Chapter 17

Again: If the Pope is plotting against America; and if all manner of crime be considered a virtue when committed by Catholics in furtherance of his ends, as Slattery would have you believe, then it were well to keep a sharp eye on apostate priests. How are we to know that they are not emissaries of the Vatican, commissioned to stir the Protestants up to persecute their brethren in Christ and thereby solidify the Catholic vote? No one, not even Slattery, has accused the Pope of being a fool; and certain it is that the A.P.A. movement, if persisted in, will have the effect of driving the Catholics of this country to political unity in self-defense. Persecution, political ostracism for religious opinion's sake, will infallibly bring about those very conditions which Slattery, Hicks, et al. declare that the Pope desires. The communicants of the Church of Rome will no longer vote as Democrats or Republicans, but as Catholics --and then? With unlimited wealth, and such a political machine at the command of a man so ambitious and unscrupulous as we are asked to believe the Pope to be, the capture of the federal government and the political domination of this country were as easy as lying! The Protestants, divided into a hundred warring factions, many of them farther apart theologically than Episcopalianism and Catholicism, could offer no resistance to such a political machine, and they would receive but cold comfort from the liberal element, which has suffered so long from their petty persecutions.

And I tell you Protestants right here, that if it be the intention of the Church of Rome to transform this government into a theocracy by fair means or by foul, then the Pope is the real founder of the A.P.A. and Slattery's a Papal spy.

. . .

According to the story of this self-constituted protector of the American government, he studied Roman Catholic theology for years, then officiated as a priest for eight more before discovering anything immoral in the teachings of the Mother Church, when it suddenly occurred to him that it was but a tissue of falsehoods, a veritable cesspool of rottenness. His transformation appears to have been almost as sudden as that of Saul of Tarsus--or that of Judas Iscariot. I have no objection to his leaving the Catholic priesthood--his bishop stopped his pay. Like the servant maid caught pilfering, he "gave notice, with the missus a pintin' at the door." If Slattery believes that the Protestant Through Line runs more comfortable cars to the great hereafter, he's welcome to take his ticket over that route; but I would have thought better of him had he made the change quietly and refrained from assaulting with the vindictiveness of a renegade that church to which he owes his education, such as it is; had he treated the religion of his mother with decency if not with respect.

I thought I had met all manner of men; men hardened in crime--men destitute of even a semblance of shame; but never before did I behold one with the hardihood to stand up before American women and boast that he had incurred a mother's curse. When a man falls so low in the scale of human degradation that his own mother disowns him it were well to watch him. When a creature asks strangers to accept him because his relatives have rejected him; when, for the sake of gain, he snaps like a mangy fice at the hand that once fed him, and stings like a poisonous adder the bosom that once nurtured him; when, to promote his personal ends, he will use his best endeavors to exterminate religious liberty and precipitate a bloody sectarian war, I tell you he was not born a man but begotten a beast.

From the very foundation of this government the Catholics have been its firm defenders. Their wisdom and eloquence have adorned its councils from the signing of the Declaration of American Independence to this good day, and its every battlefield, from Lexington to the Custer massacre, has been wet with Catholic blood. Nine Roman Catholics signed the Declaration of Independence, and the Roman Catholics of New York contributed so liberally of their blood and treasure to the cause of the new-born Nation that Washington wrote them a letter praising their patriotism. Several Roman Catholics helped frame the Federal Constitution, and the interpretation of that wonderful instrument by a Roman Catholic chief-justice to- day constitutes the fundamental law of the land. Yet Slattery and that ridiculous organization of which he boasts himself a member, would have you believe that the American Catholics would, at a nod from the Pope, ruthlessly trample under foot that flag in whose defense they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor-- that they would wreck without remorse and ruin without regret that Nation they helped place on the map of the world. How do you old Confederates, who followed Pat Cleburne, relish having this blatant tramp defame your dead commander? Can you believe, on the unsupported testimony of this mendacious mountebank, that Father Ryan's tribute to the Stars-and-Bars was rank hypocrisy --that the poet-priest was the political tool of a foreign power? Sherman died a Catholic. Fighting Phil Sheridan was a Catholic. Old Pap Thomas, "the Rock of Chickamauga," was a Catholic. The "Bloody Sixty-ninth" New York was a Catholic regiment, and its heroism at the Battle of Bull Run forms one of the brightest pages in the military history of this nation. Strange it never occurred to those demoralized Protestant regiments which took refuge behind the bayonets of the Sixty-ninth that they were throwing the Vatican between themselves and the Confederate forces!

