“The Catholics,” he replied, “are far more numerous than the Protestants. Forty years ago there was a great schism in the Catholic church, the American branch of it separating completely from the European, and setting up for itself as the “American Catholic Church.” At the same time important changes were made in the interpretation of the doctrines of the church and radical innovations in its government. The latter is now largely republican in form and the laity have representation in the councils of the church and a preponderating influence both in its doctrine and its temporal policy. The tendency toward this development showed itself strongly in the beginning of the twentieth century, and originated from the general increase of intelligence and feeling of personal assertion and responsibility among the laity and the example of the freer people about them. The clergy instinctively resisted this tendency, and called upon the Pope and the European church to help them to stop it. The help they afforded only stimulated the movement. The interference of the Europeans was resented as impertinent; the exercise of the papal authority was looked on as a display of superannuated tyranny. The Pope asserted that the American Church by its liberal practices and tendencies was corrupting the church in other parts of the world, and declared they were doing it more damage as members, than they could do as open enemies outside of its pale, and he threatened to excommunicate the whole American body. The immediate cause of the final act of separation was first the persistence of the laity in having the ownership of the church property in their own hands, represented by trustees of their own selection. Second, their demand to share in the government of the church, to which end they proposed a representative legislature composed of two houses, one composed of laymen and the other of clergy.
“Third they asserted the right of private judgment without prejudice to their standing as Catholics, on all questions of mere faith, except the cardinal principle of Christianity, requiring only the observance of the sacraments and the practice of charitable works and a moral life.
“They repudiated auricular confession. These innovations were not all consummated at once, but the controversy once begun, found no logical settlement short of these demands and the rupture of the church. Liberalized in this way in regard to creed and government, and freed from the domination of the Italians, but retaining much of the ancient ritual and the pomp of public worship, the American Church, became very popular, and soon received large accessions of membership from the protestant bodies. In fact the more conservative and spiritual protestants found the new catholic church more congenial to them than the new protestant. The former church advanced toward them as the latter drifted away into rationalism.”