FROM a talk by the nineteenth-century priest Fr. Arnold Damen, S.J.:

In the sixteenth century Protestantism did away with the authority of the Church and constituted every man his own judge of the Bible, and what was the consequence?  Religion upon religion, church upon church, sprang into existence, and has never stopped springing up new churches, to this day.  When I gave my Mission in Flint, Michigan, I invited, as I have done here, my Protestant friends to come and see me.  A good and intelligent man came to me and said:

“I will avail myself of this opportunity to converse with you.”

“What Church do you belong to, my friend,”  said I.

“To the Church of the Twelve Apostles,”  said he.

“Ha! ha!”  said I, “I belong to that Church too.  But, tell me, my friend, where was your Church started?”

“In Terre Haute, Indiana,”  says he.

“Who started the Church, and who were the Twelve Apostles, my friend?”  said I.

“They were twelve farmers,”  said he; “we all belonged to the same Church, the Presbyterian, but we quarreled with our preacher, separated from him, and started a Church of our own.”

“And that,”  said I, “is the Twelve Apostles you belonged to, twelve farmers of Indiana!  The Church came into existence about thirty years ago.”

A few years ago, when I was in Terre Haute, I asked to be shown the Church of the Twelve Apostles.  I was taken to a window and it was pointed out to me, “but it is not in existence any more,”  said my informant, “it is used as a wagonmaker’s shop now.”

Again, St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Galatians, says: “Though we Apostles, or even an angel from heaven were to come and preach to you a different Gospel from what we have preached, let him be anathema.” [Galatians 1:8]  That is the language of St. Paul, because, my dearly beloved people, religion must come from God, not from man.  No man has a right to establish a religion.  No man has a right to dictate to his fellow-man what he shall believe and what he shall do to save his soul.  Religion must come from God, and any religion that is not established by God is a false religion, a human institution, and not an institution of God.  And therefore did St. Paul say in his Epistles to the Galatians, “Though we Apostles or even an angel from heaven were to come and preach to you a new Gospel, a new religion, let them be anathema.”

The rest of the lecture can be read here.

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