The question answers itself: Of course not! For Jesus was a
gentleman; he is the head of a church attended by gentlemen, of
universities where gentlemen are educated. So the Professor of
Christian Morals proceeds to make a subtle analysis of Jesus'
actions; demonstrating therefrom that there are three proper uses
to be made of great wealth: first, for almsgiving--"The poor ye
have always with you!"; second, for beauty and culture--buying
wine for wedding-feasts, and ointment-boxes and other objets de
vertu; and third, "stewardship," "trusteeship"--which in plain
English is "Big Business."

I have used the illustration of soap and hot water; one can
imagine he is actually watching the scrubbing process, seeing the
proletarian Founder emerging all new and respectable under the
brush of this capitalist professor. The professor has a rule all
his own for reading the scriptures; he tells us that when there
are two conflicting sayings, the rule of interpretation is that
"the more spiritual is to be preferred." Thus, one gospel makes
Jesus say: "Blessed are ye poor." Another puts it: "Blessed are
the poor in spirit." The first one is crude and literal;
obviously the second must be what Jesus meant! In other words,
the professor and his church have made for their economic masters
a treacherous imitation virtue to be taught to wage-slaves, a
quality of submissiveness, impotence and futility, which they
call by the name of "spirituality". This virtue they exalt above
all others, and in its name they cut from the record of Jesus
everything which has relation to the realities of life!

So here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plummer chair at
Harvard, writing on "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," and
explaining:

The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its radicalism,
but in its externalism. It proposes to accomplish by economic
change what can be attained by nothing less than spiritual
regeneration.

And here is "The Churchman," organ of the Episcopalians of New
York, warning us:

It is necessary to remember that something more than material and
temporal considerations are involved. There are things of more
importance to the purposes of God and to the welfare of humanity
than economic readjustments and social amelioration.

And again:

Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing upon
clergy and laity alike, to address their religious energies too
exclusively to those tasks whereby human life may be made more
abundant and wholesome materially..... We need constantly to be
reminded that spiritual things come first.

There come before my mental eye the elegant ladies and gentlemen
for whom these comfortable sayings are prepared: the vestrymen
and pillars of the Church, with black frock coats and black kid
gloves and shiny top-hats; the ladies of Good Society with their
Easter costumes in pastel shades, their gracious smiles and their
sweet intoxicating odors. I picture them as I have seen them at
St. George's, where that aged wild boar, Pierpont Morgan, the
elder, used to pass the collection plate; at Holy Trinity, where
they drove downtown in old-fashioned carriages with grooms and
footmen sitting like twin statues of insolence; at St. Thomas',
where you might see all the "Four Hundred" on exhibition at once;
at St. Mary the Virgin's, where the choir paraded through the
aisles, swinging costly incense into my childish nostrils, the
stout clergyman walking alone with nose upturned, carrying on his
back a jewelled robe for which some adoring female had paid sixty
thousand dollars. "Spiritual things come first?" Ah, yes! "Seek
first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled robes shall be added
unto you!" And it is so dreadful about the French and German
Socialists, who, as the "Churchman" reports, "make a creed out of
materialism." But then, what is this I find in one issue of the
organ of the "Church of Good Society"?

Business men contribute to the Y. M. C. A. because they realize
that if their employes are well cared for and religiously
influenced, they can be of greater service in business!

Who let that material cat out of the spiritual bag?



BOOK THREE

The Church of the Servant-girls

 Was it for this--that prayers like these
      Should spend themselves about thy feet,
  And with hard, overlabored knees
      Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat
  Bosoms too lean to suckle sons
  And fruitless as their orisons?

 Was it for this--that men should make 
     Thy name a fetter on men's necks,
  Poor men made poorer for thy sake,
      And women withered out of sex?
  Was it for this--that slaves should be--
Thy word was passed to set men free?                              
                          Swinburne.


