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Show I Mormon-Catholic Alliance Fiction THE FALSE and mischievous reports' re-ports' of an alliance of the Catholic Cath-olic and'Mormon churches of Utah to control public affairs in this. state, first started by the Portland Oregonian and reiterated in a roundabout way by Frank Cannon in a public speech in this city, have provoked comments in the Catholic press of the east. Of course these papers place no faith in such reports. How could they do so, j rightly divining that Catholics of Utah are not different from Catholics elsewhere, else-where, and that the Catholic conception concep-tion of citizenship with its obligations is the same all over the country? Nowhere No-where would the Catholic laity tolerate an alliance such as that reported to be made in Utah. Nowhere could such a plan be carried out, because Catholics Catho-lics hold strong convictions regarding the limit of clerical meddling with politics. pol-itics. ' ". These Catholic papers are not to be blamed for getting things a little bit mixed and sometimes going far astray when treating of Utah, its political and social conditions. For example, a paragraph par-agraph in the New World of Chicago, errs in saying that "the whole Mormon church is bending every effort to elect Apostle Reed Smoot to the seat now filled by Senator Kearns, who is a Catholic and a Republican." Apostle Reed Smoot will, if elected, succeed to the place now filled by Senator Rawlins, Raw-lins, who is a Democrat and non-Mormon. non-Mormon. Senator Kearns' term does not expire until 1905. The error is one which any Catholic or secular paper might pardonably make, unacquainted with public affairs 1 of Utah. Trifling as it appears, it provokes pro-vokes a comment by the editor of the New World which is misleading. So far from any Mormon attack on Senator Sen-ator Kearns because he is a Catholic, that gentleman Is actually working for the election of Smoot because he is a Mormon. The incongruity of such proceeding pro-ceeding is so apparent to the eastern mind, and to the Catholic mind, that it needs explanation. In Utah, all who are not members of the Mormon church are classed as Gentiles, be they Catholics or Protests ants, Jews or infidels. There are Democratic Dem-ocratic Mormons and Republican Gentiles, Gen-tiles, Gentile Democrats and Mormon Republicans no attempt succeeding to emasculate the adjective from the mind and hardly from the speech of individual individ-ual partisans. Political offices are divided di-vided between Gentiles and Mormons. Party leaders instinctively perceive the equity of arrangement and avoid the danger of loading down party tickets with either too many Gentiles or too many Mormons. This plan obtains in cities of the state where Gentiles and Mormons are equally divided, or nearly so. Outside the two principal cities and the mining camps, Gentiles are few and far between. The Mormons embrace em-brace 75 per cent of the total population. popula-tion. At the time Thomas Kearns was a candidate before the legislature the race for the senate was conceded to Gentiles, nearly all of whom were persons per-sons of wealth, as is usually the portion por-tion of men in this western country aspiring as-piring to exalted position. A year or two before, Kearns financially aided the Mormon church and lifted its bond issue. is-sue. In other ways he gave substantial : encouragement to Mormon enterprises. All such things count and help a candidate; can-didate; they certainly could not and did not harm his chances for election. Then, perhaps, Kearns really did make the alleged bargain with the Mormon church officials, a bargain which exacted ex-acted from him a pledge to work for Apostle Smoot as a reward for the church's part in his avearns') election. But whatever Kearns did in order, to obtain the number ' of votes to eiect, those votes were not cast for Thomas Kearns the Catholic but for Thomas Kearns the Gentile. To put it stronger, these legislative votes were cast for Thomas Kearns of the Silver King mine. Without the Silver King, Tom Kearns religion would be a bar to political honor in Utah. It is only natural that Senator Kearns should wish to succeed himself. To do so, the way must be cleared for the election of a Mormon to the United States senate . by the legislature just chosen. Hence Apostle Smoot is Kearns' choice because Smoot is the choice of the church leaders. That Smoot is an apostle, that he might subordinate sub-ordinate the state to the church as Utah's representative in the federal senate, does not appear to worry Senator Sen-ator Kearns, net any more than If Smoot were only an ordinary bishop of a ward stake. It is a game of politics. and Tom Kearns is a politician. That is all there is to it. That is all there is to this fable of Catholic and Mormon alliance in Utah. The political status of Catholics in Utah has not been disturbed in the least. No attempt has been made by either cleric or Catholic layman, of wealth to change the vote of Catholic citizens one way or another. Such a thing is impossible with intelligent Catholics. Weath could not do it if lit would; the other would not do it if j it could. |