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2146 lines
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Contents of this file page
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ROME OR REASON? A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING. part 1 1
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ROME OR REASON? A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING. part 2 16
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**** ****
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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ROME OR REASON?
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1888
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A REPLY TO CARDINAL MANNING.
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Superstition "has ears more deaf than adders to
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the voice of any true reason."
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PART I.
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CARDINAL MANNING has stated the claims of the Roman Catholic
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Church with great clearness, and apparently without reserve. The
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age, position and learning of this man give a certain weight to his
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words, apart from their worth. He represents the oldest of the
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Christian churches. The questions involved are among the most
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important that can engage the human mind. No one having the
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slightest regard for that superb thing known as intellectual
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honesty, will avoid the issues tendered, or seek in any way to gain
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a victory over truth.
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Without candor, discussion, in the highest sense, is
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impossible. All have the same interest, whether they know it or
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not, in the establishment of facts. All have the same to gain, the
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same to lose. He loads the dice against himself who scores a point
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against the right.
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Absolute honesty is to the intellectual perception what light
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is to the eyes. Prejudice and passion cloud the mind. In each
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disputant should be blended the advocate and judge.
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In this spirit, having in view only the ascertainment of the
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truth, let us examine the arguments, or rather the statements and
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conclusions, of Cardinal Manning.
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The proposition is that "The church itself by its marvelous
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propagation, its eminent sanctity, its inexhaustible fruitfulness
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in all good things, its catholic unity and invincible stability, is
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a vast and perpetual motive of credibility, and an irrefragable
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witness of its own divine legation."
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The reasons given as supporting this proposition are: That the
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Catholic Church interpenetrates all the nations of the civilized
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world; that it is extranational and independent in a supernational
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unity; that it is the same in every place; that it speaks all
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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ROME OR REASON - PART II
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languages in the civilized world; that it is obedient to one head;
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that as many as seven hundred bishops have knelt before the pope;
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that pilgrims from all nations have brought gifts to Rome, and that
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all these things set forth in the most self-evident way the unity
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and universality of the Roman Church.
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It is also asserted that "men see the Head of the Church year
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by year speaking to the nations of the world, treating with
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Empires, Republics and Governments;" that "there is no other man on
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earth that can so bear himself," and that "neither from Canterbury
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nor from Constantinople can such a voice go forth to which rulers
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and people listen."
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It is also claimed that the Catholic Church has enlightened
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and purified the world; that it has given us the peace and purity
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of domestic life; that it has destroyed idolatry and demonology;
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that it gave us a body of law from a higher source than man; that
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it has produced the civilization of Christendom; that the popes
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||
were the greatest of statesmen and rulers; that celibacy is better
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than marriage, and that the revolutions and reformations of the
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last three hundred years have been destructive and calamitous.
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We will examine these assertions as well as some others.
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No one will dispute that the Catholic Church is the best
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witness of its own existence, The same is true of every thing that
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exists -- of every church, great and small, of every man, and of
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every insect.
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But it is contended that the marvelous growth or propagation
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of the church is evidence of its divine origin. Can it be said that
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success is supernatural? All success in this world is relative.
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Majorities are not necessarily right. If anything is known -- if
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anything can be known -- we are sure that very large bodies of men
|
||
have frequently been wrong. We believe in what is called the
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progress of mankind. Progress, for the most part, consists in
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finding new truths and getting rid of old errors -- that is to say,
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getting nearer and nearer in harmony with the facts of nature,
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seeing with greater clearness the conditions of well-being.
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||
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There is no nation in which a majority leads the way. In the
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||
progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest right. There
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||
have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from
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a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in
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darkness. Some great man leads the way -- he becomes the morning
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star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterward, many millions accept
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his views. But there are still heights above and beyond; there are
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other pioneers, and the old day, in comparison with the new,
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becomes a night. So, we cannot say that success demonstrates either
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divine origin or supernatural aid.
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We know, if we know anything, that wisdom has often been
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trampled beneath the feet of the multitude. We know that the torch
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of science has been blown out by the breath of the hydra-headed. We
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||
know that the whole intellectual heaven has been darkened again and
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||
again. The truth or falsity of a proposition cannot be determined
|
||
by ascertaining the number of those who assert, or of those who
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||
deny.
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||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
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||
|
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ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
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|
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If the marvelous propagation of the Catholic Church proves its
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divine origin, what shall we say of the marvelous propagation of
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Mohammedanism?
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Nothing can be clearer than that Christianity arose out of the
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ruins of the Roman Empire -- that is to say, the ruins of Paganism.
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||
And it is equally clear that Mohammedanism arose out of the wreck
|
||
and ruin of Catholicism.
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||
|
||
After Mohammed came upon the stage, "Christianity was forever
|
||
expelled from its most glorious seats -- from Palestine, the scene
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||
of its most sacred recollections; from Asia Minor, that of its
|
||
first churches; from Egypt, whence issued the great doctrine of
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||
Trinitarian Orthodoxy, and from Carthage, who imposed her belief on
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||
Europe." Before that time "the ecclesiastical chiefs of Rome, of
|
||
Constantinople, and of Alexandria were engaged in a desperate
|
||
struggle for supremacy, carrying out their purposes by weapons and
|
||
in ways revolting to the conscience of man. Bishops were concerned
|
||
in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots,
|
||
treasons, civil war. Patriarchs and primates were excommunicating
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||
and anathematizing one another in their rivalries for earthly power
|
||
-- bribing eunuchs with gold and courtesans and royal females with
|
||
concessions of episcopal love. Among legions of monks who carried
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||
terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities
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||
arose hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but never a voice for
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||
intellectual liberty or the outraged rights of man.
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||
|
||
Under these circumstances, amid these atrocities and crimes,
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||
Mohammed arose, and raised his own nation from Fetichism, the
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||
adoration of the meteoric stone, and from the basest idol worship,
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||
and inevocably wrenched from Christianity more than half -- and
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||
that by far the best half -- of her possessions, since it included
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the Holy Land, the birth-place of the Christian faith, and Africa,
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||
which had imparted to it its Latin form; and now, after a lapse of
|
||
more than a thousand years that continent, and a very large part of
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||
Asia, remain permanently attached to the Arabian doctrine."
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||
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It may be interesting in this connection to say that the
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Mohammedan now proves the divine mission of his apostle by
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||
appealing to the marvelous propagation of the faith. If the
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||
argument is good in the mouth of a Catholic, is it not good in the
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||
mouth of a Moslem? Let us see if it is not better.
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||
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||
According to Cardinal Manning, the Catholic Church triumphed
|
||
only over the institutions of men -- triumphed only over religions
|
||
that had been established by men, -- by wicked and ignorant men.
|
||
But Mohammed triumphed not only over the religions of men, but over
|
||
the religion of God. This ignorant driver of camels, this poor,
|
||
unknown, unlettered boy, unassisted by God, unenlightened by
|
||
supernatural means, drove the armies of the true cross before him
|
||
as the winter's storm drives withered leaves. At his name, priests,
|
||
bishops, and cardinals fled with white faces -- popes trembled, and
|
||
the armies of God, fighting for the true faith, were conquered on
|
||
a thousand fields.
|
||
|
||
If the success of a church proves its divinity, and after that
|
||
another church arises and defeats the first, what does that prove?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Let us put this question in a milder form: Suppose the second
|
||
church lives and flourishes in spite of the first, what does that
|
||
prove?
|
||
|
||
As a matter of fact, however, no church rises with everything
|
||
against it. Something is favorable to it, or it could not exist. If
|
||
it succeeds and grows, it is absolutely certain that the conditions
|
||
are favorable. If it spreads rapidly, it simply shows that the
|
||
conditions are exceedingly favorable, and that the forces in
|
||
opposition are weak and easily overcome.
|
||
|
||
Here, in my own country, within a few years, has arisen a new
|
||
religion. Its foundations were laid in an intelligent community,
|
||
having had the advantages of what is known as modern civilization.
|
||
Yet this new faith -- founded on the grossest absurdities, as gross
|
||
as we find in the Scriptures -- in spite of all opposition began to
|
||
grow, and kept growing. It was subjected to persecution, and the
|
||
persecution increased its strength. It was driven from State to
|
||
State by the believers in universal love, until it left what was
|
||
called civilization, crossed the wide plains, and took up its abode
|
||
on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It continued to grow. Its
|
||
founder, as he declared, had frequent conversations with God, and
|
||
received directions from that source. Hundreds of miracles were
|
||
performed -- multitudes upon the desert were miraculously fed --
|
||
the sick were cured -- the dead were raised, and the Mormon Church
|
||
continued to grow, until now, less than half a century after the
|
||
death of its founder, there are several hundred thousand believers
|
||
in the new faith.
|
||
|
||
Do you think that men enough could join this church to prove
|
||
the truth of its creed?
|
||
|
||
Joseph Smith said that he found certain golden plates that had
|
||
been buried for many generations, and upon these plates, in some
|
||
unknown language, had been engraved this new revelation, and I
|
||
think he insisted that by the use of miraculous mirrors this
|
||
language was translated. If there should be Mormon bishops in all
|
||
the countries of the world, eighteen hundred years from now, do you
|
||
think a cardinal of that faith could prove the truth of the golden
|
||
plates simply by the fact that the faith had spread and that seven
|
||
hundred bishops had knelt before the head of that church?
|
||
|
||
It seems to me that a "supernatural" religion -- that is to
|
||
say, a religion that is claimed to have been divinely founded and
|
||
to be authenticated by miracles, is much easier to establish among
|
||
an ignorant people than any other -- and the more ignorant the
|
||
people, the easier such a religion could be established. The reason
|
||
for this is plain. All ignorant tribes, all savage men, believe in
|
||
the miraculous, in the supernatural. The conception of uniformity,
|
||
of what may be called the eternal consistency of nature, is an idea
|
||
far above their comprehension. They are forced to think in
|
||
accordance with their minds, and as a consequence they account for
|
||
all phenomena by the acts of superior beings -- that is to say, by
|
||
the supernatural. In other words, that religion having most in
|
||
common with the savage, having most that was satisfactory to his
|
||
mind, or to his lack of mind, would stand the best chance of
|
||
success.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
It is probably safe to say that at one time, or during one
|
||
phase of the development of man, everything was miraculous. After
|
||
a time, the mind slowly developing, certain phenomena, always
|
||
happening under like conditions, were called "natural," and none
|
||
suspected any special interference. The domain of the miraculous
|
||
grew less and less -- the domain of the natural larger; that is to
|
||
say, the common became the natural, but the uncommon was still
|
||
regarded as the miraculous. The rising and setting of the sun
|
||
ceased to excite the wonder of mankind -- there was no miracle
|
||
about that; but an eclipse of the sun was miraculous. Men did not
|
||
then know that eclipses are periodical, that they happen with the
|
||
same certainty that the sun rises. It took many observations
|
||
through many generations to arrive at this conclusion. Ordinary
|
||
rains became "natural," floods remained "miraculous."
|
||
|
||
But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards
|
||
the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated
|
||
man -- and by that I mean the developed man -- is satisfied that
|
||
all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and
|
||
can not exist.
|
||
|
||
As a rule, an individual is egotistic in the proportion that
|
||
he lacks intelligence. The same is true of nations and races, The
|
||
barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose that an Infinite Being is
|
||
constantly doing something, or failing to do something, on his
|
||
account. But as man rises in the scale of civilization, as he
|
||
becomes really great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in
|
||
Nature happens on his account -- that he is hardly great enough to
|
||
disturb the motions of the planets.
|
||
|
||
Let us make an application of this: To me, the success of
|
||
Mormonism is no evidence of its truth, because it has succeeded
|
||
only with the superstitious. It has been recruited from communities
|
||
brutalized by other forms of superstition. To me, the success of
|
||
Mohammed does not tend to show that he was right -- for the reason
|
||
that he triumphed only over the ignorant, over the superstitious.