Slattery assures us that the number of Irish Catholics on the police force of our great cities is evidence that the Church of Rome is on mischief bent. I am not surprised that an Irish Catholic with a club in his hand should prove rather alarming to Bro. Slattery. But, although he says, "meet a policeman and you'll see the map of Ireland in his face," those same policemen have several times saved his worthless bacon. When he was mobbed in St. Louis for defaming Catholic nuns, the police formed a cordon around his infamous carcass and saved him from a well- merited trouncing at the hands of the slandered women's relatives. Probably the police did not relish the job overmuch, but they had sworn to uphold the laws, and although Slattery insists that a Catholic oath amounts to nothing, they risked their lives in his defense.

We have many nationalities in this country, and each of them, as every observant man well knows, manifests a predilection for some special occupation. Thus the Jews take to trade, the Germans to agriculture, the Norwegians to lumbering, the French to catering and the Irish to politics. Make a Freewill Baptist or a Buddhist of an Irishman and you do not change his nature--he'll turn up at the next political convention just the same. And the man who's too good to take a hand in practical politics; who's too nice to mingle with the horny-handed at the ward primaries; who's too busy to act as delegate to the convention--who deliberately neglects his duty as an American citizen--finds that Pat's activity has been rewarded with a place on the police force, and blames it all on the Pope.

. . .

It is not my province to defend Roman Catholic theology --I suppose that Slattery said all that could be urged in its behalf before he apostatized. Perhaps the Catholics really believe the Pope infallible; and if they do, it is certainly no worse than for certain Waco Protestants to believe that Slattery's infallible. I noticed that at his lecture last week they cheered every charge he preferred against either the Pope or the "Apostle," and that without asking for an iota of evidence. When I arose at the stag party with which he wound up the intellectual debauch, and questioned his infallibility, the good brethren cried, "Throw him out!" Why did they so unless they believed that to question the supernal wisdom and immaculate truth of aught a Baptist minister might say, were sacrilege --a sin against the Holy Ghost?

Here was I, their fellow citizen of Waco, I had done them no harm; yet when a strolling vagabond, wearing God's livery, and whose forte is the defamation of women, made a statement, which if true, would forever disgrace me in the eyes of the world; when he preferred this charge against me within two blocks of where my babies lay sleeping, they wanted to mob me for branding him then and there as an infamous liar and a cowardly blackguard.

Mark you, I'm no tramp in America. This is the house of my fathers. They helped hew it out of the Virginia wilderness. They helped put Old Glory in the heavens, and to keep it there for more than a hundred years, still it appears that I have no rights in this country which a foreigner with the smell of the steerage still upon him is bound to respect, if he chances to be a Baptist preacher.

Talk to me about the Church of Rome muzzling free speech when the A.P.A. would mob an American citizen for defending his character from the infamous falsehoods of a foreign tramp! "Throw him out!" Why throw him out? I'll tell you: The sanctified buzzards had gone there with appetites sharpened for a mess of carrion, and they were afraid I'd kill their cook. "Throw him out!" But I noticed that those who were splitting their faces as wide as Billy Kersands' were glued to their seats. They wanted somebody else to throw him out. They were anxious to see a gang of three or four hundred sanctified hoodlums trample upon me, but there was not one among the self- constituted protectors of this mighty American Nation with sufficient "sand" to lead the mob. If there were no better Americans than those trailing in the wake of the Rev. Joseph Slattery, like buzzards following a bad smell, I'd take a cornstalk, clean out the whole shooting-match and stock the country with niggers and yaller dogs. If such cattle were sired by Satan, damned by Sycorax and born in hell they would dishonor their parents and disgrace their country.

Slattery insists that Catholics believe thus-and-so, and that no man with such a faith concealed about his person can be a good American citizen. I don't know about that; but I do know that if the Catholics act in strict accordance with their religious creed they are the only people in this country that do so. I've learned that you can't judge a man by his catechism. Slattery assures us that he has discarded the Pope and taken Christ for his immediate guide. The latter commands his followers to pray for those who despitefully use them; but if Slattery did any praying for the "Apostle" during his sojourn in this city he managed to keep that fact a profound secret. Christ enjoins patience and humility. He tells his followers to turn the other cheek to the smiter; yet Slattery assured the ladies Wednesday night that he was "a great believer in muscular Christianity." Then he placed his 250 pounds of stall-fed beef in fighting attitude and declared he'd "like to have his enemies come at him one at a time"--to be prayed for, I presume. If Christ taught "muscular Christianity" I have inadvertently overlooked a bet. Christ commands us to love our enemies, but doesn't suggest that we should manifest our affection by lying about 'em. He rebuked those who tattled about a common courtesan, yet Slattery defamed decent women. No, you can't judge a man by his creed. If the allegiance of the Catholics to the Pope is of the same character as that of Slattery to the Lord Jesus Christ, Uncle Sam need not lie awake o' nights to worry about "Papal plots."

