all departments of municipal government absolutely in the hands of the mayor, who becomes supreme dictator; and the mayor, a puppet of their moulding, they come very near owning the cities, as was fully demonstrated in San Francisco.

The centralization of State governments at Washington, which would speedily lead to imperialism, was exactly what they tried in Mexico after the Republic was declared, and it resulted in the se- ' cession of Yucatan and Texas; war with the United States and the loss, to Mexico, of Texas.

Shortly after my visit to the Jesuit college, I entered upon civic federation work, and as chairman of the visiting committee, had free access to all classes of public institutions, including prisons.

I had been reared among broad and liberal Protestant environments where the word '^ religion" means worship, according to the mental unfoldment of the individual, accompanied by an honorable and upright life. Methodism, Presbyterianism ; Baptists and Romanists merely implied different ways of obtaining the same result, and I could scarcely believe the facts when the role of faith was called and almost every outcast and criminal who came under the ban of the law, was a Romanist.

The police who brought the unfortunate vagrant women into prison and helped to release them or get light sentences, were of the same faith, and the unspeakable creatures who own these white slaves of this free Republic, and live off their earnings are all Romanists, as are also ninety-nine per cent of the hoodlums and drunkards.

I found that reform consisted principally, in building more institutions with improved sanitation and better care of criminals, until the man in the poor house gets healthier food and is freer from disease than the millionaire, and the most vicious, irresponsible criminals are being so w^ell cared for at the expense of conscientious tax-payers and honest laborers, who must provide for them or be crushed by them, that their ''time" in prison, under healthful restraint, serves as a retreat to a sanatorium and they return to the world invigorated, to continue in vice and propogate their kind; while honest laborers die prematurely for lack of the care and rest which they provide for criminals.

Twenty per cent, of the human family slave to support the other eighty, and they might as well attempt to bail out an inundation from the ocean with buckets, as to face the future with reformatories without striking at the root of degeneracy — perverted teachings in the name of religion — which make every degree of crime a purchasable commodity, the same as a suit of clothes or a pair of shoes, through a process of brokerage between a Corporation of priests and God, which robs undeveloped, impressionable minds of all moral responsibility. The Pope's indulgences are as freely sold to-day as they were before the Reformation, and sins told in the confessional under full faith that the priest and his blessed scapulars and absolutions have the power to absolve them, become to the minds of criminals things of the past that have been done and paid for. It is a searing process which closes the moral wound without healing and removes all moral responsibility. The proof of this statement is recorded in every country under the sun, by the enormous percentage of Romish criminals.

Perverted religions, through ages of usage and priestly dictatorship, have become sacred, and every thing appertaining to them is shrouded in mysterious holiness, no matter what their origin, ceremonies or creeds. What is this hydra-headed monster labeled religion that robs men of reason and sound judgment; that pits husband against wife; that takes the child from the parents' arms and immures it for life, away from God's sunshine and every tender, beautiful thing in life; that drenches the earth with the blood of the innocents — ? Why must it be treated with so much secrecy, exclusiveness and reverence, when religion has been the passport for the unlicensed freedom of the master criminals of the world?

The word religion is the offspring of ecclesiasticism; conceived in the dark ages from the trinity of power, greed and lust. The origin of the word is from the Latin ligo, to bind; religo, to rebind or bind again and the noun religio, translated religion, which stands for spiritual bondage. Its assets are heaven, hell, purgatory and a hopeless place for unbaptized infants. It tells what it does not know; it sells what it has not got; its traffic is in immortal spirits that belong to God. Free-thinking Protestants have dropped these chains, link by link, although from the dawn of history, this trafficing in the impossible has governed the world.