Charity

As everyone knows, the "society lady" is not an independent and
self-sustaining phenomenon. For every one of these exquisite,
sweet-smelling creatures that you meet on Fifth Avenue, there
must be at home a large number of other women who live sterile
and empty lives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after their
luckier sisters. But these "domestics" also are human beings;
they have emotions--or, in religious parlance, "souls;" it is
necessary to provide a discipline to keep them from appropriating
the property of their mistresses, also to keep them from becoming
enceinte. So it comes about that there are two cathedrals in New
York: one, St. John the Divine, for the society ladies, and the
other, St. Patrick's, for the servant-girls. The latter is
located on Fifth Avenue, where its towering white spires divide
with the homes of the Vanderbilts the interest of the crowds of
sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday morning, before "Good
Society" has opened its eyes, you may see the devotees of the
Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each with a little
black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do inside? What
are they taught about life? This is the question to which we have
next to give attention.

Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate
of New York, favored me with his justification of his own career
and activities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one
man of the world to another, he said: "The reason I put them into
the hands of Catholics is not religious, but because I find they
are efficient in such matters. They don't ask questions, they do
what you want them to do, and do it economically."

I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the
remark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and
his mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.

When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long
hours and improper working-conditions which drove him to
desperation; they do not ask if police and politicians are
getting a rake-off from the saloon, or if traction magnates are
using it as an agency for the controlling of votes; they do not
plunge into prohibition movements or good government
campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard price, and
the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then
turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is
"charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism.
They have been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome
and unsightly messes--"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and
murder and sudden death." Yet--puzzling as it would seem to
anyone not religious--there were never so many messes, never so
many different kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand
years of charitable activity!

But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building
and rebuilding his web across a doorway; like soldiers under the
command of a ruling class with a "muddling through" tradition--

 Theirs not to reason why,
  Theirs but to do and die.

And so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have
messes to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away
quickly and without fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this
service, no matter what their personal religious beliefs or lack
of beliefs may be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of every
steel-mill, every coal-mine or other place of industrial danger,
you will find a Catholic hospital, with its slave-sisters and
attendants. Once when I was "muck-raking" near Pittsburgh, I went
to one of these places to ask information as to the frequency of
industrial accidents and the fate of the victims. The "Mother
Superior" received me with a look of polite dismay. "These
concerns pay us!" she said. "You must see that as a matter of
business it would not do for us to talk about them."

Obey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as
it is with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the
work of vote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and
saloon-keepers and ward-heelers which the Catholic machine
controls. This industry of vote-getting is a comparatively new
one; but the Church has been handling the masses for so many
centuries that she quickly learned this new way of "democracy,"
and has established her supremacy over all rivals. She has the
schools for training the children, the confessional for
controlling the women; she has the intellectual machinery, the
purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme
advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really
believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to
table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings
in order to bolster their hope of the survival of personality
after death!

So it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have
been driven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy.
The Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war
several hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every
year. It is no longer possible to do without Catholics in
America; not merely do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal
mined, and dishes washed, but franchises have to be granted,
tariff-schedules adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police
trained and strikes crushed. Under our native political system,
for these purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes
belong to people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German
and Italian and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and
Portuguese and Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church
can handle these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and
editors and politicians familiar with all these languages?

Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely
moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of
red fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper
advertisements. The rest may come out of the public till, in the
form of exemption from taxation of church buildings and lands, a
share of the public funds for charities and schools, the control
of the police for saloon-keepers and district leaders, the
control of police-courts and magistrates, of municipal
administrations and boards of education, of legislatures and
governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to flatter our
sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme Court
Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary prestige,
some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend High
Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and
dignitaries.

You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,
ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic shades,
absorbed in "the passionless pursuit of passionless
intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the
pit! You ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little
charities," pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your
families of one or two lovely children--while Irish and
French-Canadians and Italians and Portuguese and Hungarians are
breeding their dozens and scores, and preparing to turn you out
of your country!


God's Armor

You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the
psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware
of modern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants
to have beauty about him, to be a "cabin passenger":

  There's power in me and will to dominate
  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else;
  In many ways I need mankind's respect,
  Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.

He wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands
that faith is all-important--

 Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.

But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--

     But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!

He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he
asks what there would be in it for him--

     State the facts,
  Read the text right, emancipate the world--
The emancipated world enjoys itself
  With scarce a thank-you.
 Blougram told it first
  It could not owe a farthing,--not to him
  More than St. Paul!

So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of
the contempt of intellectual people.

  I pine among my million imbeciles
  (You think) aware some dozen men of sense
  Eye me and know me, whether I believe
  In the last winking virgin as I vow,
  And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,
  And am a knave.

But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of
faith, that is what

  Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,
  With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
  We are their lords, or they are free of us,
  Just as we tighten or relax that hold.

So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of
shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and
"ragamuffin saints."

I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop
Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints
here in this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire
the information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit
my purse. America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being
drafted to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a
firmly bound little pamphlet called "God's Armor, a Prayer Book
for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by the G. R. C.
Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor
Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first fail
to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do
you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past
creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is
the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis
sound mysterious!

In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes
of war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have
played throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not
even find anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the
resolve of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule.
Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and
who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body
and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with
crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the
trenches--how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter
by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since
first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the hearts of
men!

I quote from this little book:

Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer
yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin. Make
the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore Thee and give
Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be for Thy Glory, and
for the salvation of my immortal soul.

During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your prayers
need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few of these short
ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat them. They will serve
to recall God to your heart and will strengthen you and comfort
you.

You remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the
Thibetans. The Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan,
and is less progressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices
for saving labor. You have to use your own vocal apparatus to
keep yourself from hell; but the process has been made as
economical as possible by kindly dispensations of the Pope. Thus,
each time that you say "My God and my all," you get fifty days
indulgence; the same for "My Jesus, mercy," and the same for
"Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things." For "Jesus, Mary,
Joseph," you get three hundred days--which would seem by all odds
the best investment of your spare breath.

And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle";
"Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer
before and after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a
long March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those
in their Agony"--I cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them.
I remember standing in a cathedral "somewhere in France" during
the celebration of some special Big Magic. There was brilliant
white light, and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a
huge organ, and a clamor of voices, high, clear voices of young
boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of men in a pit reaching
up, trying to climb over the top of one another. It sent a
shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in the
modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the
ancient nightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental
life of mankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their
frantic and ceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the
sex-spell; and the poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps
spent the night with a prostitute, now prostrates himself before
a holy Woman-being who is lifted high above the shames of the
flesh, and who stirs the thrills of awe and affection which his
mother brought to him in early childhood. Read over the phrases
of this "Litany of the Blessed Virgin":

Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin of
Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother most
pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother undefiled.
Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable. Mother of good
counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our Savior. Virgin most
prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most renowned. Virgin most
powerful. Virgin most merciful. Virgin most faithful. Mirror of
justice. Seat of wisdom. Cause of our Joy. Spiritual vessel.
Vessel of honor. Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose.
Tower of David. Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the
covenant. Gate of heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick.
Refuge of sinners. Comforter of the afflicted. Help of
Christians. Queen of Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of
Prophets. Queen of Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of
Confessors. Queen of Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen
conceived without original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary.
Queen of Peace, Pray for us.


Thanksgivings

For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain
thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the
"Messenger of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New
York, the issue for October, 1917. There are pages of
advertisements of schools and colleges with strange titles:
"Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross Academy", "Holy Ghost
Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child Jesus". The
leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the Apostleship
of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa" writes a
poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a story
called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us
about the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July,
1917, it distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of
57,714 hours of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form
of letter which they are to write to the Honorable Baker,
Secretary of War, imploring him to intimate to the French
government that France should withdraw from one of her advances
in civilization, and join with mediaeval America in exempting
priests from being drafted to fight for their country. And then
there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst newspapers, only
instead of asking whether she should allow him to kiss her before
he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what is the
Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is Robert a
saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy
Communion. (No, I am not inventing this.)

I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any
squeamishness in dealing with its "million imbeciles", its
"rough, purblind mass". There is a department of the little
magazine entitled "Thanksgiving", and a statement at the top that
"the total number of Thanksgivings for the month is 2,143,911." I
am suspicious of that, as of German reports of prisoners taken;
but I give the statement as it stands, not going through the list
and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they come,
classified by states:

GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and publication
were promised, for others the Badge of Promoter's Cross was used,
for others the prayers of the Associates had been asked.

Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during
storm.

Alaska--Safe return, goods found.

Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness
averted, safe delivery.

British Honduras--Successful operation.

California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two successful
examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in salary, return
to religious duties, sight regained, medal won, Baptism,
preservation from disease, contract obtained, success in
business, hearing restored, Easter duty made, happy death,
automobile sold, mind restored, house found, house rented,
successful journey, business sold, quarrel averted, return of
friends, two successful operations.

