Historical Records and Studies (Volume 15)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1921 Excerpt: ... THE CATHOLIC CONTRIBUTION TO LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES By Frederick J. Zwierlein, D.scm.h., Professor of Church History, St. Bernard's Seminary, Rochester, N. Y. Civil authorities in the United States of America called for a celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, December 21, 1620. Public speakers, on this occasion, rightly commended the good sense of these colonists in drawing up the Mayflower Compact at their arrival off Cape Cod a month before, by which they solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.1 It was but natural for colonists thus to provide for law and order, and the rudest pioneers, that pushed the boundaries of the country westward from the Atlantic even to the Pacific Coast, found it advisable and necessary to do the same, without any thought of this precedent. After an honorable mention of the Pilgrim Fathers, public speakers usually passed at once to a glorification of the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony ten years later and soon proved themselves the controlling factors in New England. Alongside of them the Pilgrim Fathers almost fade into insignificance.2 The Puritans were a race of stalwart men, earnest and persevering in purpose, who had suffered persecution in England for conscience's sake. This is the simple truth, but that is as far as we can go in accepting the eulogy of the panegyrists. When they tell us that the Puritans were the founders of American liberty, civil and religious, truthful history shows that these men came to America to seek religious liberty for themselves, but they insisted that all others should stay away from them. Thus Roger Williams, to mention bu...