|
||
The same is true of the Catholic Church. Its seeds were planted in
|
||
darkness. It was accepted by the credulous, by men incapable of
|
||
reasoning upon such questions. It did not, it has not, it can not
|
||
triumph over the intellectual world. To count its many millions
|
||
does not tend to prove the truth of its creed. On the contrary, a
|
||
creed that delights the credulous gives evidence against itself.
|
||
|
||
Questions of fact or philosophy cannot be settled simply by
|
||
numbers. There was a time when the Copernican system of astronomy
|
||
had but few supporters -- the multitude being on the other side.
|
||
There was a time when the rotation of the earth was not believed by
|
||
the majority.
|
||
|
||
Let us press this idea further. There was a time when
|
||
Christianity was not in the majority, anywhere. Let us suppose that
|
||
the first Christian missionary had met a prelate of the Pagan
|
||
faith, and suppose this prelate had used against the Christian
|
||
missionary the Cardinal's argument -- how could the missionary have
|
||
answered if the Cardinal's argument is good?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
But, after all, is the success of the Catholic Church a
|
||
marvel? If this church is of divine origin, if it has been under
|
||
the especial care, protection and guidance of an Infinite Being, is
|
||
not its failure far more wonderful than its success? For eighteen
|
||
centuries it has persecuted and preached, and the salvation of the
|
||
world is still remote. This is the result, and it may be asked
|
||
whether it is worth while to try to convert the world to
|
||
Catholicism.
|
||
|
||
Are Catholics better than Protestants? Are they nearer honest,
|
||
nearer just, more charitable? Are Catholic nations better than
|
||
Protestant? Do the Catholic nations move in the van of progress?
|
||
Within their jurisdiction are life, liberty and property safer than
|
||
anywhere else? Is Spain the first nation of the world?
|
||
|
||
Let me ask another question: Are Catholics or Protestants
|
||
better than Freethinkers? Has the Catholic Church produced a
|
||
greater man than Humboldt? Has the Protestant produced a greater
|
||
than Darwin? Was not Emerson, so far as purity of life is
|
||
concerned, the equal of any true believer? Was Pius IX., or any
|
||
other vicar of Christ, superior to Abraham Lincoln?
|
||
|
||
But it is claimed that the Catholic Church is universal, and
|
||
that its universality demonstrates its divine origin.
|
||
|
||
According to the Bible, the apostles were ordered to go into
|
||
all the world and preach the gospel -- yet not one of them, nor one
|
||
of their converts at any time, nor one of the vicars of God, for
|
||
fifteen hundred years afterward, knew of the existence of the
|
||
Western Hemisphere. During all that time, can it be said that the
|
||
Catholic Church was universal? At the close of the fifteenth
|
||
century, there was one-half of the world in which the Catholic
|
||
faith had never been preached, and in the other half not one person
|
||
in ten had ever heard of it, and of those who had heard of it, not
|
||
one in ten believed it. Certainly the Catholic Church was not then
|
||
universal.
|
||
|
||
Is it universal now? What impression has Catholicism upon the
|
||
many millions of China, of Japan, of India, of Africa? Can it
|
||
truthfully be said that the Catholic Church is now universal? When
|
||
any church becomes universal, it will be the only church. There
|
||
cannot be two universal churches, neither can there be one
|
||
universal church and any other.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal next tries to prove that the Catholic Church is
|
||
divine, "by its eminent sanctity and its inexhaustible fruitfulness
|
||
in all good things."
|
||
|
||
And here let me admit that there are many millions of good
|
||
Catholics -- that is, of good men and women who are Catholics. It
|
||
is unnecessary to charge universal dishonesty or hypocrisy, for the
|
||
reason that this would be only a kind of personality. Many
|
||
thousands of heroes have died in defence of the faith, and millions
|
||
of Catholics have killed and been killed for the sake of their
|
||
religion. And here it may be well enough to say that martyrdom does
|
||
not even tend to prove the truth of a religion. The man who dies in
|
||
flames, standing by what he believes to be true, establishes, not
|
||
the truth of what he believes, but his sincerity.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Without calling in question the intentions of the Catholic
|
||
Church, we can ascertain whether it has been "inexhaustibly
|
||
fruitful in all good things," and whether it has been "eminent for
|
||
its sanctity."
|
||
|
||
In the first place, nothing can be better than goodness,
|
||
Nothing is more sacred, or can be more sacred, than the well-being
|
||
of man. All things that tend to increase or preserve the happiness
|
||
of the human race are good -- that is to say, they are sacred. All
|
||
things that tend to the destruction of man's well-being, that tend
|
||
to his unhappiness, are bad, no matter by whom they are taught or
|
||
done.
|
||
|
||
It is perfectly certain that the Catholic Church has taught,
|
||
and still teaches, that intellectual liberty is dangerous -- that
|
||
it should not be allowed. It was driven to take this position
|
||
because it had taken another. It taught, and still teaches, that a
|
||
certain belief is necessary to salvation. It has always known that
|
||
investigation and inquiry led, or might lead, to doubt; that doubt
|
||
leads, or may lead, to heresy, and that heresy leads to hell. In
|
||
other words, the Catholic Church has something more important than
|
||
this world, more important than the well-being of man here. It
|
||
regards this life as an opportunity for joining that church, for
|
||
accepting that creed, and for the saving of your soul.
|
||
|
||
If the Catholic Church is right in its premises, it is right
|
||
in its conclusion. If it is necessary to believe the Catholic creed
|
||
in order to obtain eternal joy, then, of course, nothing else in
|
||
this world is, comparatively speaking, of the slightest importance.
|
||
Consequently, the Catholic Church has been, and still is, the enemy
|
||
of intellectual freedom, of investigation, of inquiry -- in other
|
||
words, the enemy of progress in secular things.
|
||
|
||
The result of this was an effort to compel all men to accept
|
||
the belief necessary to salvation. This effort naturally divided
|
||
itself into persuasion and persecution.
|
||
|
||
It will be admitted that the good man is kind, merciful,
|
||
charitable, forgiving and just. A church must be judged by the same
|
||
standard. Has the church been merciful? Has it been "fruitful in
|
||
the good things" of justice, charity and forgiveness? Can a good
|
||
man, believing a good doctrine, persecute for opinion's sake? If
|
||
the church imprisons a man for the expression of an honest opinion,
|
||
is it not certain, either that the doctrine of the church is wrong,
|
||
or that the church is bad? Both cannot be good. "Sanctity" without
|
||
goodness is impossible. Thousands of "saints" have been the most
|
||
malicious of the human race. If the history of the world proves
|
||
anything, it proves that the Catholic Church was for many centuries
|
||
the most merciless institution that ever existed among men, I
|
||
cannot believe that the instruments of persecution were made and
|
||
used by the eminently good; neither can I believe that honest
|
||
people were imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake by a
|
||
church that was "inexhaustibly fruitful in all good things."
|
||
|
||
And let me say here that I have no Protestant prejudices
|
||
against Catholicism, and have no Catholic prejudices against
|
||
Protestantism, I regard all religions either without prejudice or
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
with the same prejudice. They were all, according to my belief,
|
||
devised by men, and all have for a foundation ignorance of this
|
||
world and fear of the next. All the Gods have been made by men.
|
||
They are all equally powerful and equally useless. I like some of
|
||
them better than I do others, for the same reason that I admire
|
||
some characters in fiction more than I do others. I prefer Miranda
|
||
to Caliban, but have not the slightest idea that either of them
|
||
existed. So I prefer Jupiter to Jehovah, although perfectly
|
||
satisfied that both are myths. I believe myself to be in a frame of
|
||
mind to justly and fairly consider the claims of different
|
||
religions, believing as I do that all are wrong, and admitting as
|
||
I do that there is some good in all.
|
||
|
||
When one speaks of the "inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good
|
||
things" of the Catholic Church, we remember the horrors and
|
||
atrocities of the Inquisition -- the rewards offered by the Roman
|
||
Church for the capture and murder of honest men. We remember the
|
||
Dominican Order, the members of which, upheld by the vicar of
|
||
Christ, pursued the heretics like sleuth hounds, through many
|
||
centuries.
|
||
|
||
The church, "inexhaustible in fruitfulness in all good
|
||
things," not only imprisoned and branded and burned the living, but
|
||
violated the dead. It robbed graves, to the end that it might
|
||
convict corpses of heresy -- to the end that it might take from
|
||
widows their portions and from orphans their patrimony.
|
||
|
||
We remember the millions in the darkness of dungeons -- the
|
||
millions who perished by the sword -- the vast multitudes destroyed
|
||
in flames -- those who were flayed alive those who were blinded --
|
||
those whose tongues were cut out those into whose ears were poured
|
||
molten lead -- those whose eyes were deprived of their lids --
|
||
those who were tortured and tormented in every way by which pain
|
||
could be inflicted and human nature overcome.
|
||
|
||
And we remember, too, the exultant cry of the church over the
|
||
bodies of her victims: "Their bodies were burned here, but their
|
||
souls are now tortured in hell."
|
||
|
||
We remember that the church, by treachery, bribery, perjury,
|
||
and the commission of every possible crime, got possession and
|
||
control of Christendom, and we know the use that was made of this
|
||
power -- that it was used to brutalize, degrade, stupefy, and
|
||
"sanctify" the children of men. We know also that the vicars of
|
||
Christ were persecutors for opinion's sake -- that they sought to
|
||
destroy the liberty of thought through fear -- that they endeavored
|
||
to make every brain a bastille in which the mind should be a
|
||
convict -- that they endeavored to make every tongue a prisoner,
|
||
watched by a familiar of the Inquisition -- and that they
|
||
threatened punishment here, imprisonment here, burnings here, and,
|
||
in the name of their God, eternal imprisonment and eternal burnings
|
||
hereafter.
|
||
|
||
We know, too, that the Catholic Church was, during all the
|
||
years of its power, the enemy of every science, it preferred magic
|
||
to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to physicians. It thought
|
||
more of astrologers than of astronomers. It hated geologists -- it
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
persecuted the chemist, and imprisoned the naturalist, and opposed
|
||
every discovery calculated to improve the condition of mankind.
|
||
|
||
It is impossible to forget the persecutions of the Cathari,
|
||
the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Huguenots, and of
|
||
every sect that had the courage to think just a little for itself.
|
||
Think of a woman -- the mother of a family -- taken front her
|
||
children and burned, on account of her view as to the three natures
|
||
of Jesus Christ. Think of the Catholic Church, -- an institution
|
||
with a Divine Founder, presided over by the agent of God --
|
||
punishing a woman for giving a cup of cold water to a fellow --
|
||
being who had been anathematized. Think of this church, "fruitful
|
||
in all good things," launching its curse at an honest man -- not
|
||
only cursing him from the crown of his head to the soles of his
|
||
feet with a fiendish particularity, but having at the same time the
|
||
impudence to call on God, and the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ, and
|
||
the Virgin Mary, to join in the curse; and to curse him not only
|
||
here, but forever hereafter -- calling upon all the saints and upon
|
||
all the redeemed to join in a hallelujah of curses, so that earth
|
||
and heaven should reverberate with countless curses launched at a
|
||
human being simply for having expressed an honest thought.
|
||
|
||
This church, so "fruitful in all good things," invented crimes
|
||
that it might punish. This church tried men for a "suspicion of
|
||
heresy" -- imprisoned them for the vice of being suspected --
|
||
stripped them of all they had on earth and allowed them to rot in
|
||
dungeons, because they were guilty of the crime of having been
|
||
suspected. This was a part of the Canon Law.
|
||
|
||
It is too late to talk about the "invincible stability" of the
|
||
Catholic Church.