And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient
fervor which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As
Christopher Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a
wonderful thing. By means of gold we can even get souls into
Paradise."


The Holy Roman Empire

The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its
squalor; but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous
than the Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But
the very essence of the Catholic Church is that it does not
change; semper eadem is its motto: the same yesterday, today and
forever--the same in Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in
a modern democracy as in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is
not primarily a religious organization; it is a political
organization, and proclaims the fact, and defies those who would
shut it up in the religious field, The Rev. S. B. Smith, a
Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements of
Ecclesiastical Law":

Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church consists
in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to
command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a
perfect society or sovereign state. This theory is false; for the
Church, as was seen, is vested Jure divino with power, (1) to
make laws; (2) to define and apply them (potestas judicialis);
(3) to punish those who violate her laws (potestas coercitiva).

And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated
proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of
Errors", issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in
precise language that

The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess
and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.

It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall
require the permission of the civil power in order to the
exercise of its authority.

Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
affirmed thus:

She has the right to require the state not to leave every man
free to profess his own religion.

She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or
consent of the state.

She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and state.

She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be
the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others.

She has the right to prevent the state from granting the public
exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating from it.

She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
expression of opinion.

You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization,
ought at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about
the matter. Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About
Protestantism of Today", a book published in Boston and
extensively circulated by American Catholics:

Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is likewise
the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It is one of those
impossibilities which only the levity of a superficial reason can
regard as admissable. But a sound mind, that does not feed on
empty words, looks upon this freedom of thought only as simply
absurd, and, what is more, as sinful.

You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe
because the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this
"Law" applies to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that
they are bound by the restraints that bind you? Here is Pope Leo
XIII, in his Encyclical of 1890--and please remember that Leo
XIII was the beau ideal of our capitalist statesmen and editors,
as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever roasted a
heretic. He says:

If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws of
God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set at naught the
authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in the Supreme Pontiff,
then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to render
obedience.

And consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a
democratic state do and forever must contravene the "laws of God"
as interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that
the Pope, in his decree Ne Temere, has declared that all persons
who have been married by civil authorities or by Protestant
clergymen are living in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the
same way, the problems of education, burial, prison discipline,
blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious
endowments, vows of celibacy. To the above list, as given by
Gladstone, one might add many issues, such as birth control,
which have arisen since his time.

What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of
expressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and
haughtiest and most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal
Manning, in the Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name
of the Pope:

I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; I
claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and
director of the consciences of men---of the peasant that tills
the field, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the
household of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for
kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge of what is right and
wrong.


Temporal Power

What this means is, that here in our American democracy the
Catholic Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time,
watching for the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no
secret of his intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true
believers in America, instructed them as to their attitude in
captivity:

The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation,
protected against violence by the common laws and the
impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without
hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very
erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought
the type of the most desirable status of the church, or that it
would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to
be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that
Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying
a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the
fecundity with which God has endowed His Church .... But she
would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to
liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the
public authority.

Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his
flock in the "Western Watchman", June 27, 1913:

Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen
afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between
the church and the civil government we take the side of the
church; of course we do. Why, if the government of the United
States were at war with the church, we would say tomorrow, To
hell with the government of the United States; and if the church
and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say,
To hell with all the governments of the world .... Why is it that
in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the
population, the Catholic church is so much feared? She is loved
by all her children and feared by everybody. Why is it that the
Pope has such tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the
world. All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the
presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine. The
Pope is the ruler of the world.

You recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to
control the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to
shape fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a
man swollen to bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy
robes, with his holy incense in his nostrils, and the faces of
the faithful gazing up at him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:

The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the judge
of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and duties of the
state.

And lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist
arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", April 6, 1912, speaking
for Cardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:

It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,
O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and
members of an American hierachy, yet they are as cardinals
foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as one
of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation to
concede the same honors that they receive abroad.

Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war, he
would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors reserved for
a foreign royal personage, and at any official entertainment at
Washington the Cardinal will outrank not merely every cabinet
officer, the speaker of the house and the vice-president, but
also the foreign ambassadors, coming immediately next to the
chief magistrate himself.

Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal personage not
of sovereign rank visits New York it is his duty to make the
first call on Cardinal Farley.

Knights of Slavery

Such is the worldly station of these apostles of the lowly Jesus.
And what is their attitude towards their brothers in God, the
rank and file of the membership, whose pennies grease the wheels
of the ecclesiastical machine? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over
a delegate to represent him in America, and at a convention of
the Federation of Catholic Societies held in New Orleans in
November, 1910, this gentleman, Diomede Falconio, delivered
himself on the subject of Capital and Labor. We have heard the
slave-code of the Anglican disciples of Jesus, the revolutionary
carpenter; now let us hear the slave-code of his Roman disciples:

Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of two
classes of people, the rich and the poor, which respectively
represent Capital and Labor.

Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God, human
society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters and
servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles and
plebeians.

And lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope sent a second
representative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, speaking at a general
meeting of the German Catholic Central-Verein, St. Louis, 1917,
declared:

One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European war is
the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the Catholic
Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines. We must be
ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to work against it.
As I understand, you have a society of wealthy people in St.
Louis ready for such a campaign. You have experienced leaders who
are masters in their kind of work. They are always insistent to
show that this wealth was and is in close touch with the Church,
and therefore it will not fail.

This, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the present book,
which therefore no doubt will be entitled to the "Nihil Obstat"
of the "Censor Theolog.", and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes
Josephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici." No wonder that the
"experienced leaders" of America, our captains of industry and
exploiters of labor, are forced, whatever their own faith may be,
to make use of this system of subjection. A few years ago we read
in our papers how a Jewish millionaire of Baltimore was
presenting a fortune to the Catholic Church, to be used in its
war upon Socialism. The late Mark Hanna, the shrewdest and most
far-seeing man that Big Business ever brought into power, said
that in twenty years there would be two parties in America, a
capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be the Catholic
church that would save the country from Socialism. That prophecy
was widely quoted, and sank into the souls of our steel and
railway and money magnates; from which time you might see, if you
watched political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman
Hierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you cannot get
an expression of opinion hostile to Catholicism into any
newspaper of importance. The Associated Press does not handle
news unfavorable to the Church, and from top to bottom, the
politician takes off his hat when the Sacred Host goes by. Said
Archbishop Quigley, speaking before the children of the Mary
Sodality:

I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against the
church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.


Priests and Police

And how is it in our national capital, the palladium of our
liberties? As a means of demonstrating the power of the church
and the subservience of our politicians, the Catholics have
invented what they call the "Cardinal's Day Mass": An elaborate
procession of high ecclesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and
jewels, through the streets of Washington, accompanied by a small
army of policemen, paid by non-Catholic taxpayers. The Cardinal
seats himself upon a throne, and our political rulers make
obeisance before him. On Sunday, January 14, 1917, there were
present at this political mass the following personages: Four
cabinet members and their wives; the speaker of the House; a
large group of senators and representatives; a general of the
army and his wife; an admiral of the navy and his wife; the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court and his wife, and another Justice of
the Supreme Court and his wife.

And understand that the church makes no secret of its purpose in
conducting such public exhibitions. Here is the pious Pope Leo
XIII again, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885:

All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements in
daily political life in the countries where they live. They must
penetrate, wherever possible, in the administration of civil
affairs; must constantly exert the utmost vigilance and energy to
prevent the usages of liberty from going beyond the limits fixed
by God's law. All Catholics should do all in their power to cause
the constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the
principles of the true Church.

And following these instructions, the Catholics are organized for
political work. There are the various Catholic Societies, such as
the Knights of Columbus, secret, oath-bound organizations, the
military arm of the Papal Power. These societies boast some three
million members, and control not less than that many votes. The
one thing that you can be certain about these votes is that on
every public question, of whatever nature, they will be cast on
the side of ignorance and reaction. Thus, it was the influence of
the Catholic Societies which put upon our national statute books
the infamous law providing five years imprisonment and five
thousand dollars fine for the sending through the mail of
information about the prevention of conception. It is their
influence which keeps upon the statute-books of New York state
the infamous law which permits divorce only for infidelity, and
makes it "collusion" if both parties desire the divorce. It is
these societies which, in every city and town in America, are
pushing and plotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so
that the public may not have a chance to read scientific books;
to get Catholics into the public schools and on school-boards, so
that children may not hear about Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to
have Catholics in control of police and on magistrates benches,
so that priests who are caught in brothels may not be exposed or
punished.

