"Practically Insulted"

In professional religion, as in professional politics, sagas are kept alive. Last week, America, Jesuit weekly, took occasion to address itself to the Roosevelt-Pope episode--apropos of the publication of the syndicated Roosevelt-Lodge letters.

Wrote Mr. Roosevelt to Mr. Lodge (Apr. 6, 1910) : "At Rome I had an elegant row. The Pope imposed conditions upon my reception, requiring a pledge--secret or open--that I would not visit and speak to the Methodist Mission. Of course I declined absolutely to assent to any conditions whatever, and the reception did not take place.

"Then with a folly as incredible as that of the Vatican itself, the Methodist ministers, whose game was perfectly simple because the Pope had played it for them, and who had nothing to do but sit quiet, promptly issued an address of exultation which can only he called scurrilous, and with equal promptness I canceled the arrangements I had made for seeing them.

"The only satisfaction I had out of the affair, and it was a very great satisfaction, was that on the one hand I administered a needed lesson to the Vatican, and on the other hand I made it understood that I feared the most powerful Protestant Church just as little as I feared the Roman Catholics."

Commented the Jesuit weekly's writer : "The condition for an audience imposed by the Holy Father on non-Catholic Americans was, in view of the evident facts, most proper. . . . For years they [Methodists] had acted worse than blackguards. . . . The Vatican in such a case can take no risk in safeguarding the dignity of the Vicar of Christ."

Then the writer notes : "It is a fact that, from the day that Mr. Theodore Roosevelt practically insulted the Pope in Rome by passing through the city without calling on His Holiness, he had no success."

The writer concluded:

"Mr. Roosevelt has been in his grave for years but the rule still obtains: No prominent non-Catholic American will be received at the Vatican who intends, after being welcomed there, to consort with its scurrilous libellers in Rome. It is a matter of decency, not bigotry."