|
||
|
||
It was not invincible in the seventh, in the eighth, or in the
|
||
ninth centuries. It was not invincible in Germany in Luther's day.
|
||
It was not invincible in the Low Countries. It was not invincible
|
||
in Scotland, or in England. It was not invincible in France, It is
|
||
not invincible in Italy, It is not supreme in any intellectual
|
||
center of the world. It does not triumph in Paris, or Berlin; it is
|
||
not dominant in London, in England; neither is it triumphant in the
|
||
United States. It has not within its fold the philosophers, the
|
||
statesmen, and the thinkers, who are the leaders of the human race.
|
||
|
||
It is claimed that Catholicism "interpenetrates all the
|
||
nations of the civilized world," and that "in some it holds the
|
||
whole nation in its unity.
|
||
|
||
I suppose the Catholic Church is more powerful in Spain than
|
||
in any other nation. The history of this nation demonstrates the
|
||
result of Catholic supremacy, the result of an acknowledgment by a
|
||
people that a certain religion is too sacred to be examined.
|
||
|
||
Without attempting in an article of this character to point
|
||
out the many causes that contributed to the adoption of Catholicism
|
||
by the Spanish people, it is enough to say that Spain, of all
|
||
nations, has been and is the most thoroughly Catholic, and the most
|
||
thoroughly interpenetrated and dominated by the spirit of the
|
||
Church of Rome.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Spain used the sword of the church. In the name of religion it
|
||
endeavored to conquer the Infidel world. It drove from its
|
||
territory the Moors, not because they were bad, not because they
|
||
were idle and dishonest, but because they were, Infidels. It
|
||
expelled the Jews, not because they were ignorant or vicious, but
|
||
because they were unbelievers. It drove out the Moriscoes, and
|
||
deliberately made outcasts of the intelligent, the industrious, the
|
||
honest and the useful, because they were not Catholics. It leaped
|
||
like a wild beast upon the Low Countries, for the destruction of
|
||
Protestantism. It covered the seas with its fleets, to destroy the
|
||
intellectual liberty of man. And not only so -- it established the
|
||
Inquisition within its borders. It imprisoned the honest, it burned
|
||
the noble, and succeeded after many years of devotion to the true
|
||
faith, in destroying the industry, the intelligence, the
|
||
usefulness, the genius, the nobility and the wealth of a nation, It
|
||
became a wreck, a jest of the conquered, and excited the pity of
|
||
its former victims.
|
||
|
||
In this period of degradation, the Catholic Church held "the
|
||
whole nation in its unity."
|
||
|
||
At last Spain began to deviate from the path of the church. It
|
||
made a treaty with an Infidel power. In 1782 it became humble
|
||
enough, and wise enough, to be friends with Turkey. It made
|
||
treaties with Tripoli and Algiers and the Barbary States. It had
|
||
become too poor to ransom the prisoners taken by these powers. It
|
||
began to appreciate the fact that it could neither conquer nor
|
||
convert the world by the sword.
|
||
|
||
Spain has progressed in the arts and sciences, in all that
|
||
tends to enrich and ennoble a nation, in the precise proportion
|
||
that she has lost faith in the Catholic Church. This may be said of
|
||
every other nation in Christendom. Torquemada is dead; Castelar is
|
||
alive. The dungeons of the Inquisition are empty, and a little
|
||
light has penetrated the clouds and mists -- not much, but a
|
||
little. Spain is not yet clothed and in her right mind. A few years
|
||
ago the cholera visited Madrid and other cities. Physicians were
|
||
mobbed. Processions of saints carried the host through the streets
|
||
for the purpoae of staying the plague. The streets were not
|
||
cleaned; the sewers were filled. Filth and faith, old pardners,
|
||
reigned supreme. The church, "eminent for its sanctity," stood in
|
||
the light and cast its shadow on the ignorant and the prostrate.
|
||
The church, in its "inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things,"
|
||
allowed its children to perish through ignorance, and used the
|
||
diseases it had produced as an instrumentality to further enslave
|
||
its votaries and its victims.
|
||
|
||
No one will deny that many of its priests exhibited heroism of
|
||
the highest order in visiting the sick and administering what are
|
||
called the consolations of religion to the dying, and in burying
|
||
the dead, It is necessary neither to deny or disparage the self-
|
||
denial and goodness of these men. But their religion did more than
|
||
all other causes to produce the very evils that called for the
|
||
exhibition of self-denial and heroism. One scientist in control of
|
||
Madrid could have prevented the plague, In such cases, cleanliness
|
||
is far better than "godliness;" science is superior to
|
||
superstition; drainage much better than divinity; therapeutics more
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
excellent than theology. Goodness is not enough -- intelligence is
|
||
necessary. Faith is not sufficient, creeds are helpless, and
|
||
prayers fruitless.
|
||
|
||
It is admitted that the Catholic Church exists in many
|
||
nations; that it is dominated, at least in a great degree, by the
|
||
Bishop of Rome -- that it is international in that sense, and that
|
||
in that sense it has what may be called a "supernational unity."
|
||
The same, however, is true of the Masonic fraternity. It exists in
|
||
many nations, but it is not a national body. It is in the same
|
||
sense extranational, in the same sense international, and has in
|
||
the same sense a supernational unity. So the same may be said of
|
||
other societies. This, however, does not tend to prove that
|
||
anything supernational is supernatural.
|
||
|
||
It is also admitted that in faith, worship, ceremonial,
|
||
discipline and government, the Catholic Church is substantially the
|
||
same wherever it exists. This establishes the unity, but not the
|
||
divinity, of the institution.
|
||
|
||
The church that does not allow investigation, that teaches
|
||
that all doubts are wicked, attains unity through tyranny, that is,
|
||
monotony by repression. Wherever man has had something like
|
||
freedom, differences have appeared, heresies have taken root, and
|
||
the divisions have become permanent -- new sects have been born and
|
||
the Catholic Church has been weakened. The boast of unity is the
|
||
confession of tyranny.
|
||
|
||
It is insisted that the unity of the church substantiates its
|
||
claim to divine origin. This is asserted over and over again, in
|
||
many ways; and yet in the Cardinal's article is found this strange
|
||
mingling of boast and confession: "Was it only by the human power
|
||
of man that the unity, external and internal, which for fourteen
|
||
hundred years had been supreme, was once more restored in the
|
||
Council of Constance, never to be broken again?"
|
||
|
||
By this it is admitted that the internal and external unity of
|
||
the Catholic Church had been broken, and that it required more than
|
||
human power to restore it. Then the boast is made that it will
|
||
never be broken again. Yet it is asserted that the internal and
|
||
external unity of the Catholic Church is the great fact that
|
||
demonstrates its divine origin.
|
||
|
||
Now, if this internal and external unity was broken, and
|
||
remained broken for years, there was an interval during which the
|
||
church had no internal or external unity, and during which the
|
||
evidence of divine origin failed. The unity was broken in spite of
|
||
the Divine Founder. This is admitted by the use of the word
|
||
"again." The unbroken unity of the church is asserted, and upon
|
||
this assertion is based the claim of divine origin; it is then
|
||
admitted that the unity was broken. The argument is then shifted,
|
||
and the claim is made that it required more than human power to
|
||
restore the internal and external unity of the church, and that the
|
||
restoration, not the unity, is proof of the divine origin. Is there
|
||
any contradiction beyond this?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Let us state the case in another way. Let us suppose that a
|
||
man has a sword which he claims was made by God, stating that the
|
||
reason he knows that God made the sword is that it never had been
|
||
and never could be broken. Now, if it was afterwards ascertained
|
||
that it had been broken, and the owner admitted that it had been,
|
||
what would be thought of him if he then took the ground that it had
|
||
been welded, and that the welding was the evidence that it was of
|
||
divine origin?
|
||
|
||
A prophecy is then indulged in, to the effect that the
|
||
internal and external unity of the church can never be broken
|
||
again. It is admitted that it was broken -- it is asserted that it
|
||
was divinely restored -- and then it is declared that it is never
|
||
to be broken again. No reason is given for this prophecy; it must
|
||
be born of the facts already stated. Put in a form to be easily
|
||
understood, it is this:
|
||
|
||
We know that the unity of the church can never be broken,
|
||
because the church is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
We know that it was broken; but this does not weaken the
|
||
argument, because it was restored by God, and it has not been
|
||
broken since.
|
||
|
||
Therefore, it never can be broken again.
|
||
|
||
It is stated that the Catholic Church is immutable, and that
|
||
its immutability establishes its claim to divine origin. Was it
|
||
immutable when its unity, internal and external, was broken? Was it
|
||
precisely the same after its unity was broken that it was before?
|
||
Was it precisely the same after its unity was divinely restored
|
||
that it was while broken? Was it universal while it was without
|
||
unity? Which of the fragments was universal -- which was immutable?
|
||
|
||
The fact that the Catholic Church is obedient to the pope,
|
||
establishes, not the supernatural origin of the church, but the
|
||
mental slavery of its members. It establishes the fact that it is
|
||
a successful organization; that it is cunningly devised; that it
|
||
destroys mental independence, and that whoever absolutely submits
|
||
to its authority loses the jewel of his soul.
|
||
|
||
The fact that Catholics are to a great extent obedient to the
|
||
pope, establishes nothing except the thoroughness of the
|
||
organization.
|
||
|
||
How was the Roman empire formed? By what means did that Great
|
||
Power hold in bondage the then known world? How is it that a
|
||
despotism is established? How is it that the few enslave the many?
|
||
How is it that the nobility live on the labor of peasants? The
|
||
answer is in one word, Organization. The organized few triumph over
|
||
the unorganized many. The few hold the sword and the purse. The
|
||
unorganized are overcome in detail -- terrorized, brutalized,
|
||
robbed, conquered.
|
||
|
||
We must remember that when Christianity was established the
|
||
world was ignorant, credulous and cruel. The gospel with its idea
|
||
of forgiveness -- with its heaven and hell -- was suited to the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
barbarians among whom it was preached. Let it be understood, once
|
||
for all, that Christ had but little to do with Christianity. The
|
||
people became convinced -- being ignorant, stupid and credulous --
|
||
that the church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation
|
||
for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men was
|
||
in this way laid. The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its
|
||
power. It resorted to every possible form of fraud; it perverted
|
||
every good instinct of the human heart; it rewarded every vice; it
|
||
resorted to every artifice that ingenuity could devise, to reach
|
||
the highest ground of power. It tortured the accused to make them
|
||
confess; it tortured witnesses to compel the commission of perjury;
|
||
it tortured children for the purpose of making them convict their
|
||
parents; it compelled men to establish their own innocence; it
|
||
imprisoned without limit; it had the malicious patience to wait; it
|
||
left the accused without trial, and left them in dungeons until
|
||
released by death. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did
|
||
not commit, -- no cruelty that it did not practice, -- no form of
|
||
treachery that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not
|
||
persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human
|
||
rights. It did all that organization, cunning, piety, self-denial,
|
||
heroism, treachery, zeal and brute force could do to enslave the
|
||
children of men. It was the enemy of intelligence, the assassin of
|
||
liberty, and the destroyer of progress, It loaded the noble with
|
||
chains and the infamous with honors. In one hand it carried the
|
||
alms dish, in the other a dagger. It argued with the sword,
|
||
persuaded with poison, and convinced with the fagot.
|
||
|
||
It is impossible to see how the divine origin of a church can
|
||
be established by showing that hundreds of bishops have visited the
|
||
pope.
|
||
|
||
Does the fact that millions of the faithful visit Mecca
|
||
establish the truth of the Koran? Is it a scene for congratulation
|
||
when the bishops of thirty nations kneel before a man? Is it not
|
||
humiliating to know that man is willing to kneel at the feet of
|
||
man? Could a noble man demand, or joyfully receive, the humiliation
|
||
of his fellows?