Had Slattery been truly a Christian, instead of black- guarding me when protected by the presence of ladies, he would have put up a fervent prayer for my immediate conversion to the Baptist faith. But his milk of human kindness had soured--he was short on Christian charity and long on gall.

"Faith, hope and charity," says St. Paul; "and the greatest of these is charity." And he might have added that it's also the scarcest. Perhaps that's what makes it so valuable--the supply is ever equal to the demand.

Speaking of charity reminds me of my experience with the Protestant preachers of San Antonio, some of whom, I understand, are aiding and abetting this A.P.A. movement, "designed to preserve the priceless liberty of free speech." While editor of the morning paper of that city I was in the habit of writing a short sermon for the Sunday edition, for the benefit of those who could not go to church, I supposed that the ministers would sanction my clerical efforts, but they didn't. They wanted no assistance in saving souls, considered that they should be accorded a monopoly in that line and were entitled to all the emoluments. They proceeded to thunder at me from the pulpit, and sometimes three or four perspiring pulpiteers were pounding away at me at the same time--and incidentally making me very popular. I dropped into a swell church one Sunday morning to get a little grace-- a building that cost up in the six figures while people were living in $4 jackals and subsisting on 50 cents a week within sound of its bells--and the minister was holding a copy of the Express aloft in one hand and a Bible in the other and demanding of his congregation: "Which will you take--Brann or God?" Well, they seemed to think that if they couldn't have both they'd best take God, though some of the sinners on the back seats were a trifle subsequent in making up their minds.

I kept hammering away--preaching to my little congregation of fifteen or twenty thousand readers every Sunday, as I now do to ten times that many a month--until finally the Ministerial Association met, perorated, whereased, resoluted and wound up by practically demanding of the proprietor of the Express that I be either muzzled or fired. And all this time the Catholic priests said never a word--and San Antonio is a Catholic city. But the Baptist ministers were running a sneaking boycott! Yet the Church of Rome is the boa-constrictor that's trying to throttle the American right of free speech!

The Y.M.C.A. invited me to lecture on Humbugs, and that scared the Ministerial Association nearly to death. They thought I was after 'em now sure, so they went to the officials of the Y.M.C.A. and made them cancel the date. And the only Protestant minster in the entire city who did not join in this attempt to throttle free speech was an Episcopalian--and the Episcopalians are not Protestants to hurt. Yet when these ministers, who are now so fearful that the Church of Rome will muzzle somebody, found that they couldn't drive me out of town; that they couldn't take the bread from the mouths of my babes because I had dared utter my honest thoughts like a freeman; that I was to continue to edit the Express so long as I liked, they came fawning about me like a lot of spaniels afraid of the lash! But not one of them ever tried to convert me. Not one of them ever tried, by kindly argument, to convince me that I was wrong. Not one of them ever invited me to church--or prayed for me, so far as I could learn. Perhaps they thought I was past redemption.

Slattery cautions you not to send your children to convent schools, declaring that he "never yet saw a nun who was an educated woman." That statement, standing alone, ought to convince every one blessed with a thinking apparatus that Slattery's a fraud. Some of the best educated women in this world have entered convents. Women upon whose tuition fortunes have been expended are now making convent schools deservedly popular with the intelligent people.

He says ignorance is the correlative of Catholicism, and points to Spain as proof of this startling assertion. There was a time when Spain stood in the very forefront of civilization, in the van of human progress, the arbiter of the world's political destiny,--and Spain was even more Catholic then than it is to-day. Nations and civilizations have their youth, their lusty manhood and their decay, and it were idle to attribute the decline of Spain to Catholicism as the decadence of Greece to Paganism. The Catholic church found Spain a nation of barbarians and brought it up to that standard of civilization where a Spanish monarch could understand the mighty plans of Columbus. It was her Catholic Majesty, Queen Isabella, who took from her imperial bosom the jewels with which to buy a world--who exchanged the pearls of the Orient for the star of Empire. The Catholic church found England a nation of barbarians and brought it up, step by step, until Catholic barons wrung from King John at Runnymede the Great Charter--the mother of the American Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could not--brought it within the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institutions of their fathers.

. . .

Slattery was horrified to learn that some of the nuns were inclined to talk about each other. I sincerely trust that he will find none of the Baptist sisters addicted to the same bad habit.

