The Temporal Power of the Pope Author:John McClintock Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTEE II. Dear Sir,—Your disavowals of any temporal authority on the part of the pope are very strong. You appear to deny that he has any such authority, dir... more »ectly or indirectly; and I shall take it for granted that this is your meaning. Any other construction of your language would impeach your integrity; and this I do not dream of doing. At the same time, you state your views to be, not your own individually, but those of the Roman Catholics as such; and that they are " fully held and openly asserted and approved by every Catholic bishop and archbishop of the United States." Even if this last assertion were true, it would not help your cause ; for it might be the case (though it is not) that " every Catholic bishop and archbishop in the United States" should be a Gallican. You quote from Bishop England, on page 20, a statement apparently coinciding with yours, but really differing from it in a very important particular. Search his language carefully, and you will find no declaration incompatible with such an exercise of the pope's spiritual power as would affect temporal interests. But Bishop England was a Gallican, and although his terms are more carefully chosen than yours, even his view is condemned by Ultramontane writers. The same number of the Tablet which I quoted in my last letter cites Bishop England's declaration, that the "spiritual power does not, and cannot, destroy the claim which the government has upon" a Roman Catholic; and replies that "if the pope can forbid a priest to fight, when the civil government bids him, there is an end to this argument, for the spiritual power does, in the case of the priest, destroy the claim of the government." You also cite the prelates Kenrick, Troy, Hughes, and Spalding, as declaring that the temporal power spoken of is ...« less