|
||
|
||
As a rule, arrogance and humility go together. He who in power
|
||
compels his fellow-man to kneel, will himself kneel when weak, The
|
||
tyrant is a cringer in power; a cringer is a tyrant out of power.
|
||
Great men stand face to face. They meet on equal terms. The
|
||
cardinal who kneels in the presence of the pope, wants the bishop
|
||
to kneel in his presence; and the bishop who kneels demands that
|
||
the priest shall kneel to him; and the priest who kneels demands
|
||
that they in lower orders shall kneel; and all, from pope to the
|
||
lowest -- that is to say, from pope to exorcist, from pope to the
|
||
one in charge of the bones of saints -- all demand that the people,
|
||
the laymen, those upon whom they live, shall kneel to them.
|
||
|
||
The man of free and noble spirit will not kneel. Courage has
|
||
no knees.
|
||
|
||
Fear kneels, or falls upon its ashen face.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal insists that the pope is the vicar of Christ, and
|
||
that all popes have been. What is a vicar of Christ? He is a
|
||
substitute in office. He stands in the place, or occupies the
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
position in relation to the church, in relation to the world, that
|
||
Jesus Christ would occupy were he the pope at Rome. In other words,
|
||
he takes Christ's place; so that, according to the doctrine of the
|
||
Catholic Church, Jesus Christ himself is present in the person of
|
||
the pope.
|
||
|
||
We all know that a good man may employ a bad agent. A good
|
||
king might leave his realm and put in his place a tyrant and a
|
||
wretch. The good man and the good king cannot certainly know what
|
||
manner of man the agent is -- what kind of person the vicar is --
|
||
consequently the bad may be chosen. But if the king appointed a bad
|
||
vicar, knowing him to be bad, knowing that he would oppress the
|
||
people, knowing that he would imprison and burn the noble and
|
||
generous, what excuse can be imagined for such a king?
|
||
|
||
Now, if the church is of divine origin, and if each pope is
|
||
the vicar of Jesus Christ, he must have been chosen by Jesus
|
||
Christ; and when he was chosen, Christ must have known exactly what
|
||
his vicar would do. Can we believe that an infinitely wise and good
|
||
Being would choose immoral, dishonest, ignorant, malicious,
|
||
heartless, fiendish, and inhuman vicars?
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal admits that "the history of Christianity is the
|
||
history of the church, and that the history of the church is the
|
||
history of the Pontiffs," and he then declares that "the greatest
|
||
statesmen and rulers that the world has ever seen are the Popes of
|
||
Rome."
|
||
|
||
Let me call attention to a few passages in Draper's "History
|
||
of the Intellectual Development of Europe."
|
||
|
||
"Constantine was one of the vicars of Christ. Afterwards,
|
||
Stephen IV. was chosen. The eyes of Constantine were then put out
|
||
by Stephen, acting in Christ's place. The tongue of the Bishop
|
||
Theodorus was amputated by the man who had been substituted for
|
||
God. This bishop was left in a dungeon to perish of thirst. Pope
|
||
Leo III. was seized in the street and forced into a church, where
|
||
the nephews of Pope Adrian attempted to put out his eyes and cut
|
||
off his tongue. His successor, Stephen V., was driven ignominiously
|
||
from Rome. His successor, Paschal I., was accused of blinding and
|
||
murdering two ecclesiastics in the Lateran Palace. John VIII.,
|
||
unable to resist the Mohammedans, was compelled to pay them
|
||
tribute.
|
||
|
||
"At this time, the Bishop of Naples was in secret alliance
|
||
with the Mohammedans, and they divided with this Catholic bishop
|
||
the plunder they collected from other Catholics. This bishop was
|
||
excommunicated by the pope; afterwards he gave him absolution
|
||
because he betrayed the chief Mohammedans, and assassinated others.
|
||
There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the pope, and some
|
||
of the treasures of the church were seised, and the gate of St.
|
||
Pancrazia was opened with false keys to admit the Saracens.
|
||
Formosus, who had been engaged in these transactions, who had been
|
||
excommunicated as a conspirator for the murder of Pope John, was
|
||
himself elected pope in 891. Boniface VI. was his successor. He had
|
||
been deposed from the diaconate and from the priesthood for his
|
||
immoral and lewd life. Stephen VII. was the next pope, and he had
|
||
the dead body of Formosus taken from the grave, clothed in papal
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
habiliments, propped up in a chair and tried before a Council. The
|
||
corpse was found guilty, three fingers were cut off and the body
|
||
cast into the Tiber. Afterwards Stephen VII., this Vicar of Christ,
|
||
was thrown into prison and strangled.
|
||
|
||
"From 896 to 900, five popes were consecrated. Leo V., in less
|
||
than two months after he became pope, was cast into prison by
|
||
Christopher, one of his chaplains. This Christopher usurped his
|
||
place, and in a little while was expelled from Rome by Sergius
|
||
III., who became pope in 905. This pope lived in criminal
|
||
intercourse with the celebrated Theodora, who with her daughters
|
||
Marozia and Theodota, both prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary
|
||
control over him. The love of Theodora was also shared by John X.
|
||
She gave him the Archbishopric of Revenna, and made him pope in
|
||
915. The daughter of Theodora overthrew this pope. She surprised
|
||
him in the Lateran Palace. His brother, Peter, was killed; the pope
|
||
was thrown into prison, where he was afterward murdered. Afterward,
|
||
this Marozia, daughter of Theodora, made her own son pope, John XI.
|
||
Many affirmed that Pope Sergius was his father, but his mother
|
||
inclined to attribute him to her husband Alberic, whose brother
|
||
Guido she afterward married. Another of her sons, Alberic, jealous
|
||
of his brother John, the pope, cast him and their mother into
|
||
prison. Alberic's son was then elected pope as John XII.
|
||
|
||
"John was nineteen years old when he became the vicar of
|
||
Christ. His reign was characterized by the most shocking
|
||
immoralities, so that the Emperor Otho I. was compelled by the
|
||
German clergy to interfere. He was tried. It appeared that John had
|
||
received bribes for the consecration of bishops; that he had
|
||
ordained one who was only ten years old; that he was charged with
|
||
incest, and with so many adulteries that the Lateran Palace had
|
||
become a brothel. He put out the eyes of one ecclesiastic; he
|
||
maimed another -- both dying in consequence of their injuries. He
|
||
was given to drunkenness and to gambling. He was deposed at last,
|
||
and Leo VII. elected in his stead, Subsequently he got the upper
|
||
hand. He seized his antagonists; he cut off the hand of one, the
|
||
nose, the finger, and the tongue of others. His life was eventually
|
||
brought to an end by the vengeance of a man whose wife he had
|
||
seduced."
|
||
|
||
And yet, I admit that the most infamous popes, the most
|
||
heartless and fiendish bishops, friars, and priests were models of
|
||
mercy, charity, and justice when compared with the orthodox God --
|
||
with the God they worshiped. These popes, these bishops, these
|
||
priests could persecute only for a few years -- they could burn
|
||
only for a few moments -- but their God threatened to imprison and
|
||
burn forever; and their God is as much worse than they were, as
|
||
hell is worse than the Inquisition.
|
||
|
||
"John XIII. was strangled in prison. Boniface VII. imprisoned
|
||
Benedict VII., and starved him to death. John XIV. was secretly put
|
||
to death in the dungeons of the castle of St. Angelo. The corpse of
|
||
Boniface was dragged by the populace through the streets."
|
||
|
||
It must be remembered that the popes were assassinated by
|
||
Catholics -- murdered by the faithful -- that one vicar of Christ
|
||
strangled another vicar of Christ, and that these men were "the
|
||
greatest rulers and the greatest statesmen of the earth,"
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
"Pope John XVI. was seized, his eyes put out, his nose cut
|
||
off, his tongue torn from his mouth, and he was sent through the
|
||
streets mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail. Benedict IX.,
|
||
a boy of less than twelve years of age, was raised to the apostolic
|
||
throne. One of his successors, Victor III., declared that the life
|
||
of Benedict was so shameful, so foul, so execrable, that he
|
||
shuddered to describe it. He ruled like a captain of banditti. The
|
||
people, unable to bear longer his adulteries, his homicides and his
|
||
abominations, rose against him, and in despair of maintaining his
|
||
position, he put up the papacy to auction, and it was bought by a
|
||
presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI., in the year of grace
|
||
1045. Well may we ask, Were these the vicegerents of God upon earth
|
||
-- these, who had truly reached that goal beyond which the last
|
||
effort of human wickedness cannot pass?"
|
||
|
||
It may be sufficient to say that there is no crime that man
|
||
can commit that has not been committed by the vicars of Christ.
|
||
They have inflicted every possible torture, violated every natural
|
||
right. Greater monsters the human race has not produced.
|
||
|
||
Among the "some two hundred and fifty-eight" Vicars of Christ
|
||
there were probably some good men. This would have happened even if
|
||
the intention had been to get all bad men, for the reason that man
|
||
reaches perfection neither in good nor in evil; but if they were
|
||
selected by Christ himself, if they were selected by a church with
|
||
a divine origin and under divine guidance, then there is no way to
|
||
account for the selection of a bad one. If one hypocrite was duly
|
||
elected pope -- one murderer, one strangler, one starver -- this
|
||
demonstrates that all the popes were selected by men, and by men
|
||
only, and that the claim of divine guidance is born of zeal and
|
||
uttered without knowledge.
|
||
|
||
But who were the vicars of Christ? How many have there been?
|
||
Cardinal Manning himself does not know. He is not sure. He says:
|
||
"Starting from St. Peter to Leo XIII., there have been some two
|
||
hundred and fifty-eight Pontiffs claiming to be recognized by the
|
||
whole Catholic unity as successors of St. Peter and Vicars of Jesus
|
||
Christ." Why did he use the word "some"? Why "claiming"? Does he
|
||
not positively know? Is it possible that the present Vicar of
|
||
Christ is not certain as to the number of his predecessors? Is he
|
||
infallible in faith and fallible in fact?
|
||
|
||
Robert G, Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON?
|
||
|
||
A Reply to Cardinal Manning.
|
||
|
||
PART II
|
||
|
||
"If we live thus timely, --
|
||
To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet, --
|
||
Farewell nobility."
