Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/140

Rh 396 theological students, 32 bishops, 7 archbishops, church-property worth about $10,000,000, and 1,728,000 Catholics. But most of them are of the Celtic stock, which has never much favoured Protestantism or individual liberty in religion; and in this respect is widely distinguished from the Teutonic population, who have the strongest ethnological instinct for personal freedom.

Besides, the Catholics are governed with absolute rigour by their clergy, who are celibate priests, a social caste by themselves, not sympathizing with mankind, but emasculated of the natural humanities of our race. There are exceptional men amongst them, but such seems to be the rule with the class of Catholic priests in America. They are united into one compact body, with complete corporate unity of action, and ruled despotically by their bishops, archbishops, and Pope. The Catholic worshipper is not to think, but to believe and obey; the priest not to reason and consider, but to proclaim and command ; the voter is not to inquire and examine, but to deposit his ballot as the ecclesiastical authority directs. The better religious orders do not visit America; the Jesuits, the most subtle enemies of humanity, come in abundance ; some are known, others stealthily prowl about the land, all the more dangerous for their disguise. They all act under the direction of a single head. One shrewd Protestant minister may be equal to one Jesuit, but no ten or forty Protestant ministers is a match for a combination of ten Jesuits, bred to the business of deception, knowing no allegiance to truth or justice, consciously disregarding the higher law of God, with the notorious maxim that "the end justifies the means," bound to their order by the most stringent oath, and devoted to the worst purposes of the Catholic Church. All these priests owe allegiance to a foreign head. It is not an American Church; it is Roman, not free, individual, but despotic; nay, in its designs not so much human as merely Papal.

The Catholic Church opposes everything which favours democracy and the natural rights of man. It hates our free churches, free press, and, above all, our free schools. No owl more shuns the light. It hates the rule of majorities, the voice of the people; it loves violence, force, and blood.

The Catholic clergy are on the side of Slavery. They