Chapter 5
When The Pope Was King
That Pope Pius IXth
conspired with Napoleon IIIrd to take advantage of the conflict between
the North and the South in this country and with one blow to destroy both
Popular Governments of Mexico and the United States, is beyond question.
During the years from
1864 to '65 the activity of these Jesuits in Europe was redoubled. There
is no doubt that they were not in close touch with every step and phase of
the Rebellion in this country. In 1856 Prince Maximillian of Austria, was
called to Rome where a marriage had been arranged through ecclesiastical
and royal intrigue between himself and the Princess Carlotta, daughter of
King Leopold IInd of Belgium, thus uniting two of the strongest Catholic
powers in Europe.
The next step was the
marriage of this royal couple in the Cathedral at Vienna. In April, 1864,
by the orders of the pope, they were crowned Emperor and Empress of Mexico
at Pontifical High mass and amidst great rejoicing. On April 14, 1864,
just one year to the day, previous to Lincoln's assassination, this royal
couple set sail in an Austrian ship of war for Mexico. They put in at
Cevita Vecchia, the port in the Papal States, and were received at the
Vatican by the most elaborate ceremonies, which had ever been extended by
a pope to royalty. After several days of these honors and being loaded
down with the papal blessings they again assumed their journey across the
Atlantic.
Maximillian had been
during a previous visit to Napoleon IIIrd and his Empress Eugenie, assured
of the assistance of thirty thousand French and Belgian troops for his
invasion into Mexico, the specific object of which was the destruction of
the young Republic already established under Juarez. These troops were
poured in and were being supported by the Mexican People. It had been
impressed upon Maxmillian at the Vatican that his first official act must
be complete restoration of all the church property and ecclesiastical
rights of the clergy which had been confiscated by the Liberal
government.
After the conquest of
Mexico the plan was for this imperialistic commander Emperor
Maximillian, to join Jefferson Davis and Confederate troops at Richmond
where they would sweep north and capture Washington.
Davis had made a
strong appeal in 1863 in a letter to the Pope, and after the reply, which
he promptly received from His Holiness, a wholesale desertion of
the Irish Catholic troops of the North to the Confederacy followed. In
fact, the Government figures are that out of 144,000 Irish Romanists, but
44,000 remained loyal.
We have seen and
heard how the Roman priesthood the world over, is bending every effort to
restore the pope to the position which he occupied during the Dark Ages.
This is perhaps an opportune time for the reader to take a survey of
conditions which existed in the Papal States prior to and during the Civil
War where the popes of Rome had been in supreme command for over fourteen
hundred years. Certainly, fourteen hundred years ought to be sufficient
for a thorough test of the merits of a system. Pius IXth was elected in
1846. There had been three popes in the interim between him and Pius VIIth
who had restored the Jesuits and called the congress of Vienna in 1814.
There was no change in policy however, nor any laxness in regard to the
attitude of the church towards its obligations to the high contracting
parties of the Holy Alliance and their
Secret
Treaty at Verona.
Of all of his
predecessors Pius IXth was one of the most reactionary, and in his
notorious Syllabus which was proclaimed to a startled world in
December, 1864, he anathematized every fundamental principle upon which
this Republic is based. The historians are inclined to place all the blame
of his mistakes, and they were many, upon his Secretary of State, Cardinal
Antonelli, who was beyond doubt the power behind the throne—the
agent for the Black pope. Antonelli is far more interesting as a
character study than the White pope, inasmuch as he was so deeply
interested in the affairs of this country during the war. I am taking the
liberty of reproducing some graphic pen pictures by the distinguished
French joumalist, M. About, who made a personal visit to the Papal States
to learn, firsthand, if the astounding reports from the Italian
Revolutionists which had been pouring into the European press for several
years were correct. M. About's book, The Roman Question is
intensely interesting and written in the peculiarly piquant style of the
brilliant Frenchman. It is long since out of print and difficult to secure
as the Leopoldines have bought up every copy, which comes under their
WATCHFUL EYE. It is a terrific arraignment, especially so, as the author
himself was a Roman Catholic.
His visit to the
Papal States was made in 1859, the same year you will remember that
Abraham Lincoln was making his telling political campaigns for the
presidency, and immortalizing himself by his debate with Judge Douglas, on
the Dred Scott Decision of Judge Roger E. Taney.
The great Italian
poet and patriot, Mazzini, was an exile, living in a London attic, pouring
out his soul's most noble appeals to the Liberals of Europe. His large
property holdings in Italy had been confiscated by the Pope's government.