From what I could gather of his discourse,--before I was "put out"--and from the report of his alleged wife's lectures, I infer that this delectable twain impeach the virtue of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods. Malice, like death, loves a shining mark, and there is no hate so venomous as that of the apostate. But before giving credence to such tales, let me ask you: Why should a woman exchange the brilliant parlor for a gloomy cell in which to play the hypocrite? Why should a cultured woman of gentle birth deliberately forego the joys of wife and motherhood, the social triumph and the freedom of the world and condemn herself to a life of labor, a dreary round of drudgery, if her heart's impure? For shame!

Who is it that visits the slums of our great cities ministering to the afflicted, comforting the dying, reclaiming the fallen? When pestilence sweeps over the land and mothers desert their babes and husbands their wives, who is it that presses the cup of cold water to the feverish lip and closes the staring eyes of the deserted dead? Who was it that went upon the Southern battle-fields to minister to the wounded soldiers, followed them to the hospitals and tenderly nursed them back to life? The Roman Catholic sisterhoods, God bless them!

One of those angels of mercy can walk unattended and unharmed through our "Reservation" at midnight. She can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the White-chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is stilled and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen creatures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and men steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove their hats as a tribute to noble womanhood. The very atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming and the howl of hell's demons to grow silent. None so low in the barrel-house, the gambling hell or the brothel as to breathe a word against her good name; but when we turn to the Baptist pulpit there we find an inhuman monster clad in God's livery, saying, "Unclean, unclean!" God help a religious denomination that will countenance such an infamous cur!

As a working journalist I have visited all manner of places. I have written up the foulest dives that exist on this continent, and have seen Sisters of Charity enter them unattended. Had one of the inmates dared insult them he would have been torn in pieces. And I have sat in the opera house of this city--boasting itself a center of culture--and heard a so-called man of God speak flippantly of the Catholic sisterhoods, and professing Christians applaud him to the echo.

Merciful God! if heaven is filled with such Christians, send me to hell, with those whose sins are human! Better everlasting life in a lake of fire than enforced companionship in Paradise for one hour with the foul harpies that groaned "awmen" to Slattery's infamous utterances. God of Israel! to think that those unmanly scabs, those psalm-singing vultures are Americans and our political brethren!

. . .

I know little about the private lives of the Catholic priesthood; but this I do know: They were the first to plant the standard of Christian faith in the New World. They were the first to teach the savages something of the blessings of civilization. I do know that those of them who were once Protestants are not making a specialty of defaming the faith of their fathers. I do know that neither hardship nor danger can abate their holy zeal and that hundreds of them have freely given their lives in the service of the Lord. And why should a man devote his body to God and his soul to the devil? I do know that one of them has given us the grandest example of human sacrifice for others' sake that this great world affords. Even Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me"; but Father Damien pressed a cup even more bitter to his own lips and drained it to the dregs--died for the sake of suffering mortals a death to which the cross were mercy.

The Protestants admit that they are responsible for the inoculation of the simple Sandwich Islanders with the leprosy; yet when those who fell victims to the foul disease were segregated, made prisoners upon a small island in the mid-Pacific, not a Protestant preacher in all the earth could be found to minister to them. The Lord had "called" 'em all into his vineyard, but it appears that he didn't call a blessed one of them to that leper colony where people were rotting alive, with none to point them to that life beyond the grave where all the sins and corruptions of the flesh are purged away and the redeemed stand in robes of radiant white at the right hand of God. I blame no man for declining the sacrifice. To set foot upon that accursed spot was to be declared unclean and there confined until death released you--death by leprosy, the most appalling disease in all the dreadful catalogue of human ills, the most dreaded arrow in the quiver of the grim Destroyer. Yet Father Damien, a young Roman Catholic priest, left home and country and all that life holds dear, and went deliberately forth to die for afflicted barbarians. There he reared an humble temple with his own hands to the God of his fathers, there, through long years of confinement, he ministered to the temporal and spiritual wants of the afflicted; there he died, as he knew he must die, with his fingers falling from his hands, his flesh from his bones, a sight to appall the very imps of hell. No wonder the Protestant ministers held aloof. Merciful God. I'd rather be crucified!

We are all brave men when the war-drum throbs and the trumpet calls us to battle beneath the eyes of the world, --when, touching elbows with our fellows and clad in all the glorious pomp and circumstance of war we seek the bubble of fame e'en at the cannon's mouth. When the music of the battery breeds murder in the blood, the electric order goes ringing down the line, is answered by the thrilling cheer, the veriest coward drives the spur deep into the foaming flank and plunges, like a thunderbolt, into the gaping jaws of death, into the mouth of hell; but when a man was wanted to go forth alone, without blare of trumpet or drum, and become a life-prisoner in a leper colony, but one in all the world could be found equal to that supreme test of personal heroism, and that man was a Roman Catholic priest. And what was his reward? Hear what Thos. G. Sherman, a good Protestant, says in the New York Post: