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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
**** ****
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 13
ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
THE ROMAN CHURCH, THE POOREST IN CULTURE
AND RICHEST IN CRIME
by Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS
**** ****
CHAPTER
I Who Are the Catholic 300,000,000 .................... 1
II The Minimum of Scholarship and Maximum of Crime ..... 9
III Rome Loves the Poor Illiterate ..................... 18
IV The Myth of Its Patronage of Learning .............. 24
**** ****
Chapter I
WHO ARE THE CATHOLIC 300,000,000?
It occurred to me while I was revising the manuscript of the
preceding book that most readers would like to have, before I
proceed further, a full and clear statement of the grounds on which
I challenge, in fact disdainfully reject, the total numbers of
Catholics in the world that are usually given. These numbers vary
in Catholic writers and standard works of reference from
250,000,000 to nearly 400,000,000. The figure given in the new
Encyclopedia Americana by a Catholic expert is 294,583,000. The
figure in the Catholic Directory, which may be described as an
official publication of the British Catholic authorities, is
398,277,000. Authoritative works of reference, which take amazing
pains to ascertain exactly how many tons of steel are produced
annually in, or tons of rice imported into, the United States give
world-totals which similarly differ from each other by tens of
millions when they turn to "the venerable Church of Rome."
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
Does it matter? Yes, it matters very seriously for three
reasons. First, these big figures are an essential part of the
bluff which priests put up when they claim, as they do in America,
special consideration and privileges for their Church. Secondly,
they are an important part of the deception which these priests
practice on their own followers, since they give, and are intended
to give, Catholics a vague impression that their creed has not
merely been that of the civilized world for fifteen centuries but
is endorsed by the largest body of men and women in the leading
countries of the modern world. Thirdly, the publication of these
figures by Catholic writers and authorities affords a rich
illustration of that recklessness and untruthfulness of statement
which it is the aim of these booklets to expose.
The Church of Rome knows within very much closer limits how
many members it has. Every priest makes an annual report to his
bishops -- I have assisted in this job -- and these reports provide
national totals which are forwarded to Rome. Two things, amongst
others, are reported: how many Catholics in the loose sense --
baptized persons -- there are in the parish and, particularly, how
many of them are real Catholics as testified by attendance at
church on Sundays and the number of confessions at Easter. But
neither local prelates nor the Vatican ever publish these results.
The nearest approach to an official international annual is Orbis
Catholicus, and it gives no world-total; though if you add up the
statements for each country the total runs to about 350,000,000.
The sum-total is therefore usually compiled by an entirely
dishonest method, but even professors of sociology who include the
Churches as socially valuable agencies never condemn this.
Countries which, from geographical or historical conditions, never
accepted the Reformation are still called Catholic countries, and
the whole population is usually included in the Catholic total or
only from 1 to 5 percent is allowed for Protestants, Jews, and --
though they generally form the largest body -- skeptics. These
countries (France and its colonies, Italy, Spain and its former
colonies, Portugal and its colonies, Spanish America, and generally
Austria), with a total population of more than 200,000,000 make the
bulk of the Catholic figure. For other countries the figures are
equally fantastic. The Catholic writer in the Encyclopedia
Americana gives 11,000,000 to Russia, where no Catholic claims more
than 3,000,000 and there are now certainly not 300,000: 39,000,000
to Austria and Hungary, which have had for quarter of a century a
total (mixed) population of only 15,000,000: 24,000,000 to Germany,
where the Church is in ruins: 35,000,000 to France, which is at
least five times too much.
In examining these figures we must clearly understand the
conditions. What is a Catholic or a member of the Roman Church? The
Canon Law is simple and peremptory: everybody who once received
Catholic baptism. American Catholic writers are uneasy about this
arrogant theory of their Church that you cannot secede from it, and
they are shifty and evasive in defining what they mean when they
claim that there are more than 26,000,000 Catholics in the United
States. In a fantastic -- Catholics call it a scientific -- work,
Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? (1925), Fr. G. Shaugnessy says
that by Catholic he means one who has received Catholic baptism,
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
marries in the Church and has his children baptized, and at death
receives the last sacraments. He at once admits that the third
condition is "rather theoretical" -- he is perfectly aware that it
is not taken into account -- and he ought to know, and probably
does know, that Irish, Italian, and other Catholics commonly marry
in the Church and allow the mothers or relatives to have the
children baptized though they have definitely abandoned it. From
quotations given in Moore's 'Will America Become Catholic?' (1931)
it appears that in Catholic periodicals Fr. Shaugnessy, a professor
at a Catholic college, is accustomed to give the usual definition
of a Catholic: one who was baptized in infancy. This is the strict
law of the Church, and it is the guiding principle of the priests
who compile the parochial statistics from which the national and
world-totals are compiled.
Now we have no objection to Catholics making fools of
themselves by repeating "Once a Catholic always a Catholic," which
entails that in their opinion I, whom they call "the bitterest
enemy" of the Church, am a Catholic. Hoodwinked as they are, they
do not see that the real purpose of the Church in laying down this
seemingly extravagant proposition is so that when a country which
had disowned the Church and has been reduced by violence, as so
often happened in the 19th Century and has happened in a score of
countries today, it can break the rebels by jail, torture, or
execution. They are its subjects. We do not blame Catholics for not
knowing that, but at least, we can expect them to say, when they
boast that there are 20,000,000 Catholics in America and
300,000,000 in the world, that they include tens of millions who
though baptized in infancy, rejected the creed when they grew to
manhood or womanhood. We shall see presently cases in which
Catholic American bishops and canonists have incited priests
deliberately to include these seceders in their statistics.