The Carlysles had visited him in his attic and through their friendship he
was brought from the miserable surroundings and ensconced in comfortable
quarters, where the most distinguished literati of London and Paris
visited him and were captivated by his remarkable talents and his sincere
patriotism and completely won over by his irresistible arguments for a
FREE AND UNITED ITALY.
The exile Garibaldi,
with his Redshirted Legion, had answered the call of his country
after a sojourn in the United States where he had also lived in an attic
in New York City, following the humble profession of a candlemaker, saving
up his money.
One day he suddenly
closed his attic door and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. The
great soldier patriot returned to Italy by the way of London and one of
his most brilliant conquests was the capture of the hearts of the people
of London. The red-blooded staunch Protestants not only of the city
itself, but from all over England, came to welcome the man who had
returned to offer his sword against the papal yoke. They went wild with
delight. Garibaldi with his yellow flowing hair under his big slouch hat
was lifted to the shoulders of the crowd, mad with joy, which surged about
him, and carried as though his great form was but a feather's weight.
This was an insult,
aye, it was the unforgivable sin in the eyes of the black-robed Jesuits,
and the Vatican, which aroused the deadly hatred for the English
Protestant nation, a hatred which has not abated itself up to today.
One might presume
under the circumstances that the Pope would have been too occupied with
his own affairs to meddle with the politics in the United States, at such
a time.
The clever Frenchman,
M. Dupin, had said: "Le Jesuitism est un epee don't la poingee est a
Rome, et la point partout."—Jesuitism is a sword whose hilt is in Rome
and it points everywhere.
Gladstone had
visited the Papal States in 1850 and on his return to England, had
reported to his government and the London press that the Papal government
was The negation of God.
In the preface of
this book, M. About says:
"It was in the Papal
States that I studied the Roman Question. I traveled over every part of
the country; I conversed with men of all opinions, examined things very
closely, and collected my information on the spot.
"The pressing
condition of Italy has obliged me to write more rapidly than I could have
wished; and this enforced haste has given me a certain air of warmth,
perhaps of intemperance, even to the most carefully matured reflections .
. . . I fight fairly, and in good faith. I do not pretend to have judged
the foes of Italy without passion; but I have calumniated none of them.
"If," he continues.
"I have sought a publisher in Brussels, while I had an excellent one in
Paris, it is not because I feel any alarm on the score of the regulations
of our press, or the severity of our tribunals. But as the Pope has a long
arm that might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to
tell him the plain truths contained in these pages."
And now for the
plain truths about his Secretary of State, the Cardinal Deacon,
Antonelli.
"He was born among
thieves. His native place Sonino, is more celebrated in the history of
crime, than all Arcadia in the annals of virtue. This nest of vultures was
hidden in the southern mountains, toward the Neapolitan frontier. Roads,
impractical to mounted dragoons, winding through brakes and thickets;
forests impenetrable to the stranger; deep ravines and gloomy caverns—all
combine to form a most desirable landscape for the convenience of crime.
"The houses of Sonino,
old, ill built, flung pell-mell, one upon another, and almost
uninhabitable by human beings, were, in point of fact, little else than
depots of pillage and magazines of rapine. The population, alert and
vigorous, had for many centuries practiced armed robberies, and
depredation had gained its livelihood at the point of the carbine.
"Newborn infants
inhaled a contempt of the law with the mountain air and drew in the love
of others goods, with their mother's milk. Almost as soon as they could
walk, they assumed cioccie, or moccasins of untanned leather, with which
they learned to run fearlessly along the ledge of the giddiest mountain
precipices. When they had acquired the art of pursuing and escaping, of
taking without being taken, the knowledge of the value of different coins,
the arithmetic of the distribution of booty, and the principles of the
rights of nations, as they are practiced among the Apaches or the
Comanches, their education was deemed complete . . . .
"In the year of grace
1806, this sensual, brutal, impious, superstitious, ignorant and cunning
race, endowed Italy with a little mountaineer, known as Giacomo Antonelli.
Hawks do not hatch doves. This is an axiom in natural history, which has
no need of demonstration. Had Giacomo Antonelli been gifted with simple
virtues of an Arcadian shepherd, his village would have instantly disowned
him. But the influence of certain events modified his conduct, although
they failed to modify his nature.
"If he received his
first lessons from successful brigandage, his next teachers were the
gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old, the discharge of a high
moral lesson shook his ears, it was the French troops who were shooting
brigands in the outskirts of Sonino.