You are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, perhaps; but
during a period of "vice raids" in New York I was told by a
captain of police, himself a Catholic, that it was a common thing
for them to get priests in their net. "Of course," the official
added, good-naturedly, "we let them slip out." I understood that
he had to do that; for the Pope, in his "Motu Proprio" decree,
has forbidden Catholics to bring a priest into court for any
civil crime whatsoever; he has forbidden Catholic policemen to
arrest, Catholic judges to try, and Catholic law-makers to make
laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome. And of course we
know, upon the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope is "the
sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." He has
held that position for a thousand years and more; and wherever
you consult the police records throughout the thousand years, you
find the same entries concerning Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn
to Riley's "Illustrations of London Life from Original
Documents," and I find in the year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose
name is considerately suppressed, had a breviary stolen from him
by a loose woman, because he has not given her any money, either
on that night or the one previous. In 1320 John de Sloghtre, a
priest, is put in the tower "for being found wandering about the
city against the peace", and Richard Heyring, a priest, is
indicted in the ward of Farringdon and in the ward of Crepelgate
"as being a bruiser and nightwalker." That this has been going on
for six hundred years is due, not to any special corruption of
the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical celibacy,
which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental
instinct. It should be noted that the purpose of this
transgression, which pretends to be spiritual, is really
economic; it was the means whereby the church machine built up
its power through the Middle Ages. The priests had children then,
as they have them today; but these children not being recognized,
the church machine remained the sole heir of the property of its
clergy.

The Church Militant

Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for
Germany to prepare through so many years for her assault on
civilization, and for England to have slept through it all. In
exactly the same way, the historian of a generation from now will
marvel that America should have slept, while the New Inquisition
was planning to strangle her. For we are told with the utmost
explicitness precisely what is to be done. We are to see wiped
out these gains of civilization for which our race has bled and
agonized for many centuries; the very gains are to serve as the
means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope Leo tell
his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in
America--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty,
our open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met
democracy?

We see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and
we can read upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the
Prussian military caste had its slogan "Deutschland ueber Alles!"
so the Knights of Slavery have their slogan: "Make America
Catholic!"

Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact
that none of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to
"deeply deplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the
Pope." Their subjection to priestly domination is indicated by
such resolutions as this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:

The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention assembled,
prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present filial regards
with assurances of loyalty and obedience to the Holy See and
request the Papal blessing.

On June 10th, 1912, one T. J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to
Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: "Must I, as a
Catholic, surrender my political freedom to the Church? And by
this I mean the right to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or
Republican parties when and where I please?" The answer was: "You
should submit to the decisions of the Church, even at the cost of
sacrificing political principles." And to the same effect Mgr.
Preston, In New York City, Jan. 1, 1888: "The man who says, 'I
will take my faith from Peter, but I will not take my politics
from Peter,' is not a true Catholic."

Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not
discover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a "Catholic
battle-ship" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all
ships of the navy; Catholic holidays---such as Columbus Day--to
be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million
dollars worth of church property exempted from taxation in New
York City; mission bells to be set up at the expense of the state
of California; state support for parish schools--or, if this
cannot be had, exemption of Catholics from taxation for school
purposes. So on through the list which might continue for pages.

More than anything else, of course, the Papal machine is
concerned with education, or rather, with the preventing of
education. It was in its childish days that the race fell under
the spell of the Priestly Lie; it is in his childish days that
the individual can be most safely snared. Suffer little children
to come unto the Catholic priest, and he will make upon their
sensitive minds an impression which nothing in after life can
eradicate. So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is the
parish-school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school
system. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the Society of Jesus,
in his book, "The Rights of Our Little Ones":

Catholic parents cannot, in conscience send their children to
American public schools, except for very grave reasons approved
by the ecclesiastical authorities.

While state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited
amount of knowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said to
have a beneficial influence on civilization in general.

The state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in
case of utter illiteracy, so long as the essential physical and
moral education are sufficiently provided for.