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
No one will deny that "the pope speaks to many people in many
|
||
nations; that he treats with empires and governments," and that
|
||
"neither from Canterbury nor from Constantinople such a voice goes
|
||
forth."
|
||
|
||
How does the pope speak? What does he say? He speaks against
|
||
the liberty of man -- against the progress of the human race. He
|
||
speaks to calumniate thinkers, and to warn the faithful against the
|
||
discoveries of science. He speaks to the destruction of
|
||
civilization.
|
||
|
||
Who listens? Do astronomers, geologists and scientists put the
|
||
hand to the ear fearing that an accent may be lost? Does France
|
||
listen? Does Italy hear? Is not the church weakest at its center?
|
||
Do those who have raised Italy from the dead, and placed her again
|
||
among the great nations, pay attention? Does Great Britain care for
|
||
this voice -- this moan, this groan -- of the Middle Ages? Do the
|
||
words of Leo XIII, impress the intelligence of the Great Republic?
|
||
Can anything be more absurd than for the vicar of Christ to attack
|
||
a demonstration of science with a passage of Scripture, or a
|
||
quotation from one of the Fathers"?
|
||
|
||
Compare the popes with the kings and queens of England.
|
||
Infinite wisdom had but little to do with the selection of these
|
||
monarchs, and yet they were far better than any equal number of
|
||
consecutive popes. This is faint praise, even for kings and queens,
|
||
but it shows that chance succeeded in getting better rulers for
|
||
England than "Infinite Wisdom" did for the Church of Rome. Compare
|
||
the popes with the presidents of the Republic elected by the
|
||
people. If Adams had murdered Washington, and Jefferson had
|
||
imprisoned Adams, and if Madison had cut out Jefferson's tongue,
|
||
and Monroe had assassinated Madison, and John Quincy Adams had
|
||
poisoned Monroe, and General Jackson had hung Adams and his
|
||
Cabinet, we might say that presidents had been as virtuous as
|
||
popes. But if this had happened, the verdict of the world would be
|
||
that the people are not capable of selecting their presidents.
|
||
|
||
But this voice from Rome is growing feebler day by day; so
|
||
feeble that the Cardinal admits that the vicar of God, and the
|
||
supernatural church, "are being tormented by Falck laws, by Mancini
|
||
laws and by Crispi laws." In other words, this representative of
|
||
God, this substitute of Christ, this church of divine origin, this
|
||
supernatural institution -- pervaded by the Holy Ghost -- are being
|
||
"tormented" by three politicians. Is it possible that this
|
||
patriotic trinity is more powerful than the other?
|
||
|
||
It is claimed that if the Catholic Church "be only a human
|
||
system, built up by the intellect, will and energy of men, the
|
||
adversaries must prove it -- that the burden is upon them." As a
|
||
general thing, institutions are natural. If this church is
|
||
supernatural, it is the one exception. The affirmative is with
|
||
those who claim that it is of divine origin. So far as we know, all
|
||
governments and all creeds are the work of man. No one believes
|
||
that Rome was a supernatural production, and yet its beginnings
|
||
were as small as those of the Catholic Church. Commencing in
|
||
weakness, Rome grew, and fought, and conquered, until it was
|
||
believed that the sky bent above a subjugated world. And yet all
|
||
was natural. For every effect there was an efficient cause.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
The Catholic asserts that all other religions have been
|
||
produced by man -- that Brahminism and Buddhism, the religion of
|
||
Isis and Osiris, the marvelous mythologies of Greece and Rome, were
|
||
the work of the human mind. From these religions Catholicism was
|
||
borrowed. Long before Catholicism was born, it was believed that
|
||
women had borne children whose fathers were gods. The Trinity was
|
||
promulgated in Egypt centuries before the birth of Moses. Celibacy
|
||
was taught by the ancient Nazarenes and Essenes, by the priests of
|
||
Egypt and India, by mendicant monks, and by the piously insane of
|
||
many countries long before the apostles lived. The Chinese tell us
|
||
that "when there were but one man and one woman upon the earth, the
|
||
woman refused to sacrifice her virginity even to people the globe;
|
||
and the gods, honoring her purity, granted that she should conceive
|
||
beneath the gaze of her lover's eyes, and a virgin mother became
|
||
the parent of humanity,"
|
||
|
||
The Founders of many religions have insisted that it was the
|
||
duty of man to renounce the pleasures of sense, and millions before
|
||
our era took the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and most
|
||
cheerfully lived upon the labor of others.
|
||
|
||
The sacraments of baptism and confirmation are far older than
|
||
the Church of Rome. The Eucharist is pagan. Long before popes began
|
||
to murder each other, pagans ate cakes -- the flesh of Ceres, and
|
||
drank wine -- the blood of Bacchus. Holy water flowed in the Ganges
|
||
and Nile, priests interceded for the people, and anointed the
|
||
dying.
|
||
|
||
It will not do to say that every successful religion that has
|
||
taught unnatural doctrines, unnatural practices, must of necessity
|
||
have been of divine origin. In most religions there has been a
|
||
strange mingling of the good and bad, of the merciful and cruel, of
|
||
the loving and malicious. Buddhism taught the universal brotherhood
|
||
of man, insisted on the development of the mind, and this religion
|
||
was propagated not by the sword, but by preaching, by persuasion,
|
||
and by kindness -- yet in many things it was contrary to the human
|
||
will, contrary to the human passions, and contrary to good sense.
|
||
Buddhism succeeded. Can we, for this reason, say that it is a
|
||
supernatural religion? Is the unnatural the supernatural?
|
||
|
||
It is insisted that, while other churches have changed, the
|
||
Catholic Church alone has remained the same, and that this fact
|
||
demonstrates its divine origin.
|
||
|
||
Has the creed of Buddhism changed in three thousand years? Is
|
||
intellectual stagnation a demonstration of divine origin? When
|
||
anything refuses to grow, are we certain that the seed was planted
|
||
by God? If the Catholic Church is the same to-day that it has been
|
||
for many centuries, this proves that there has been no intellectual
|
||
development. If men do not differ upon religious subjects, it is
|
||
because they do not think.
|
||
|
||
Differentiation is the law of growth, of progress. Every
|
||
church must gain or lose: it cannot remain the same; it must decay
|
||
or grow. The fact that the Catholic Church has not grown -- that it
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
has been petrified from the first -- does not establish divine
|
||
origin; it simply establishes the fact that it retards the progress
|
||
of man. Everything in nature changes -- every atom is in motion --
|
||
every star moves. Nations, institutions and individuals have youth,
|
||
manhood, old age, death. This is and will be true of the Catholic
|
||
Church. It was once weak -- it grew strong -- it reached its climax
|
||
of power -- it began to decay -- it never can rise again. lt is
|
||
confronted by the dawn of Science. In the presence of the
|
||
nineteenth century it cowers.
|
||
|
||
It is not true that "All natural causes run to
|
||
disintegration."
|
||
|
||
Natural causes run to integration as well as to
|
||
disintegration. All growth is integration, and all growth is
|
||
natural. All decay is disintegration, and all decay is natural.
|
||
Nature builds and nature destroys. When the acorn grows -- when the
|
||
sunlight and rain fall upon it and the oak rises -- so far as the
|
||
oak is concerned "all natural causes" do not "run to
|
||
disintegration." But there comes a time when the oak has reached
|
||
its limit, and then the forces of nature run towards
|
||
disintegration, and finally the old oak falls. But if the Cardinal
|
||
is right -- if "all natural causes run to disintegration," then
|
||
every success must have been of divine origin, and nothing is
|
||
natural but destruction. This is Catholic science: "All natural
|
||
causes run to disintegration." What do these causes find to
|
||
disintegrate? Nothing that is natural. The fact that the thing is
|
||
not disintegrated shows that it was and is of supernatural origin.
|
||
According to the Cardinal, the only business of nature is to
|
||
disintegrate the supernatural. To prevent this, the supernatural
|
||
needs the protection of the Infinite. According to this doctrine,
|
||
if anything lives and grows, it does so in spite of nature. Growth,
|
||
then, is not in accordance with, but in opposition to nature. Every
|
||
plant is supernatural -- it defeats the disintegrating influences
|
||
of rain and light. The generalization of the Cardinal is half the
|
||
truth. It would be equally true to say: All natural causes run to
|
||
integration. But the whole truth is that growth and decay are
|
||
equal.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal asserts that "Christendom was created by the
|
||
world-wide church as we see it before our eyes at this day.
|
||
Philosophers and statesmen believe it to be the work of their own
|
||
hands; they did not make it, but they have for three hundred years
|
||
been unmaking it by reformations and revolutions.
|
||
|
||
The meaning of this is that Christendom was far better three
|
||
hundred years ago than now; that during these three centuries
|
||
Christendom has been going toward barbarism. It means that the
|
||
supernatural church of God has been a failure for three hundred
|
||
years; that it has been unable to withstand the attacks of
|
||
philosophers and statesmen, and that it has been helpless in the
|
||
midst of "reformations and revolutions."
|
||
|
||
What was the condition of the world three hundred years ago,
|
||
the period, according to the Cardinal, in which the church reached
|
||
the height of its influence, and since which it has been unable to
|
||
withstand the rising tide of reformation and the whirlwind of
|
||
evolution?
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
In that blessed time, Philip II. was king of Spain -- he with
|
||
the cramped head and the monstrous jaw. Heretics were hunted like
|
||
wild and poisonous beasts; the Inquisition was firmly established,
|
||
and priests were busy with rack and fire. With a zeal born of the
|
||
hatred of man and the love of God, the church, with every
|
||
instrument of torture, touched every nerve in the human body.
|
||
|
||
In those happy days, the Duke of Alva was devastating the
|
||
homes of Holland; heretics were buried alive -- their tongues were
|
||
torn from their mouths, their lids from their eyes; the Armada was
|
||
on the sea for the destruction of the heretics of England, and the
|
||
Moriscoes -- a million and a half of industrious people -- were
|
||
being driven by sword and flame from their homes. The Jews had been
|
||
expelled from Spain. This Catholic country had succeeded in driving
|
||
intelligence and industry from its territory; and this had been
|
||
done with a cruelty, with a ferocity, unequaled in the annals of
|
||
crime. Nothing was left but ignorance, bigotry, intolerance,
|
||
credulity, the Inquisition, the seven sacraments and the seven
|
||
deadly sins. And yet a Cardinal of the nineteenth century, living
|
||
in the land of Shakespeare, regrets the change that has been
|
||
wrought by the intellectual efforts, by the discoveries, by the
|
||
inventions and heroism of three hundred years.
|
||
|
||
Three hundred years ago, Charles IX., in France, son of
|
||
Catherine de Medici, in the year of grace, 1572 -- after nearly
|
||
sixteen centuries of Catholic Christianity -- after hundreds of
|
||
vicars of Christ had sat in St. Peter's chair -- after the natural
|
||
passions of man had been "softened" by the creed of Rome -- came
|
||
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the result of a conspiracy between
|
||
the Vicar of Christ, Philip II., Charles IX., and his fiendish
|
||
mother. Let the Cardinal read the account of this massacre once
|
||
more, and, after reading it, imagine that he sees the gashed and
|
||
mutilated bodies of thousands of men and women, and then let him
|
||
say that he regrets the revolutions and reformations of three
|
||
hundred years.
|
||
|
||
About three hundred years ago Clement VIII., Vicar of Christ,
|
||
acting in God's place, substitute of the Infinite, persecuted
|
||
Giordano Bruno even unto death. This great, this sublime man, was
|
||
tried for heresy. He had ventured to assert the rotary motion of
|
||
the earth; he had hazarded the conjecture that there were in the
|
||
fields of infinite space worlds larger and more glorious than ours.
|
||
For these low and groveling thoughts, for this contradiction of the
|
||
word and vicar of God, this man was imprisoned for many years. But
|
||
his noble spirit was not broken, and finally, in the year 1600, by
|
||
the orders of the infamous vicar, he was chained to the stake.
|
||
Priests believing in the doctrine of universal forgiveness --
|
||
priests who when smitten upon one cheek turned the other -- carried
|
||
with a kind of ferocious joy fagots to the feet of this
|
||
incomparable man. These disciples of "Our Lord" were made joyous as
|
||
the flames, like serpents, climbed around the body of Bruno. In a
|
||
few moments the brave thinker was dead, and the priests who had
|
||
burned him fell upon their knees and asked the infinite God to
|
||
continue the blessed work forever in hell.
|
||
|
||
There are two things that cannot exist in the same universe --
|
||
an infinite God and a martyr.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Does the Cardinal regret that kings and emperors are not now
|
||
engaged in the extermination of Protestants? Does he regret that
|
||
dungeons of the Inquisition are no longer crowded with the best and
|
||
bravest? Does he long for the fires of the auto da fe?
|
||
|
||
In coming to a conclusion as to the origin of the Catholic
|
||
Church -- in determining the truth of the claim of infallibility --
|
||
we are not restricted to the physical achievements of that church,
|
||
or to the history of its propagation, or to the rapidity of its
|
||
growth.
|
||
|
||
This church has a creed; and if this church is of divine
|
||
origin -- if its head is the vicar of Christ, and, as such,
|
||
infallible in matters of faith and morals, this creed must be true.
|
||
Let us start with the supposition that God exists, and that he is
|
||
infinitely wise, powerful and good -- and this is only a
|
||
supposition. Now, if the creed is foolish, absurd and cruel, it
|
||
cannot be of divine origin. We find in this creed the following:
|
||
"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he
|
||
hold the Catholic faith."