"After the return of
Pius VIIth, he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighboring relatives
who had dandled him on their knees. Under Leo XIIth., it was still worse.
The wholesome correctives of the wooden horse were permanently established
in village square . . . . St. Peter's Gate, which adjoins the house of the
Antonelli, was ornamented with a garland of human heads, which . . .
grinned dogmatically enough in their iron cages . . . . Young Giacomo was
enabled to reflect upon the inconveniences of brigandage, even before he
had tasted its sweets . . . . He hesitated for some time as to the choice
of a calling. His natural vocation was that of the inhabitants of Sonino .
. . to live in plenty, to enjoy every sort of pleasure, to rule others, to
frighten them if necessary, but above all to violate laws with immunity.
"With the view of
obtaining so lofty an end, without endangering his life, for which he had
ever a most particular regard, he entered the great seminary of Rome."
That's a beautiful
picture of the next highest prelate to the Pope. is it not?
So much for the early
years of Antonelli.
But permit me to
quote again from the pen of the author of The Roman Question, who,
as we know, was an eye witness:
"No country in Europe
is more richly gifted, or possess greater advantages, whether for
agriculture, manufacture or commerce . . .
"Traversed by the
Apennines, which divide it about equally, the Papal dominions incline
gently, on one side the Adriatic, on the other the Mediterranean. In each
of the seas they possess an excellent port: to the east, Ancona; to the
west, Civita Vecchia . . . . If Panurge had had these ports in his
kingdom, he would have infallibly built himself a navy . . . . The
Phoenicians and Carthaginians were not so well off.
"A river tolerably
well known under the name of the Tiber, waters nearly the whole country to
the west. In former days it ministered to the wants of internal commerce.
Roman historians describe it as navigable up to Perugia. At the present
time it is hardly so far as Rome; but if its bed were cleared out, and the
filth not allowed to be thrown in, it would render greater service and
would not overflow so often.
"In 1847, the country
lands subject to the Pope were valued at about 34,800,000 pounds sterling
. . . the Minister of Public Works and Commerce admitted that the property
was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital returned
its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade and
manufactures to increase, the national income, as ought to be the case, it
would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money from the Pope at six
percent interest."
As a matter of fact
the Papacy was heavily indebted to the Rothschilds upon which About throws
a high light further on.
"But, stay," he
continues, "I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To the
munificence of nature, must be added the inheritance of the past. The poor
Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the Pope who damns them."
"They left him
gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers and roads which we find still in
use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him the Coliseum, for
his Capuchins to preach in. They left him an example of an administration
without equal in history. But the heritage was accepted without the
responsibilities.
"I will conceal from
you no longer that this magnificent territory appeared to me in the first
place most unworthily cultivated. From Civita Vecchia to Rome, a distance
of sixteen leagues, cultivation struck me in the light of very rare
accident . . . . Some pasture fields, some land in fallow, plenty of
brambles, and, at long intervals, a field with oxen at the plow; that is
what the traveler will see in April. He will not meet with the occasional
forest, which he finds in the desert regions of Turkey. It seems as if man
had swept across the land to destroy everything, and the soil had been
taken possession of by flocks and herds . . . I used to walk in even
direction, and sometimes long distances . . . . However, in proportion as
I receded from the City of Rome, I found the land better cultivated. One
would suppose that from a certain distance from St. Peter's, the peasants
worked with greater relish . . . .
"I sometimes fancied
that these honest laborers worked as if they were afraid to make a noise,
lest by smiting the soil too hard, too deeply, too boldly, they should
wake up the dead of the past ages.
"St. Peter's is a
noble church, but, in its way, a well cultivated field is a beautiful
sight . . . . It seemed to me, that the activity and prosperity of the
subjects of the Pope were in exact proportion to the square of the
distance which separated them from Rome . . . in other words, that the
shade of the monuments of the eternal city, was noxious to the cultivation
of the country. Rabelais says. 'the shade of monasteries is fruitful' but
he speaks in another sense.
"I submitted my
doubts to an old ecclesiastic, who hastened to undeceive me. 'The country
is not uncultivated,' he said, 'or if it be so, the fault is with the
subjects of the Pope. This people is indolent by nature, though 21,415
monks are always preaching activity and industry to them!'"
That is a birds eye
view, dear reader, of the Papal States in the early eighteenth century
when we were having our blind struggle with the Papacy for our national
existence in this country.
