An Open Letter

TO THE MOST REV. M. A. CORRIGAN, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK.
     YOUR GRACE: While sincerely grieving over the murder of President McKinley with the great body of Socialists in America, I cannot, in justice to the truth, pass by the unfair inference of your letter of the 14th inst., which is, in a sense, a public document by reason of its wide diffusion in the daily papers. To the average reader of that letter you seem to implicate Socialism in the crime against the President when you request your clergy “to impress on the faithful the constant teachings of our holy father, Leo XIII., against the errors of Socialism.” I therefore respectfully challenge Your Grace to show wherein Socialism errs. The Catholic Church championed Socialism for four hundred years until capitalism succeeded in winning the high places and poured its corrupting gold into her coffers.
     The Pope’s encyclical has no dogmatic value in view of the fact that it is not the work of Leo XIII., proclaiming a doctrine of faith and morals, but merely the opinion of Joachim Pecci as a writer on social economics.
     My love for the Catholic Church is too profound to allow me to keep silent when such a distinguished representative of the lowly Nazarene condemns a righteous movement for the liberation of the toiling masses from the bondage of industrial serfdom.
     I will go to New York and pay the rent of the hall on any date it may suit Your Grace’s convenience to debate this vital question.
     Trusting that Your Grace will not shirk the issue, I am,

Respectfully yours,

T. MCGRADY,               
Pastor St. Anthony’s Church,          
Bellevue, Ky.