The natural enemy of life is death and the Brahmin priests, over six thousand years ago, knowing that the fear of death made all men cowards, established this traffic in souls. The high priests, being with the scribes, the only ones who could read and write, arrogated to themselves in the name of reUgion, special divine light, power and gifts from the great Cm or God, by which they held absolute control over the keys of heaven and hell and the doom of every departing spirit. They became oracles of wisdom by guarding all avenues of learning from their followers, which did not come through them, and gave little knowledge from their Bible, the Vedas, until they established a caste of men-gods over ignorant, superstitious, slave people, so strong that it has survived as a conquest of the human race, and pervades every religion on the face of the earth today. It created the mediator — the priest, between man and God; the barterer and bargainer of spirit, which is to man what the light is to the candle, the incomprehensible, intangible breath of the infinite.

The United States is a Protestant country and must be governed as such. Religious corporations can be shown no favoritism when they violate the laws. Protestant, or heretic, is the name given to all who protested against the cruelties, abuses and paganisms of the church of Rome which culminated in the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It includes every human being who disagrees with a single doctrine, creed or ceremony of the Romish church, and comprises one hundred and forty-three different religious denominations, including Jews, who are worshiping with absolute religious freedom, in respectful observance of the laws of the nation, which guarantee ' 'liberty of speech and freedom of conscience."

Arrayed against this formidable force of advanced thinkers, in the ratio of almost seven Protestants, to every Romanist, stands the church of Rome — alone — arrogant, despotic, aggressive and rebellious against every law and every step of human progress; every physical, mental and spiritual liberty of its followers. The church or '' Corporation of Rome" claims to have cornered heaven and hell and holds the only keys, which is of such vast importance to those who chance to be w^ithout its portals, that they claim the right to challenge its title.

When religion of any kind rears its head in political or civil affairs, it must be suppressed for the future safety of the nation. The great mind of the free-thinker has as much right to act and have his principles incorporated in the Constitution and laws as the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian or Romanist. This is not a nation of creed or sect. It is not a Christian nor infidel nation. It is a Pro- TESTant Nation against ignorance, superstition and enslaving creeds, and the religion which seeks to place its indelible stamp upon our institutions in any way, shape or form, is a parasite and usurper.

What would Americans say if the Epworth Leaguers and Christian Endeavorers decided to go into ''rehgious confraternities;" take vows of mendicancy and poverty; abandon all the natural and useful duties of life and demand that the world at large should support them as professional beggars, which is the meaning of '^ mendicants." How would they receive the announcement that the Latter Day Saints had canonized Brigham Young and founded an order of St. Brigham, and demanded appropriations from Congress and State Legislatures? It would be regarded as a huge joke, yet it would be as just to the tax-payers, as the appropriations of millions yearly to the orders of St. Benedict, the Italian mendicant; St. Francis, the French mendicant; St. Patrick and the Brothers of Jesus and Sisters of Mary, from Ireland, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico and Guatemala.

When President Roosevelt declared himself in thundering tones against the Corporations and Trusts which have unchained the hidden treasures of earth and air, and given to the world luxurious commodities within the reach of the poorest laborer — of which no king could dream fifty years ago. Why did he not add to his '' smashing" list, the foreign ''Corporation of Rome?"

The Standard Oil Company, which astonishes and frightens thinking minds, is a babe in swadling clothes in comparison to this close corporation of souls. The tax of the Standard Oil, whatever its transgressions, is for valuable products delivered and is in ratio as the dew from heaven to the mighty ocean, in comparison with the ceaseless tax of the Corporation of Rome upon millions of human beings — unborn — born — and dead, for which it promises the impossible and delivers nothing.

Leaders of political crises, like masters of finance, are born geniuses, not only with masterful, suggestive intellects, but the moral courage to grasp situations, as the artist discerns the chiaro obscura in a labyrinth of foliage, while to the dull, unsuggestive mind it has no meaning.

J. D. Rockefeller is a vehicle of evolution, and no more responsible for his inordinate mastery over material things than Paderewski, in his witchery with the piano ; or Edison, when he penetrates the infinite of space; grasps the lightning from the hand of the All- Supreme and awakens sordid minds to higher conceptions of their Infinite Master.

