« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2021, 06:20:16 PM »
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The only practical way to protect a Church is with armed guards."Dagger John" used armed guards from the Ancient Order of Hibernians to back down the ʝʊdɛօ-masons of the day. Bishop John Hughes of New York
In 1844, James Harper, was elected Mayor of New York supported by the anti-immigrant American Republican Party consisting mainly of Nativists. A highly organized group of anti-Catholic Protestant fundamentalists, they saw the Catholic Church as incompatible with democracy and believed the United States should be a land for Anglo-Saxon Protestants only. At the time, nativist riots in Philadelphia claimed the lives of 30 Irishmen and burned Catholic churches and convents. Bishop Hughes defending the rights of Irish Catholics against such bigotry and bƖσσdshɛd, sent a letter to Mayor Harper warning that if any harm came to a single Catholic church, he would turn New York into another Moscow, referring to the burning of Moscow during Napoleon’s invasion in 1812. He then called on the AOH to defend the Cathedral. As a massive Nativist torchlight parade gathered in City Hall Park, ready to march up the Bowery to the Cathedral, he stationed the Hibernians on the protective walls around the Cathedral. The Nativists backed down and Hughes’ powerful message and forceful actions are credited with averting the same anti-Catholic violence in New York that had plagued Philadelphia. Hughes won the nickname of “Dagger John,” not only for the cross he penned beside his signature but also for being a man not to be trifled with!
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"Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it underfoot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor but a destroyer." St. Francis of Assisi