Some Calumnies Against The Catholic Church

Fifty years ago there was not a more common or catching heading on all non – Catholic pamphlets, sermons and religious journals than the celebrated motto: “If ever the liberties of the United States be destroyed it will be by Romish priests.—WordsofLafayette.”

Lafayette had promised his Catholic wife on her deathbed that he would give more attention to religion. He had received the last rites of his Church, and he had been laid to rest in a Catholic cemetery, with Catholic hymn and prayer, two years before the scandalous words ascribed to him had risen to the surface of religious bigotry. But, being a revolutionist by profession,on the one hand,this saying ascribed to him was just possible,and being most dear to the American people on account of his gallant deeds,on the other, there was enormous weight attached to the mere possibility of such an utterance. The improbability of the saying had to be proved, the testimony of lying witnesses had to be dissected and confuted, the character of the great general had to be discussed ,and all his speeches and writings diligently scanned. And,while this work took up the time of church men, ,the motto went bravely on doing its deadly work of destruction. Yet when all the evidence was in, it was convincingly shown that just the contrary were the sentiments of our country’s defender. He had argued in the French chamber in opposition to the bill for the expulsion of the Irish trappists, that if the Jesuits of Georgetown were not dangerous to the United States, much less would these refugees from Ireland be dangerous to France. Thus the lie was nailed by documentary evidence, but the prejudice it had engendered remained.

Again,what more common attack against the Jesuit Fathers’ and by inference against the Catholic Church,than that they teach that “the end justifies the means” in the sense that a good intention can sanctify actions which are intrinsically bad? Every child can understand that there is the closest relation between the means and the end to be attained by them. If the end is natural,natural likewise are the means;if the end is supernatural, supernatural must be the means to attain it. A walk, a drive,a talk, things indifferent in themselves, maybe made good or bad according to the end in view. It is evident that an act of heroic charity may be destroyed by a bad intention. Hence in particular cases it is true that the end does determine the morality of an act, and, in the writings of the Jesuit father’s, such doctrine,with well defined limitations,maybe found, but no where the general maxim that “the end justifies the means.” On the contrary, all Jesuit moralists have taken care to teach that the end does not justify the means,and that,no matter how good the intention, it cannot make good what is intrinsically bad. In the year 1852,in Frankfort,a Jesuit father read a declaration, that, if any witness could produce a Jesuit author who had uttered the maxim “ the end justifies the means,either literally or in equivalent terms, he would pay him a thousand florins. Ten years elapsed and only one applicant appeared, and the “Protestant university of Heidelberg,to which was left the decision, would not allow that his garbled extracts from Jesuit author proved this claim. A few years ago the former pastor of this church offered a thousand dollars to anyone who could produce,from a catholic author,the equivalent saying, “Evil can be done that good may come.” But he uttered it in vain; there was no applicant. Yet with all this the Protestant Bishop of New York had the effrontery, in the year 1888, to produce some mutilated texts and claim the money on a similar challenge. He added, however, naively, that he did not expect to get it. Who will ever remove from the minds of Protestants this silly prejudice?It has been embalmed in the Encyclopedia Brittannica by another Protestant clergyman, and there it will remain forever — a monument of bad faith.

– Rev. James C. Bryne, Refutations of Some Calumnies Against the Catholic Church.