When Tacoma Protestants Told the Pope to Stay Out of Their Lodges
A 2,500-person rally in Tacoma’s Armory Hall denounces a papal edict against secret societies, blending fraternal pride with fierce anti-Catholic nativism.
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Tacoma, Jan. 6.—Special.—A meeting attended by fully 2,500 persons was held in the Armory hall this afternoon under the auspices of the A. P. A., the Knights of Pythias, the Odd Fellows and the Sons of Temperance, to protest against the recent edict of the pope placing the latter three secret societies under the ban of the Catholic church. G. W. Van Fossen, president of the state A. P. A., made a speech of half an hour's duration, reviewing papal interference in the affairs of European countries and the United States.
Rev. W. Gallagher, a Congregational minister, spoke in behalf of the Odd Fellows. He declared that this order was thoroughly Christian and eminently humane in teaching and practice. He briefly reviewed its history and enumerated its charitable deeds. Why the pope did not want Catholics to be Odd Fellows was because the Catholic church, to exist, must confine the mental visions of its members to the narrow channels of ignorance, superstition and fear. To go into Odd Fellowship broadened a man's mind and therefore unfitted him to be a Catholic.
Rev. B. F. Rattery, a Congregational minister, spoke briefly as a Son of Temperance. It stood the pope well in hand to place temperance under the ban, he declared, since four-fifths of the members of the Catholic church are keepers of dives, saloons and gambling joints. He was willing for any American to hold whatever religious views he pleased, but the pope and the Catholic church must keep their hands off American institutions.
State Senator Ed. Taylor, a Knight of Pythias, created merriment by charging Mr. Van Fossen and Representative Fred Taylor, president and secretary of the state A. P. A., with bribing the pope to issue his edict so as to drive all the Catholics from other societies into the A. P. A., the only society left not under the ban. The senator said the pope's edict had made A. P. A.'s of the 56,000,000 Protestants and half of the 10,000,000 Catholics in the United States. The only Catholics who upheld it were the ignorant and foreign-born.
“The pope and the Catholic church must keep their hands off American institutions.”
The A.P.A. rally shows how fraternal organizations and religious identity fused with politics in the 1890s—a precursor to later fights over immigration and religious pluralism. The rhetoric is a reminder that exclusionary movements have long used ‘American institutions’ as a rallying cry.
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