Four hundred years ago when the church, or Corporation of Rome, was all-powerful in the European world, Mr. Rockefeller w^ould have been put through the ^'Holy Office" of the ''Holy Inquisition" and possibly burned alive on a day made "sacred" for that festive occasion, and the ''Holy Church" wouJd have confiscated his unholy wealth.

As there were no insane asylums at that period, Paderewski would have been sent to some monastery attached to a cathedral where he would have been a miracle worker behind the scenes for Cecilia and other saints. As for Edison — Lourdes would not even be a side show, in the great Corporation's theatrical circuit, if the "Holy Inquisitors" could have put the "holy" screws of the "Holy Office" upon his marvelous brains and used them for ancient miracle working. Every scientific discovery; every inspiration; every thought that dared to rise above the mental denseness of the human perverts who played God, was speedily extinguished, as inspired by the devil.

The liberal laws of the United States make them an inviting field for religious fanatics and imposters. They are broad, humane laws of liberty-loving men who suffered through religious oppression and fled from Europe to escape persecution and death by the "Holy Inquisition" which was imprisoning, torturing and burning every human being who dared to express an original thought.

The heroes who fled from persecution across the ocean in frail boats, to face the hardships of the wilderness and the dangers of savage tribes of Indians, made far-reaching laws for the security and advancement of the human family through freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, but men who rode in poste-chases or drove oxen and whose sweethearts rode on cows ; whose business methods were the primitive barter and exchange, could not be expected to make laws as far-reaching as our modern Croesus; — the Standard Oil Compan}^; wireless telegraphy; electric motors, and the marvelous developments, upon whose threshold we are standing. But they blazed the w^ay through the wilderness which led to liberty of speech and expression of conscience, and gave to the world the mental vigor to master science and unveil the mysteries of the Universe. They rekindled the light which the great Creator had placed in every mind as a guide toward the inevitable goal of his soul, which had been dimmed or extinguished by priestcraft. They broke the chains of sacerdotalism, but our eminent statesmen of the present are so carefully welding the pieces, it will not be their fault if they are not made as good as new.

It is only one hundred and thirty years since the thirteen colonies declared their independence, yet the world, scientifically, intellectually and financially has made greater strides during that period than in all its previous known history. It is difficult for the present generation to realize the barbarous customs from which society has evolved within the past sixty-five years; since telegraphy was perfected and steam became a commodity; that cooking stoves are less than one hundred years old; that our ancestors used braziers and cranes over open fires, like all savages. That they rose by the light of a tallow dip, and went to bed by the light of a log fire to save the tallow dip; that families had to mould their candles as regularly as they made their bread; that the ancient Romans — the idols of hero worshipers — burned tapers in oil, like the Esquimaux; sat on the floor or reclined on couches; ate with their fingers or chop sticks; went bareheaded and barefooted or in sandals.

The scientific miracles of the present age, in comparison with which the dumb little doings of unlettered men — labeled, "Miracles of Saints^' — merely demonstrate the animal materialism, lack of mental development and pagan origin of our ancestors and their barbaric conception of a Supreme Presence. They have unfolded the minds of men upon a higher spiritual plane than the adoration of wooden images and a money value for spiritual favors.

The man who opens the throttle of a great, breathing, panting machine; who touches the telegraph and awakens the responsive lightning thousands of miles away; who wafts a message into the sky, where it is taken up by a responsive, awaiting current and intelligently transmitted, cannot go back, physicall3^ mentally or spiritually and sit upon a dromedary or ass, while he consults that part of a priest's brain which he proudly boasts is a thousand years old. Cardinal Gibbons says: ''The Church has not changed in a thousand years; she cannot change, she is infallible."

There is no such thing as inaction. The instant that a thing ceases to change, it begins to die, and the transition — called death — is always birth into new conditions. If the Supreme Master, whom these puny creatures blaspheme with their teachings of unchanging infallibility, were to stop the perpetual change of the universe, for an infinitesimal fraction of time, chaos would follow, and on the same principle the mind that is trained backward a thousand years, is in every sense a stranger to the present. Religious fanatics are spiritual dwarfs who cannot conceive of mental unfoldment in ratio with physical development, and whose material doctrines do not recognize the fact that mental growth is spiritual growth, and the spirit of man rises like vapor toward the infinite, of whom it is the invisible, incomprehensible ''likeness of God, Himself."

