Charles Trevelyan Quotes

The Catholic Church has access to a major section of the American public. Our impact on the public will be directly proportionate to the persuasiveness of our positions. We seek no special status and we should not be accorded one.

As for the much discussed Irish university, I do not myself believe it will be founded. Should even an English Government be blind enough to allow it, an Irish university could only become a hot-bed of treason, and practically all educated members of the Roman Catholic community would avoid sending their sons to such a seminary of sedition, where the influence would be insidiously directed to make the undergraduates even more hostile to England than they already are by inherited instincts and by all they have been told in their own homes.

She certainly is a great queen, and were she only a Catholic she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs; she is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all.

Let them be reassured, it has never been one of our intentions to ban religion in society, but solely to protect the national education system from any conspicuous display of religious affiliation.

The fact that President-elect Kennedy would be the first Catholic president did not sit well with many Americans. There was a fear that, as president, Kennedy's decisions would be based on his religion and dictated by the pope.

God is not a franchise of the Republican Party.

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote.... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant or Jewish ... for while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.

The alliance between church and state in England, has ever made their judges accomplice in the frauds of the clergy.

I hope to see the day when as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over …

I do affirm I was never, nor am, a popish Recusant—or popishly affected

Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery

For political and intellectual freedom and for all the blessings that political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she [England] is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood.

We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power.

Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies differed widely in their religious views. There were the Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics, and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and color and kind, and how was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should be only one religion until they got through, and that was the religion of patriotism. They solemnly agreed that the new nation should not belong to any particular church, but that it should secure the rights of all.

This will be a different society if a Catholic is elected President

For what you mention concerning liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the Mass. I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed …

Catholics and Protestants remained faithful to their religions, but stopped thinking of them in zero-sum terms and gradually embraced the separation between church and state.

These day schools did invaluable service in the days of the Colony and Commonwealth, and, indeed, in the early days of the Republic; but to their continuation must undoubtedly be ascribed the tardy recognition of the government and people of the fact that no agency for the education of the masses is as effective as the public school.... There is not one public school building owned by the government or by any city or township.

Back in the '50s and '60s, most politicians were concerned about not talking about faith, partly because there were consequences you had to deal with - (for instance) Catholicism had been made an issue.

To call public education godless betrays invincible ignorance, infinite prejudice, and complete misunderstanding of what religion is all about.

The Irish nation is de facto a Catholic nation

Catholicism is among the arch enemies of America and our way of life and of the true faith.

I ask you tonight ... to judge me on the basis of fourteen years in the Congress—on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I attended myself)—instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we have all seen that carefully selected quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic Church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and rarely relevant to any situation here—and always omitting, of course, that statement of the American bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation.

Our Executive never interferes in the discipline, doctrine, or regulations of any religious society. They were not consulted nor took part in the appointment of our Bishops, or the Church of England, or Methodists.

The law of the land is We do not allow parties on a religious basis. We launch ourselves from our value system … but religion does not belong to any political party.