Excerpt from Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine, Vol. 2: June, 1908

The wily politicians of the Vatican made the most of the immense progress of Catholicism in America. The purpose was to throw the public opinion of the United States in the scales against the French government. Our V ice-president, Mr. Fairbanks, so far forgot the proprieties, that he attended, in Washington City, one of the meetings in which a friendly government was outrageously misrepresented and abused. Not a word of protest or disclaimer did the V ice-president utter.

During this agitation, Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, a Jesuit and an Ultramontane, was conspicuous for the violence and the untruthfulness of his public statements. He boldly declared that the French Ministry hated God and were making war upon religion. Of course, the cardinal knew that these statements were false. The cardinal very well knew that those who were bringing about the separation of Church and State in France were, as a rule, Catholics themselves, and they were simply combatting clericalism and the special privilege which had been given by law to the Catholic priesthood.

Bishop Keiley, of the diocese of Savannah, Georgia, felt it his duty to declare that if the State of Georgia should pass a law interfering with the church duties of a Catholic, I would be the first to announce that I expected the people in my diocese to break the law. The Pope is supreme and has authority from God, and no true believer would hesi tate whether to obey the law of God or man. It would not be necessary for me to make any announcement, however; for, if the United States should attempt anything like France is doing, the Catholics would rise of their own accord and remove the bigots from power. The Catholic Church needs no secular arm to protect it.

Here we have the same spirit of clerical pride, arrogance and as sumption of identity with God, which, in the old days, when men were more superstitious, ignorant and idolatrous than now, compelled a German emperor to stand bare-footed three days in the snow, knocking in vain for permission to enter Canossa and plead his case with the Pope.

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