There never was a period in the history of the United States which called for greater statesmanship and truer patriotism than the present. The very air is as laden with poison for the future of the Republic as the fangs of a serpent.

Statesmanship is passing to give place to diplomatic imperialism, and weak diplomacy is too often mistaken for statesmanship. We have able statesmen, but few of the country's ablest men are before the public. In this age of graft, a seat in Congress — even the Presidential chair — , is a matter of price. Ignorant, incompetent drunkards have bought their way to Congress by paying the press of the country to boom them, and they bought the brains that wrote their speeches, while they debauched the nation's honor. The}^ flaunted their wealth until the intellectual, modest, scholarly statesmen shun contact with this brazen affrontery, which they cannot and will not imitate. When patriotic Americans, who are not acceptable to the clerical party — the Jesuits — aspire to office, there is no limit to the slanders and persecutions to which they are subjected, and the unthinking public, who leave their bodily welfare to a doctor, their spiritual unfoldment to a priest, and their financial matters to a lawyer, hand over their civic responsibilities to the political grafter whom their leader dictates.

Chapter II. If^ho are Anarchistsf What Constitutes Anarchy?

This subject has been glaringly thrust before the world through the recent assassination, in Denver, of Father Heinrichs, by Guisseppe Alio, which like all murders and assassinations was a shocking tragedy.

The Romish priests, from their altars, and through their own papers as well as the public press of the country, ''sounded a warning against anarchists and anti-clerical propaganda" as bitter and murderous as the priestly Jew-haters in Russia. There was an effort to suppress all foreign papers that were not edited by the clergy: Municipal and federal officers were sent with "drag-nets" to arrest all anarchists and suspects. The police of the large cities were called from duty to escort the hysterical priests to their altars and guard them there.

"I am positive," said the chancellor of the Chicago archdiocese, "that these anarchists, anti-clericals or whatever else they may call themselves, have prepared lists of priests and clergy whom they wish to suffer the fate of the priest of Denver."

The chancellor's assertion is misleading. Anti-clerics and anarchists are as far apart as the North and South poles.

Anarchists are rebels against all laws governing civilization. "They have no oath, because they do not believe in a god who creates human beings to damn or burn them according to his mood. They believe in a great scientific cause of existence, which unfolds by evolution; that all laws having been made by reUgious fanatics, are opposed to common sense and the laws of nature and not only retard human progress but hold it in savage disregard of the comfort and

Who are Anarchists? 21

possible progress of the many. They do not beheve that any man or set of men no matter how they may label themselves, know any more about the future or the mysteries of the universe than they do. They believe that men, who in their business of religion sell seats in heaven and buy 'poor souls' from purgatory and hell, are as great criminals as other men who sell what they have not."

Anti-clerics are the higher, intelligent Romanists of every country who are demanding that their clergy marry and live as Protestant ministers; that they be compelled to respect the laws of their country as other men, and cease to be exempt from all duties human and divine; that the present farce of celibacy, by which thousand? of idle, dissipated men mingle in close relations with their wives and daughters, is the source of the social degradation of every Romish country.

Anti-clerics stand for reform in the Roman church and intelligent progress with the spirit of the age, which is cursed by the Pope as "modernism," of which he is deathly afraid, because it prompts men to think for themselves.

Leo Heinrichs was labeled "priest" and Alio "anarchist," and the world, as it has been trained, judged them by their labels; just as they would a turtle dove and a rattlesnake. The "father" was laid in state as a martyr, in two cities and the anarchist was hanged — mysteriously — at night. Yet these men were products of the same system — both reared Romanists — in fact, of all the many assassinations and assaults upon priests, there has never been one by a Protestant.