|
||
|
||
It is not necessary, before all things, that he be good,
|
||
honest, merciful, charitable and just. Creed is more important than
|
||
conduct. The most important of all things is, that he hold the
|
||
Catholic faith. There were thousands of years during which it was
|
||
not necessary to hold that faith, because that faith did not exist;
|
||
and yet during that time the virtues were just as important as now,
|
||
just as important as they ever can be. Millions of the noblest of
|
||
the human race never heard of this creed. Millions of the bravest
|
||
and best have heard of it, examined, and rejected it. Millions of
|
||
the most infamous have believed it, and because of their belief, or
|
||
notwithstanding their belief, have murdered millions of their
|
||
fellows. We know that men can be, have been, and are just as wicked
|
||
with it as without it. We know that it is not necessary to believe
|
||
it to be good, loving, tender, noble and self-denying. We admit
|
||
that millions who have believed it have also been self-denying and
|
||
heroic, and that millions, by such belief, were not prevented from
|
||
torturing and destroying the helpless.
|
||
|
||
Now, if all who believed it were good, and all who rejected it
|
||
were bad, then there might be some propriety in saying that
|
||
"whoever will he saved, before all things it is necessary that he
|
||
hold the Catholic faith." But as the experience of mankind is
|
||
otherwise, the declaration becomes absurd, ignorant; and cruel.
|
||
|
||
There is stili another clause:
|
||
|
||
"Which faith, except every one do keep entire and inviolate,
|
||
without doubt, he shall everlastingly perish."
|
||
|
||
We now have both sides of this wonderful truth: The believer
|
||
will be saved, the unbeliever will be lost. We know that faith is
|
||
not the child or servant of the will. We know that belief is a
|
||
conclusion based upon what the mind supposes to be true. We know
|
||
that it is not an act of the will. Nothing can be more absurd than
|
||
to save a man because he is not intelligent enough to accept the
|
||
truth, and nothing can be more infamous than to damn a man because
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
he is intelligent enough to reject the false. It resolves itself
|
||
into a question of intelligence. If the creed is true, then a man
|
||
rejects it because he lacks intelligence. Is this a crime for which
|
||
a man should everlastingly perish? If the creed is false, then a
|
||
man accepts it because he lacks intelligence. In both cases the
|
||
crime is exactly the same. If a man is to be damned for rejecting
|
||
the truth, certainly he should not be saved for accepting the
|
||
false. This one clause demonstrates that a being of infinite wisdom
|
||
and goodness did not write it. It also demonstrates that it was the
|
||
work of men who had neither wisdom nor a sense of justice.
|
||
|
||
What is this Catholic faith that must be held? It is this:
|
||
"That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither
|
||
confounding the persons nor dividing the substance." Why should an
|
||
Infinite Being demand worship? Why should one God wish to be
|
||
worshiped as three? Why should three Gods wished to be worshiped as
|
||
one? Why should we pray to one God and think of three, or pray to
|
||
three Gods and think of one? Can this increase the happiness of the
|
||
one or of the three? Is it possible to think of one as three, or of
|
||
three as one? If you think of three as one, can you think of one as
|
||
none, or of none as one? When you think of three as one, what do
|
||
you do with the other two? You must not "confound the persons" --
|
||
they must be kept separate. When you think of one as three, how do
|
||
you get the other two? You must not "divide the substance." Is it
|
||
possible to write greater contradictions than these?
|
||
|
||
This creed demonstrates the human origin of the Catholic
|
||
Church. Nothing could be more unjust than to punish man for
|
||
unbelief -- for the expression of honest thought -- for having been
|
||
guided by his reason -- for having acted in accordance with his
|
||
best judgment.
|
||
|
||
Another claim is made, to the effect "that the Catholic Church
|
||
has filled the world with the true knowledge of the one true God,
|
||
and that it has destroyed all idols by light instead of by fire."
|
||
|
||
The Catholic Church described the true God as a being who
|
||
would inflict eternal pain on his weak and erring children;
|
||
described him as a fickle, quick-tempered, unreasonable deity, whom
|
||
honesty enraged, and whom flattery governed; one who loved to see
|
||
fear upon its knees. ignorance with closed eyes and open mouth; one
|
||
who delighted in useless self-denial, who loved to hear the sighs
|
||
and sobs of suffering nuns, as they lay prostrate on dungeon
|
||
floors; one who was delighted when the husband deserted his family
|
||
and lived alone in some cave in the far wilderness, tormented by
|
||
dreams and driven to insanity by prayer and penance, by fasting and
|
||
faith.
|
||
|
||
According to the Catholic Church, the true God enjoyed the
|
||
agonies of heretics. He loved the smell of their burning flesh; he
|
||
applauded with wide palms when philosophers were flayed alive, and
|
||
to him the auto da fe was a divine comedy. The shrieks of wives,
|
||
the cries of babes when fathers were being burned, gave contrast,
|
||
heightened the effect and filled his cup with joy. This true God
|
||
did not know the shape of the earth he had made, and had forgotten
|
||
the orbits of the stars. "The stream of light which descended from
|
||
the beginning "was propagated by fagot to fagot, until Christendom
|
||
was filled with the devouring fires of faith.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
It may also be said that the Catholic Church filled the world
|
||
with the true knowledge of the one true Devil. It filled the air
|
||
with malicious phantoms, crowded innocent sleep with leering
|
||
fiends, and gave the world to the domination of witches and
|
||
wizards, spirits and spooks, goblins and ghosts, and butchered and
|
||
burned thousands for the commission of impossible crimes.
|
||
|
||
It is contended that: "In this true knowledge of the Divine
|
||
Nature was revealed to man their own relation to a Creator as sons
|
||
to a Father."
|
||
|
||
This tender relation was revealed by the Catholics to the
|
||
Pagans, the Arians, the Cathari, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the
|
||
heretics, the Jews, the Moriscoes, the Protestants -- to the
|
||
natives of the West Indies, of Mexico, of Peru -- to philosophers,
|
||
patriots and thinkers. All these victims were taught to regard the
|
||
true God as a loving father, and this lesson was taught with every
|
||
instrument of torture -- with brandings and burnings, with flayings
|
||
and flames. The world was filled with cruelty and credulity,
|
||
ignorance and intolerance, and the soil in which all these horrors
|
||
grew was the true knowledge of the one true God, and the true
|
||
knowledge of the one true Devil. And yet, we are compelled to say,
|
||
that the one true Devil described by the Catholic Church was not as
|
||
malevolent as the one true God.
|
||
|
||
Is it true that the Catholic Church overthrew idolatry? What
|
||
is idolatry? What shall we say of the worship of popes -- of the
|
||
doctrine of the Real Presence, of divine honors paid to saints, of
|
||
sacred vestments, of holy water, of consecrated cups and plates, of
|
||
images and relics, of amulets and charms?
|
||
|
||
The Catholic Church filled the world with the spirit of
|
||
idolatry. It abandoned the idea of continuity in nature, it denied
|
||
the integrity of cause and effect. The government of the world was
|
||
the composite result of the caprice of God, the malice of Satan,
|
||
the prayers of the faithful -- softened, it may be, by the charity
|
||
of Chance. Yet the Cardinal asserts, without the preface of a
|
||
smile, that "Demonology was overthrown by the church, with the
|
||
assistance of forces that were above nature;" and in the same
|
||
breath gives birth to this enlightened statement: "Beelzebub is not
|
||
divided against himself" Is a belief in Beelzebub a belief in
|
||
demonology? Has the Cardinal forgotten the Council of Nice, held in
|
||
the year of grace 787 that declared the worship of images to be
|
||
lawful? Did that infallible Council, under the guidance of the Holy
|
||
Ghost, destroy idolatry?
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal takes the ground that marriage is a sacrament,
|
||
and therefore indissoluble, and he also insists that celibacy is
|
||
far better than marriage, -- holier than a sacrament, -- that
|
||
marriage is not the highest state, but that "the state of virginity
|
||
unto death is the highest condition of man and woman."
|
||
|
||
The highest ideal of a family is where all are equal -- where
|
||
love has superseded authority -- where each seeks the good of all,
|
||
and where none obey -- where, no religion can sunder hearts, and
|
||
with which no church can interfere.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
The real marriage is based on mutual affection -- the ceremony
|
||
is but the outward evidence of the inward flame. To this contract
|
||
there are but two parties. The church is an impudent intruder.
|
||
Marriage is made public to the end that the real contract may be
|
||
known, so that the world can see that the parties have been
|
||
actuated by the highest and holiest motives that find expression in
|
||
the acts of human beings. The man and woman are not joined together
|
||
by God, or by the church, or by the state. The church and state may
|
||
prescribe certain ceremonies, certain formalities -- but all these
|
||
are only evidence of the existence of a sacred fact in the hearts
|
||
of the wedded. The indissolubility of marriage is a dogma that has
|
||
filled the lives of millions with agony and tears. It has given a
|
||
perpetual excuse for vice and immorality. Fear has borne children
|
||
begotten by brutality. Countless women have endured the insults,
|
||
indignities and cruelties of fiendish husbands, because they
|
||
thought that it was the will of God. The contract of marriage is
|
||
the most important that human beings can make; but no contract can
|
||
be so important as to release one of the parties from the
|
||
obligation of performance; and no contract, whether made between
|
||
man and woman, or between them and God, alter a failure of
|
||
consideration caused by the willful act of the man or woman, can
|
||
hold and bind the innocent and honest.
|
||
|
||
Do the believers in indissoluble marriage treat their wives
|
||
better than others? A little while ago, a woman said to a man who
|
||
had raised his hand to strike her: "Do not touch me; you have no
|
||
right to beat me; I am not your wife."
|
||
|
||
About a year ago a husband, whom God in his infinite wisdom
|
||
had joined to a loving and patient woman in the indissoluble
|
||
sacrament of marriage, becoming enraged, seized the helpless wife
|
||
and tore out one of her eyes. She forgave him. A few weeks ago he
|
||
deliberately repeated this frightful crime, leaving his victim
|
||
totally blind. Would it not have been better if man, before the
|
||
poor woman was blinded, had put asunder whom God had joined
|
||
together? Thousands of husbands, who insist that marriage is
|
||
indissoluble, are the beaters of wives.
|
||
|
||
The law of the church has created neither the purity nor the
|
||
peace of domestic life. Back of all churches is human affection.
|
||
Back of all theologies is the love of the human heart. Back of all
|
||
your priests and creeds is the adoration of the one woman by the
|
||
one man, and of the one man by the one woman. Back of your faith is
|
||
the fireside; back of your folly is the family; and back of all
|
||
your holy mistakes and your sacred absurdities is the love of
|
||
husband and wife, of parent and child.
|
||
|
||
It is not true that neither the Greek nor the Roman world had
|
||
any true conception of a home. The splendid story of Ulysses and
|
||
Penelope, the parting of Hector and Andromache, demonstrate that a
|
||
true conception of home existed among the Greeks. Before the
|
||
establishment of Christianity, the Roman matron commanded the
|
||
admiration of the then known world. She was free and noble. The
|
||
church degraded woman -- made her the property of the husband, and
|
||
trampled her beneath its brutal feet. The "fathers" denounced woman
|
||
as a perpetual temptation, as the cause of all evil. The church
|
||
worshiped a God who had upheld polygamy, and had pronounced his
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
curse on woman, and had declared that she should be the serf of the
|
||
husband. This church followed the teachings of St. Paul. It taught
|
||
the uncleanness of marriage, and insisted that all children were
|
||
conceived in sin. This church pretended to have been founded by one
|
||
who offered a reward in this world, and eternal joy in the next, to
|
||
husbands who would forsake their wives and children and follow him.
