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Show the Vatican, and all because the Catholics hold to the temporal rights of the pope. There is no more uncompromising organiartion in the world than that of the Catholic church, and its laws are lived up to regardless of the degree of the offending. The high, as readily as the low, are made to feel the inexorableness of it authority. ROOSEVELT AND THE POPE. Theodore Roosevelt's decision to forego an audience with Pope Pius, head of the Catholic church, while the ex-President is in Rome, is one of the most sensational acts of Mr. Roosevelt's strenuous life. If, on his return home, Mr. Roosevelt is persuaded to become a receptive candidate for re-election to the presidency and the indications in-dications now are that he will then there is grave danger of this act of his in Rome growing to the proportions of a national issue and dividing the country on sectarian lines, for if there is one reverence rever-ence more devoutly and devotedly given than another by the Catholics Cath-olics of America, it is that of paying homage to the pope, not as an individual, but as head of the church, and a slight directed at the pope in unforgivable. But the great body of the American people, we believe will approve ap-prove Roosevelt's declaration for individual liberty and will applaud his determination to refuse to compromiso his freedom of action. It required considerable courage to meet a situation such as confronted Roosevelt, when Cardinal Merry De Val, representing the pope, made known that the proposed visit to the Vatican would be a source of pleasure if the ex-President would obligate himself not to do as Vice President Fairbanks had done. This question might have been avoided by the cardinal, and Mr. Roosevelt left to his own good sense of the proprieties. In that manner, the church could not have been held to have countenanced the Methodists or any other Protestant missionary body in Rome recognized as offensive of-fensive to the Vatican. When informed that he must in a measure forego recognition of his own or other Protestant churches in order to gain entrance to the presence of the pope, Roosevelt was confronted with a choice of action he could submissively bow down to the mandate and stulify his own religious conscience, or he could assert his God-given God-given right to be publicly what he privately professes to be, a non-believer non-believer in the pope's religious sovereignty. The American people believe in this asscrtiveness; they believe in a man being frank and above board. And yet, wo have no quarrel with the Vatican for doing what it has done. Believing as they do, the pope and the cardinals have a rule of conduct which forbids a compromise with outsiders or a recognition of other religions, and they are most tenacious in holding to that rule. For nearly 40 years the pope has refused to recognize tho Quirinal and has voluntarily restricted himself to the walls of 1 - - |