THE editor of the Outlook—Lyman Abbott D. D.—wrote a letter to Archbishop Ireland asking him if there could not be “agreement and coöperation between Protestants and Catholics in the Philippines, Cuba and Porto Rice, and the work carried on in such relations of mutual friendliness… as will help to draw Protestants and Catholics nearer together rather than to estrange them from each other in the United States.” The Archbishop replied “frankly” “as a Catholic” and “as an American” and said: “As a Catholic, I cannot approve of any efforts of Protestants to affect the religious duties of the inhabitants of those islands. Catholics are there in complete control; they have a thorough church organization; the inhabitants are Catholics…. Protestantism will never take the place in their hearts of that faith…. As an American, I will no less object to efforts to implant Protestantism in those islands”—and much more of the same sort. When will professed Protestants learn enough to quit humbling themselves before Rome only to be spurned? But nearly twenty years ago the compromising Protestants, the church and state “Protestants,” declared that they must, in spite of rebuffs, seek coöperation with Rome in any way that she shall consent; and there diligently following it up. “Protestants, there are some; but Protestantism is dead.”
A. T. J.