|
||
Did this tend to the elevation of woman? Did this detestable
|
||
doctrine "create the purity and peace of domestic life"? Is it true
|
||
that a monk is purer than a good and noble father? -- that a nun is
|
||
holier than a loving mother?
|
||
|
||
Is there anything deeper and stronger than a mother's love? Is
|
||
there anything purer, holier than a mother holding her dimpled babe
|
||
against her billowed breast?
|
||
|
||
The good man is useful, the best man is the most useful. Those
|
||
who fill the nights with barren prayers and holy hunger, torture
|
||
themselves for their own good and not for the benefit of others.
|
||
They are earning eternal glory for themselves -- they do not fast
|
||
for their fellow-men -- their selfishness is only equalled by their
|
||
foolishness. Compare the monk in his selfish cell, counting beads
|
||
and saying prayers for the purpose of saving his barren soul, with
|
||
a husband and father sitting by his fireside with wife and
|
||
children. Compare the nun with the mother and her babe.
|
||
|
||
Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity. It tries to put a stain
|
||
upon motherhood, upon marriage, upon love -- that is to say, upon
|
||
all that is holiest in the human heart. Take love from the world,
|
||
and there is nothing left worth living for. The church has treated
|
||
this great, this sublime, this unspeakably holy passion, as though
|
||
it polluted the heart. They have placed the love of God above the
|
||
love of woman, above the love of man. Human love is generous and
|
||
noble. The love of God is selfish, because man does not love God
|
||
for God's sake, but for his own.
|
||
|
||
Yet the Cardinal asserts "that the change wrought by
|
||
Christianity in the social, political and international relations
|
||
of the world" -- "that the root of this ethical charge, private and
|
||
public, is the Christian home." A moment afterward, this prelate
|
||
insists that celibacy is far better than marriage. If the world
|
||
could be induced to live in accordance with the "highest state,"
|
||
this generation would be the last. Why were men and women created?
|
||
Why did not the Catholic God commence with the sinless and sexless?
|
||
The Cardinal ought to take the ground that to talk well is good,
|
||
but that to be dumb is the highest condition; that hearing is a
|
||
pleasure, but that deafness is ecstasy; and that to think, to
|
||
reason, is very well, but that to be a Catholic is far better.
|
||
|
||
Why should we desire the destruction of human passions? Take
|
||
passions from human beings and what is left? The great object
|
||
should be not to destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the
|
||
intellect, To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of
|
||
intemperance to destroy passion is another. The reasonable
|
||
gratification of passion under the domination of the intellect is
|
||
true wisdom and perfect virtue.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
The goodness, the sympathy, the self-denial of the nun, of the
|
||
monk, all come from the mother-instinct, the father-instinct -- all
|
||
were produced by human affection, by the love of man for woman, of
|
||
woman for man. Love is a transfiguration. It ennobles, purifies and
|
||
glorifies. In true marriage two hearts burst into flower. Two lives
|
||
unite. They melt in music. Every moment is a melody. Love is a
|
||
revelation, a creation. From love the world borrows its beauty and
|
||
the heavens their glory. Justice, self-denial, charity and pity are
|
||
the children of love. Lover, wife, mother, husband, father, child,
|
||
home -- these words shed light -- they are the gems of human
|
||
speech. Without love all glory fades, the noble falls from life,
|
||
art dies, music loses meaning and becomes mere motions of the air,
|
||
and virtue ceases to exist.
|
||
|
||
It is asserted that this life of celibacy is above and against
|
||
the tendencies of human nature; and the Cardinal then asks: "Who
|
||
will ascribe this to natural causes, and, if so, why did it not
|
||
appear in the first four thousand years?
|
||
|
||
"If there is in a system of religion a doctrine, a dogma, or
|
||
a practice, against the tendencies of human nature" -- if this
|
||
religion succeeds, then it is claimed by the Cardinal that such
|
||
religion must be of divine origin. Is it "against the tendencies of
|
||
human nature" for a mother to throw her child into the Ganges to
|
||
please a supposed God? Yet a religion that insisted on that
|
||
sacrifice succeeded, and has, to-day, more believers than the
|
||
Catholic Church can boast.
|
||
|
||
Religions, like nations and individuals, have always gone
|
||
along the line of least resistance. Nothing has "ascended the
|
||
stream of human license by a power mightier than nature." There is
|
||
no such power. There never was, there never can be, a miracle. We
|
||
know that man is a conditioned being. We know that he is affected
|
||
by a change of conditions. If he is ignorant he is superstitious;
|
||
this is natural. If his brain is developed -- if he perceives
|
||
clearly that all things are naturally produced, he ceases to be
|
||
superstitious, and becomes scientific. He is not a saint, but a
|
||
savant -- not a priest, but a philosopher. He does not worship, he
|
||
works; he investigates; he thinks; he takes advantage, through
|
||
intelligence, of the forces of nature. He is no longer the victim
|
||
of appearances, the dupe of his own ignorance, and the persecutor
|
||
of his fellow-men.
|
||
|
||
He then knows that it is far better to love his wife and
|
||
children than to love God. He then knows that the love of man for
|
||
woman, of woman for man, of parent for child, of child for parent,
|
||
is far better, far holier than the love of man for any phantom born
|
||
of ignorance and fear.
|
||
|
||
It is illogical to take the ground that the world was cruel
|
||
and ignorant and idolatrous when the Catholic Church was
|
||
established, and that because the world is better now than then,
|
||
the church is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
What was the world when science came? What was it in the days
|
||
of Galileo, Copernicus and Eepler? What was it when printing was
|
||
invented? What was it when the Western World was found? Would it
|
||
not be much easier to prove that science is of divine origin?
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood -- it fills
|
||
the world with light. It cares nothing for heresy; it develops the
|
||
mind, and enables man to answer his own prayers.
|
||
|
||
Cardinal Manning takes the ground that Jehovah practically
|
||
abandoned the children of men for four thousand years, and gave
|
||
them over to every abomination. He claims that Christianity came
|
||
"in the fullness of time," and it is then admitted that "what the
|
||
fullness of time may mean is one of the mysteries of times and
|
||
seasons, that it is not for us to know." Having declared that it is
|
||
a mystery, and one that we are not to know, the Cardinal explains
|
||
it: "One motive for the long delay of four thousand years is not
|
||
far to seek -- it gave time, Full and ample, for the utmost
|
||
development and consolidation of all the falsehood and evil of
|
||
which the intellect and will of man are capable."
|
||
|
||
Is it possible to imagine why an infinitely good and wise
|
||
being "gave time full and ample for the utmost development and
|
||
consolidation of falsehood and evil"? Why should an infinitely wise
|
||
God desire this development and consolidation? What would be
|
||
thought of a father who should refuse to teach his son and
|
||
deliberately allow him to go into every possible excess, to the end
|
||
that he might develop all the falsehood and evil of which his
|
||
intellect and will were capable"? If a supernatural religion is a
|
||
necessity, and if without it all men simply develop and consolidate
|
||
falsehood and evil, why was not a supernatural religion given to
|
||
the first man? The Catholic Church, if this be true, should have
|
||
been founded in the Garden of Eden.
|
||
|
||
Was it not cruel to drown a world just for the want of a
|
||
supernatural religion -- a religion that man, by no possibility,
|
||
could furnish? Was there "husbandry in heaven"?
|
||
|
||
But the Cardinal contradicts himself by not only admitting,
|
||
but declaring, that the world had never seen a legislation so just,
|
||
so equitable, as that of Rome.
|
||
|
||
Is it possible that a nation in which falsehood and evil had
|
||
reached their highest development was, after all, so wise, so just
|
||
and so equitable?
|
||
|
||
Was not the civil law far better than the Mosaic -- more
|
||
philosophical, nearer just?
|
||
|
||
The civil law was produced without the assistance of God.
|
||
|
||
According to the Cardinal, it was produced by men in whom all
|
||
the falsehood and evil of which they were capable had been
|
||
developed and consolidated, while the cruel and ignorant Mosaic
|
||
code came from the lips of infinite wisdom and compassion.
|
||
|
||
It is declared that the history of Rome shows what man can do
|
||
without God, and I assert that the history of the Inquisition shows
|
||
what man can do when assisted by a church of divine origin,
|
||
presided over by the infallible vicars of God.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
The fact that the early Christians not only believed
|
||
incredible things, but persuaded others of their truth, is regarded
|
||
by the Cardinal as a miracle. This is only another phase of the old
|
||
argument that success is the test of divine origin. All
|
||
supernatural religions have been founded in precisely the same way.
|
||
The credulity of eighteen hundred years ago believed everything
|
||
except the truth.
|
||
|
||
A religion is a growth, and is of necessity adapted in some
|
||
degree to the people among whom it grows. It is shaped and molded
|
||
by the general ignorance, the superstition and credulity of the age
|
||
in which it lives. The key is fashioned by the lock.
|
||
|
||
Every religion that has succeeded has in some way supplied the
|
||
wants of its votaries, and has to a certain extent harmonized with
|
||
their hopes, their fears, their vices, and their virtues.
|
||
|
||
If, as the Cardinal says, the religion of Christ is in
|
||
absolute harmony with nature, how can it be supernatural? The
|
||
Cardinal also declares that "the religion of Christ is in harmony
|
||
with the reason and moral nature in all nations and all ages to
|
||
this day."
|
||
|
||
What becomes of the argument that Catholicism must be of
|
||
divine origin because "it has ascended the stream of human license,
|
||
contra ictum fluminis, by a power mightier than nature"?
|
||
|
||
If "it is in harmony with the reason and moral nature of all
|
||
nations and all ages to this day," it has gone with the stream, and
|
||
not against it. If "the religion of Christ is in harmony with the
|
||
reason and moral nature of all nations," then the men who have
|
||
rejected it are unnatural, and these men have gone against the
|
||
stream. How then can it be said that Christianity has been in
|
||
changeless opposition to nature as man has marred it? To what
|
||
extent has man marred it?
|
||
|
||
In spite of the marring by man, we are told that the reason
|
||
and moral nature of all nations in all ages to this day is in
|
||
harmony with the religion of Jesus Christ.
|
||
|
||
Are we justified in saying that the Catholic Church is of
|
||
divine origin because the Pagans failed to destroy it by
|
||
persecution?
|
||
|
||
We will put the Cardinal's statement in form:
|
||
|
||
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution,
|
||
therefore Catholicism is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
Let us make an application of this logic:
|
||
|
||
Paganism failed to destroy Catholicism by persecution;
|
||
therefore, Catholicism is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
Catholicism failed to destroy Protestantism by persecution;
|
||
there fore, Protestantism is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to destroy
|
||
Infidelity; therefore, Infidelity is of divine origin.
|
||
|
||
Let us make another application:
|
||
|
||
Paganism did not succeed in destroying Catholicism; therefore,
|
||
Paganism was a false religion.
|
||
|
||
Catholicism did not succeed in destroying Protestantism;
|
||
therefore, Catholicism is a false religion.
|
||
|
||
Catholicism and Protestantism combined failed to destroy
|
||
Infidelity; therefore, both Catholicism and Protestantism are false
|
||
religions.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal has another reason for believing the Catholic
|
||
Church of divine origin. He declares that the "Canon Law is a
|
||
creation of wisdom and justice to which no statutes at large or
|
||
imperial pandects can bear comparison;" "that the world-wide and
|
||
secular legislation of the church was of a higher character, and
|
||
that as water cannot rise above its source, the church could not,
|
||
by mere human wisdom, have corrected and perfected the imperial
|
||
law, and therefore its source must have been higher than the
|
||
sources of the world."
|
||
|
||
When Europe was the most ignorant, the Canon Law was supreme.