In his chapter on
PLEBEIANS, M. About has this to say:
"The subjects of the
Holy Father are divided by birth and fortune into three very distinct
classes—nobility, citizens, and people, or plebeians.
"The Gospel has
omitted to consecrate the inequality of men, but the law of the state—that
is to say, the will of the Popes—carefully maintains it. Benedict XIV
declared it honorable and salutary in his Bull of January 4, 1746, and
Pius IX expressed himself in the same terms at the beginning of his
Chirografo of May 2nd, 1853."
Ponder these words
well, dear reader, and add to them the following quotation which I lifted
from The New World, the Official Organ of the Roman Catholic Church
in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Ill., which was a comment on the Federation
of Catholic Societies held at New Orleans the previous November, 1910:
"Human society has
its origin from God and is constituted of two classes of people, rich and
poor, which respectively represents Capital and Labor.
"Hence it follows
that according to the ordinance of God, human society is composed of two
classes, superiors and subjects, masters and servants, learned and
unlettered, rich and poor, nobles and plebeians." (The New World, Chicago,
Ill., Dec. 20, 1910.)
It is astounding to
know that Diomede Falconio, the Pope's Legate to this country, who uttered
the above divine right treason on that occasion was at the time a
naturalized citizen of the United States!!!
That is what the oath
of a Jesuit amounts to.
Falconio, who has
since died, was instructing the subjects of the Pope in this country and
there were thousands of Catholics present at the New Orleans Convention,
that a government based as our POPULAR Government is, is not worthy "Favor
or support." (See Leo XIIIth's Great Encyclicals, page 126).
In a nutshell, The
Roman Church in this country has always taught and is still teaching its
subjects a separate citizenship inimical to our American citizenship that
the sole authority to rule must come from the consent of the ruled.
This is the same
divine right IDEA that rent this country from stem to stern in 1860, which
gashed its fair face with the Mason Dixon line!
This is the same
identical teaching, which swept Abraham Lincoln from us at the most
critical moment in our country's history.
This is the
concentrated treason which is today being inculcated in the minds of one
million seven hundred thousand boys and girls who attend the Catholic
parochial schools which we have wickedly permitted her to erect in direct
opposition to the Public Schools where the fundamentals of POPULAR
GOVERNMENT are instilled.
This is the ROMAN
QUESTION, the irrepressible conflict, the same old question which the
great Lincoln understood and defined so thoroughly in his campaign with
Douglas—Douglas with the Roman Catholic wife—Douglas, the Leopoldine, the
defender of slavery, who was chosen whether consciously or unconsciously,
I cannot say, but chosen just the same to champion the doctrine of class
distinction in this country with which they thought to destroy it.
"That is the issue
that will continue in this country when the poor tongues of Judge Douglas
and myself shall be silent.
"It is the eternal
struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the
world.
"They are the two
principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and
will ever continue to struggle.
"The one is the
common right of humanity and the other, the divine right of kings . . . it
is the same spirit that says: 'You work and toil and earn bread and I'll
eat it.' no matter in what shape it comes . . . it is the same tyrannical
principle." (Lincoln's Speech at Alton, Ill., October 15, 1858.)
Abraham Lincoln was
the living embodiment of the common right of humanity. In his life
the perfection of the NEW IDEA had been materialized, had become a living,
breathing FACT, which was unconquerable, yes, unassailable.
Lincoln knew the
struggle would go on, after "these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and
myself shall be silent."
I believe that the
prophetic, inimitable words that Charles Chiniquy attributes to him in his
Fifty Years In The Church of Rome were said by him. They have the peculiar
literary style of Lincoln and could never be confused with the effusive,
emotional manner of expression of the Frenchman that Chiniquy had, than
night with day.
The opening words:
"I do not pretend to
be a prophet," ring with the modesty which distinguishes many of Mr.
Lincoln's greatest sayings. Listen:
"I do not pretend to
be a prophet. But though not a prophet, I see a very dark cloud on our
horizon. That dark cloud is coming from Rome. It will be filled with tears
of blood. It will rise and increase, till its flanks will be torn by a
flash of lightning, followed by a fearful peal of thunder. Then a cyclone
such as the world has never seen will pass over this country, spreading
ruin and desolation from north to south. After it is over, there will be
long days of peace and prosperity; for popery with its Jesuitism and
merciless Inquisition, will have been forever swept away from our country.
Neither you, nor I, but our children will live to see these things.
"—(Page 715, Fifty Years In The Church of Rome, by Rev. Charles
Chiniquy.)
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