# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

nation expressed for the elevation of several archbishops to cardinals. Let us think of the arrogance with which these cardinals, as princes of the Church, have shown themselves toward the state officials, how they claimed precedence over all officials of the state with the exception of the President. No man, however famous, no statesman, president, etc., has probably ever been received in our country with such great honors, with such enthusiasm, as the Archbishop of New York, Dr. Farley, when, clothed with the cardinal's dignity, he returned from Rome. It has been stated more than once in Roman circles that Rome also strives for political power, that it aims to found a special party with Roman tendencies in our country too, similar to the Center party in Germany. That people have not gone further yet comes only from the fact that they recognize that the time is not yet ripe, that the people must first be made still more Roman in their thinking and views. Everywhere we look, not only in the religious field but also in all fields of civil life, we see Rome's busy activity, Rome's ever more significant influence. What Prof. Theodor Kolde writes with regard to the European nations in his work "Der Katholizismus und das zwanzigste Jahrhundert" [Catholicism and the Twentieth Century] is true also of our country: "Whether it pleases us Protestants or not, whoever lets the history of the papacy pass before him must admit that since the days of Innocent III the papacy has never held a more brilliant and powerful position than today. Not only Catholic princes, but almost more Protestant ones outdo one another in actual and rhetorical homage toward the shrewd old man on the Roman episcopal throne, who dared to call the Reformation a plague. . . . The Ultramontanes dominate our parliaments, they make our laws, they decide on the needs of the Evangelical Church. More and more the demand prevails that not ability but attitude toward the Roman Church shall decide in the appointment of officials, above all of scholars. 'How does the Roman Church stand on this? Will the Curia approve it?' — on this already depends, not seldom, even in very secular domestic affairs, the position of our statesmen; for a nod from Rome can, by means of the well-schooled Center factions, bring the whole legislative machinery to a standstill. And what is perhaps the most astonishing: what an Innocent strove for in vain, against which Catholic princes and peoples have always rebelled, the office of arbiter over right and wrong in the political struggle of princes and peoples, this a Protestant power was the first to concede to the papacy, and not least for that reason, as already remarked, perhaps never has a Pope, though he may otherwise be much hemmed in by the power of tradition and by the Jesuit camarilla, outwardly