|
||
|
||
As a matter of fact, the good in the Canon Law was borrowed --
|
||
the bad was, for the most part, original. In my judgment, the
|
||
legislation of the Republic of the United States is in many
|
||
respects superior to that of Rome, and yet we are greatly indebted
|
||
to the Civil Law. Our legislation is superior in many particulars
|
||
to that of England, and yet we are greatly indebted to the Common
|
||
Law; but it never occurred to me that our Statutes at Large: are
|
||
divinely inspired.
|
||
|
||
If the Canon Law is, in fact, the legislation of infinite
|
||
wisdom, then it should be a perfect code. Yet, the Canon Law made
|
||
it a crime next to robbery and theft to take interest for money.
|
||
Without the right to take interest the business of the whole world
|
||
would, to a large extent, cease and the prosperity of mankind end.
|
||
There are railways enough in the United States to make six tracks
|
||
around the globe, and every mile was built with borrowed money on
|
||
which interest was paid or promised. In no other way could the
|
||
savings of many thousands have been brought together and a capital
|
||
great enough formed to construct works of such vast and continental
|
||
importance.
|
||
|
||
It was provided in this same wonderful Canon Law that a
|
||
heretic could not be a witness against a Catholic. The Catholic was
|
||
at liberty to rob and wrong his fellow-man, provided the fellow-man
|
||
was not a fellow Catholic, and in a court established by the vicar
|
||
of Christ, the man who had been robbed was not allowed to open his
|
||
mouth. A Catholic could enter the house of an unbeliever, of a Jew,
|
||
of a heretic, of a Moor, and before the eyes of the husband and
|
||
father murder his wife and children, and the father could not
|
||
pronounce in the hearing of a judge the name of the murderer.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
The world is wiser now, and the Canon Law, given to us by
|
||
infinite wisdom, has been repealed by the common sense of man.
|
||
|
||
In this divine code it was provided that to convict a cardinal
|
||
bishop, seventy-two witnesses were required; a cardinal presbyter,
|
||
forty-four; a cardinal deacon, twenty-four; a sub-deacon, acolyth,
|
||
exorcist, reader, ostiarius, seven; and in the purgation of a
|
||
bishop, twelve witnesses were invariably required; of a presbyter,
|
||
seven; of a deacon, three. These laws, in my judgment, were made,
|
||
not by God, but by the clergy.
|
||
|
||
So too in this cruel code it was provided that those who gave
|
||
aid, favor, or counsel, to excommunicated persons, should be
|
||
anathema, and that those who talked with, consulted, or sat at the
|
||
same table with or gave anything in charity to the excommunicated
|
||
should be anathema.
|
||
|
||
Is it possible that a being of infinite wisdom made
|
||
hospitality a crime? Did he say: "Whoso giveth a cup of cold water
|
||
to the excommunicated shall wear forever a garment of fire"? Were
|
||
not the laws of the Romans much better? Besides all this, under the
|
||
Canon Law the dead could be tried for heresy, and their estates
|
||
confiscated -- that is to say, their widows and orphans robbed.
|
||
|
||
The most brutal part of the common law of England is that in
|
||
relation to the rights of women -- all of which was taken from the
|
||
Corpus Juris Canonici "the law that came from a higher source than
|
||
man."
|
||
|
||
The only cause of absolute divorce as laid down by the pious
|
||
canonists was propter infidelitatem, which was when one of the
|
||
parties became Catholic, and would not live with the other who
|
||
continued still an unbeliever. Under this divine statute, a pagan
|
||
wishing to be rid of his wife had only to join the Catholic Church,
|
||
provided she remained faithful to the religion of her fathers.
|
||
Under this divine law, a man marrying a widow was declared to be a
|
||
bigamist.
|
||
|
||
It would require volumes to point out the cruelties,
|
||
absurdities and inconsistencies of the Canon Law. It has been
|
||
thrown away by the world. Every civilized nation has a code of its
|
||
own, and the Canon Law is of interest only to the historian, the
|
||
antiquarian, and the enemy of theological government.
|
||
|
||
Under the Canon Law, people were convicted of being witches
|
||
and wizards, of holding intercourse with devils. Thousands perished
|
||
at the stake, having been convicted of these impossible crimes.
|
||
Under the Canon Law, there was such a crime as the suspicion of
|
||
heresy. A man or woman could he arrested, charged with being
|
||
suspected, and under this Canon Law, flowing from the intellect of
|
||
infinite wisdom, the presumption was in favor of guilt. The
|
||
suspected had to prove themselves innocent. In all civilized
|
||
courts, the presumption of innocence is the shield of the indicted,
|
||
but the Canon Law took away this shield, and put in the hand of the
|
||
priest the sword of presumptive guilt.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
If the real pope is the vicar of Christ, the true shepherd of
|
||
the sheep, this fact should be known not only to the vicar, but to
|
||
the sheep. A divinely founded and guarded church ought to know its
|
||
own shepherd, and yet the Catholic sheep have not always been
|
||
certain who the shepherd was.
|
||
|
||
The Council of Pisa, held in 1409, deposed two popes -- rivals
|
||
-- Gregory and Benedict -- that is to say, deposed the actual vicar
|
||
of Christ and the pretended. This action was taken because a
|
||
council, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, could not tell the genuine
|
||
from the counterfeit. The council then elected another vicar, whose
|
||
authority was afterwards denied. Alexander V. died, and John XXIII.
|
||
took his place; Gregory XII. insisted that he was the lawful pope;
|
||
John resigned, then he was deposed, and afterward imprisoned; then
|
||
Gregory XII. resigned, and Martin V. was elected. The whole thing
|
||
reads like the annals of a South American revolution.
|
||
|
||
The Council of Constance restored, as the Cardinal declared,
|
||
the unity of the church, and brought back the consolation of the
|
||
Holy Ghost. Before this great council John Huss appeared and
|
||
maintained his own tenets. The council declared that the church was
|
||
not bound to keep its promise with a heretic. Huss was condemned
|
||
and executed on the 6th of July, 1415. His disciple, Jerome of
|
||
Prague, recanted, but having relapsed, was put to death, May 30,
|
||
1416. This cursed council shed the blood of Huss and Jerome.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal appeals to the author of "Ecce Homo" for the
|
||
purpose of showing that Christianity is above nature, and the
|
||
following passages, among others, are quoted:
|
||
|
||
"Who can describe that which unites men? Who has entered into
|
||
the formation of speech, which is the symbol of their union? Who
|
||
can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society? He who can
|
||
do these things can explain the origin of the Christian Church."
|
||
|
||
These passages should not have been quoted by the Cardinal.
|
||
The author of these passages simply says that the origin of the
|
||
Christian Church is no harder to find and describe than that which
|
||
unites men -- than that which has entered into the formation of
|
||
speech, the symbol of their union -- no harder to describe than the
|
||
origin of civil society -- because he says that one who can
|
||
describe these can describe the other.
|
||
|
||
Certainly none of these things are above nature. We do not
|
||
need the assistance of the Holy Ghost in these matters. We know
|
||
that men are united by common interests, common purposes, common
|
||
danger -- by race, climate and education. It is no more wonderful
|
||
that people live in families, tribes, communities and nations, than
|
||
that birds, ants and bees live in flocks and swarms.
|
||
|
||
If we know anything, we know that language is natural -- that
|
||
it is a physical science. But if we take the ground occupied by the
|
||
Cardinal, then we insist that everything that cannot be accounted
|
||
for by man, is supernatural. Let me ask, by what man? What man must
|
||
we take as the standard? Cosmas or Humboldt, St. Irenaeus or
|
||
Darwin? If everything that we cannot account for is above nature,
|
||
then ignorance is the test of the supernatural. The man who is
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
mentally honest, stops where his knowledge stops. At that point he
|
||
says that he does not know. Such a man is a philosopher. Then the
|
||
theologian steps forward, denounces the modesty of the philosopher
|
||
as blasphemy, and proceeds to tell what is beyond the horizon of
|
||
the human intellect.
|
||
|
||
Could a savage account for the telegraph, or the telephone, by
|
||
natural causes? How would he account for these wonders? He would
|
||
account for them precisely as the Cardinal accounts for the
|
||
Catholic Church.
|
||
|
||
Belonging to no rival church, I have not the slightest
|
||
interest in the primacy of Leo XIII., and yet it is to be regretted
|
||
that this primacy rests upon such a narrow and insecure foundation.
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal says that "it will appear almost certain that the
|
||
original Greek of St. Irenreus, which is unfortunately lost,
|
||
contained either -a -eo*,;a, (*) or some inflection of "xru"o" *
|
||
(* GREEK - computer will not generate Greek characters.) which
|
||
signifies primacy."
|
||
|
||
From this it appears that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome
|
||
rests on some "inflection" of a Greek word -- and that this
|
||
supposed inflection was in a letter supposed to have been written
|
||
by St. Irenaeus, which has certainly been lost. Is it possible that
|
||
the vast fabric of papal power has this, and only this, for its
|
||
foundation? To this "inflection" has it come at last?
|
||
|
||
The Cardinal's case depends upon the intelligence and veracity
|
||
of his witnesses. The Fathers of the church were utterly incapable
|
||
of examining a question of fact. They were all believers in the
|
||
miraculous. The same is true of the apostles. If St. John was the
|
||
author of the Apocalypse, he was undoubtedly insane, If Polycarp
|
||
said the things attributed to him by Catholic writers, he was
|
||
certainly in the condition of his master. What is the testimony of
|
||
St. John worth in the light of the following? "Cerinthus, the
|
||
heretic, was in a bathhouse. St. John and another Christian were
|
||
about to enter. St. John cried out: 'Let us run away, lest the
|
||
house fall upon us while the enemy of truth is in it.'" Is it
|
||
possible that St. John thought that God would kill two eminent
|
||
Christians for the purpose of getting even with one heretic?
|
||
|
||
Let us see who Polycarp was. He seems to have been a prototype
|
||
of the Catholic Church, as will be seen from the following
|
||
statement concerning this Father: "When any heretical doctrine was
|
||
spoken in his presence he would stop his ears." After this, there
|
||
can be no question of his orthodoxy. It is claimed that Polycarp
|
||
was a martyr -- that a spear was run through his body, and that
|
||
from the wound his soul, in the shape of a bird, flew away. The
|
||
history of his death is just as true as the history of his life.
|
||
|
||
Irenaeus, another witness, took the ground that there was to
|
||
be a millennium -- a thousand years of enjoyment in which celibacy
|
||
would not be the highest form of virtue. If he is called as a
|
||
witness for the purpose of establishing the divine origin of the
|
||
church, and if one of his "inflections" is the basis of papal
|
||
supremacy, is the Cardinal also willing to take his testimony as to
|
||
the nature of the millennium?
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
ROME OR REASON - PART II
|
||
|
||
All the Fathers were infinitely credulous. Every one of them
|
||
believed, not only in the miracles said to have been wrought by
|
||
Christ, by the apostles, and by other Christians, but every one of
|
||
them believed in the Pagan miracles. All of these Fathers were
|
||
familiar with wonders and impossibilities. Nothing was so common
|
||
with them as to work miracles, and on many occasions they not only
|
||
cured diseases, not only reversed the order of nature, but
|
||
succeeded in raising the dead.
|
||
|
||
It is very hard, indeed, to prove what the apostles said, or
|
||
what the Fathers of the church wrote. There were many centuries
|
||
filled with forgeries -- many generations in which the cunning
|
||
hands of ecclesiastics erased, obliterated or interpolated the
|
||
records of the past -- during which they invented books, invented
|
||
authors, and quoted from works that never existed.
|
||
|
||
The testimony of the "Fathers" is without the slightest value.
|
||
They believed everything -- they examined nothing. They received as
|
||
a waste-basket receives. Whoever accepts their testimony will
|
||
exclaim with the Cardinal: "Happily, men are not saved by logic,"
|
||
|
||
Robert G. Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom Inc. is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|