“THE Prophet Daniel, in the twelfth chapter, says that in the time of the end ‘many shall be chosen and made white, and shall be tried as fire; and the wicked shall deal wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand, but the learned shall understand’ that is, many who have known the faith shall abandon it, by apostasy. ‘Some of the learned shall fall;’ that is, they shall fall from their fidelity to God. And how shall this come to pass? Partly by fear, partly by deception, partly by cowardice; partly because they cannot stand for unpopular truth in the face of popular falsehood; partly because the overruling contemptuous public opinion, as in such a country as this [England], and in France, so subdues and frightens Catholics, that they dare not avow their principles, and, at last, dare not hold them. They become admirers and worshipers of the material prosperity of Protestant countries. They see the commerce, the manufactures, the agriculture, the capital, the practical science, the irresistible armies, and the fleets that cover the sea, and they come flocking to adore, and say, ‘Nothing is so great as this great country of Protestant England.’ [Ed., Or perhaps, ‘Nothing is so great as this great country of Protestant and Masonic America.’] And so they give up their faith, and become materialists, seeking for the wealth and power of this world, dazzled and overpowered by the greatness of a country which has cast off its fidelity to the Church.”
—- — Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy, 1861
This passage by Manning is a piercingly accurate description of the American Catholic as he has been for many years — materialist and traitor. It was the Americans who were some of the staunchest foes of the First Vatican Council and Pope Pius IX’s valiant efforts to define the all-important, and much misunderstood, doctrine of papal infallibility. American bishops returned home in a huff, so taken aback that they might have to defend the faith in the face of Protestant effrontery and opposition.
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