And so, at all times and in all places, the Catholic Church is
fighting the public school. Eternal vigilance is necessary; as
"America", the organ of the Jesuits, explains:

Sometimes it is a new building code, or an attempt at taxing the
school buildings, which creates hardships to the parochial and
other private schools. Now it is the free text book law that puts
a double burden on the Catholics. Then again it is the unwise
extension of the compulsory school age that forces children to be
in school until they are 16 to 18 years old.

And if you wish to know the purpose of the Catholic schools, hear
Archbishop Quigley of Chicago, speaking before the children of
the Mary Sodality in the Holy Name Parish-School:

Within twenty years this country is going to rule the world.
Kings and emperors will pass away, and the democracy of the
United States will take their place. The West will dominate the
country, and what I have seen of the Western parochial schools
has proved that the generation which follows us will be
exclusively Catholic. When the United States rules the world the
Catholic Church will rule the world.


The Church Triumphant

The question may be asked, What of it? What if the Church were to
rule? There are not a few Americans who believe that there have
to be rich and poor, and that rule by Roman Catholics might be
preferable to rule by Socialists. Before you decide, at least do
not fail to consider what history has to tell about priestly
government. We do not have to use our imaginations in the matter,
for there was once a Golden Age such as Archbishop Quigley dreams
of, when the power of the church was complete, when emperors and
princes paid homage to her, and the civil authority made haste to
carry out her commands. What was the condition of the people in
those times? We are told by Lea, in his "History of the
Inquisition" that:

The moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved.
Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and its
methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and sin was
comparatively unimportant except as a source of revenue to those
who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie tersely puts it, hell and
purgatory would be emptied if enough money could be found. The
artificial standard thus created is seen in a revelation of the
Virgin to St. Birgitta, that a Pope who was free from heresy, no
matter how polluted by sin and vice, is not so wicked but that he
has the absolute power to bind and loose souls. There are many
wicked popes plunged in hell, but all their lawful acts on earth
are accepted and confirmed by God, and all priests who are not
heretics administer true sacraments, no matter how depraved they
may be. Correctness of belief was thus the sole essential; virtue
was a wholly subordinate consideration. How completely under such
a system religion and morals came to be dissociated is seen in
the remarks of Pius II, that the Franciscans were excellent
theologians, but cared nothing about virtue.

This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of persecution
embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were admitted to be
patterns of virtue were ruthlessly exterminated in the name of
Christ, while in the same holy name the orthodox could purchase
absolution for the vilest of crimes for a few coins. When the
only unpardonable offence was persistence in some trifling error
of belief, such as the poverty of Christ; when men had before
them the example of their spiritual guides as leaders in vice and
debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions of
morality were destroyed and the confusion between right and wrong
became hopeless. The world has probably never seen a society more
vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart fascinate us with
their pictures of the artificial courtesies of chivalry; the
mystic reveries of Rysbroek and of Tauler show us that spiritual
life survived in some rare souls, but the mass of the population
was plunged into the depths of sensuality and the most brutal
oblivion of the moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that
the priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with
them, the laity were holy. What was that state of comparative
holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he writes, for the
benefit of confessors, giving a terrible sketch of universal
immorality which nothing could purify but fire and brimstone from
heaven. The chroniclers do not often pause in their narrations to
dwell on the moral aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals
of Flanders, under date of 1379, tells us that it would be
impossible to describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries,
blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,
rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery,
avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness: and similar
vices, and he illustrates his statement with the fact that in the
territory of Ghent, within the space of ten months, there
occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders committed in the
bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and other similar
places. When, in 1396, Jean sans Peur led his Crusaders to
destruction at Micopolis, their crimes and cynical debauchery
scandalized even the Turks, and led to the stern rebuke of
Bajazet himself, who as the monk of St. Denis admits was much
better than his Christian foes. The same writer, moralizing over
the disaster at Agincourt, attributes it to the general
corruption of the nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an
alternation of disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought
but fraud and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her
tithes, and ordinary conversation was a succession of
blasphemies. The Church, set up by God as a model and protector
of the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops,
through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual
accepters of persons; they annointed themselves with the last
essence extracted from their flocks, and there was in them
nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of decent.