The general public, in short, is grossly deceived, and is
meant to be deceived. In common honesty and common sense "members
of a Church" means men, women, and children who accept its creed,
are in touch with its local organization, and more or less
regularly attend its services. What I have said in earlier books --
what I have proved by official statistics -- about the spread, for
instance, of atheistic Communism and Socialism in the last 20 years
shows that at least 50,000,000 adults who are included in the
figure of 300,000,000 loathed and despised the Church and creed as
long as they were free to express their sentiments. But apart from
these there are, especially in America, millions of others who have
thought their way out of the creed and quietly severed their
connection with the Church.
The only real test is attendance at church. There are two
vital differences to bear in mind in comparing Protestant and
Catholic statistics. Many Churches do not baptize children and by
"members" they mean the adolescent and adult, but the Church of
Rome counts babies a week old. The second difference is that a man
may be a genuine member of a Protestant Church yet attend the
services very irregularly. A Catholic cannot. He is, unless there
is "grave reason" (illness, etc., not a social engagement or
tiredness.), bound to attend every Sunday morning as stringently as
he is prohibited adultery and much more stringently than he is
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
forbidden to lie, get drunk, be cruel, or rob this neighbor. It is
only a rare and abnormal type of mind that, holding this belief,
can miss Mass Sunday after Sunday -- hell every time. though the
sentences run concurrently since they are eternal -- for frivolous
reasons; and to question the law is to question the authority of
the Church or the whole distinctive structure of Catholic teaching.
Thus the distinction between "practicing" and "non-practicing" (or
floating") Catholics is a mere trick of apologists to excuse
dishonest statistics.
Now take the various national constituents of the grand total
of 300,000,000 or 350,000,000; and, as all these figures refer to
the period before Papal-Fascism destroyed freedom in a score of
countries, we need not worry about the obscure situation in France,
Spain, etc., today. France is, in all these totals, credited with
39,000,000 or 40,000,000 Catholics in a total population of
41,000,000. It is amazing how American Catholics swallow this.
Until the political alliance of the Vatican and the French
government began in 1919, on the Church's promise to curb rebellion
in Alsace-Lorraine, Rome had thundered against that "government of
Jews and Freemasons" for 50 years. It had ruined the Church in
France and defied the Pope's. And it had the vast majority of the
people with it, since, in free elections, the Catholics could
hardly get a deputy, much legs a statesman, in Congress. French
culture was solidly anti-Roman. Its hundreds of scientific men were
nearly all Atheists -- even Pasteur, Fabre, and Bernard were not
Catholics -- and of its leading writers nine-tenth's were anti-
Roman.
But I need not labor the point. Reviewing the position
carefully in 1937, after 18 years of the Catholic influence of
Alsace-Lorraine and the government's encouragement of the Church,
-- I found French Catholic writers agreed with me. Andre Goddard
(Le surnaturel contemporain, 1922) described his country as
overwhelmingly irreligious and said that in no other age had
Frenchmen been "so little interested in the truth." Georges Goyau
(L'effort catholique dans la Franee d'aujourdhui, 1922) gave an
account of all the supposed triumphs of his Church in France since
1919 (so much admired in the American Catholic press) and finally
left it open "whether there are in France today ten million
practicing Catholics, as some say, or only five million, as others.
say." Denis Gwynn, a strictly orthodox Irish writer and, as an
important foreign correspondent in Paris a high authority, agreed
with Goyau and distrusted the higher figure of 10,000,000. This
agrees with my finding after a severe analysis of the evidence in
my 'Decay of the Church of Rome' (1909). I said that there were
5,000,000 to 6,000,000 Catholics in France. The eminent French
authority on religion P. Sabatier insists that I was too generous:
that the figure was 4,000,000. The incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine
in 1919 raised my figure to 7,000,000, and this is supported by the
Catholics Goyau and Gwynn. Now that Alsace and Lorraine have gone
the figure drops again to between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000. Take the
more generous figure. We strike off, with the leading Catholic
experts in agreement, 33,000,000 from the number of French
Catholics in the world-total.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
Of Germany I have written so mush recently that I will be
brief. There never were in Germany the 24,000,000 Catholics claimed
in Orhis Catholicus and the Americana. The election-figures and
explanations which I gave in the First Series of these booklets
proved that beyond question Catholics were one-seventh, not one-
third, of the adult community or, including children a little more
generously, about 10,000,000 to 12,000,000. Catholic papers which
I quoted admit that they are far less today, but we will avoid the
present compared period. The 24,000,000 German Catholics included
in a world-total of 300,000,000 or more were not in reality more
than 12,000,000. We strike off a further 12,000,000, or, if the
biggest Catholic figure is pressed upon us, we strike off
20,000,000 on the ground of indisputable facts and statistics.
The Italians (42,000,000) are "practically all Catholics,"
Says the Orbis, though the Americana claims only 32,000,000.
Strange how these mighty Catholic majorities are so helpless
politically until some Nazi or Fascist thug is called in Italy had
for 50 years (from 1870 onward) a government and a monarchy which
were under the ban of excommunication. I traveled all over Italy in
1904 as a delegate to a Congress of Freethinkers, and my yellow
ticket evoked friendly smiles and reductions of price everywhere:
except, I regret to say at the Vatican. Nine-tenths of the leading
novelists, poets, and dramatists as well as the scientists were as
in France, Freethinkers. . . . But enough. The electoral figures I
gave in No. 1 of the Appeal to Reason prove that at the time when
innocent foreigners were talking about 40,000,000 Catholic Italians
they were not more than a third of the population. Strike off at
least 20,000,000 (Liberals, Socialists, and Communists) from the
grand total.
The case of Spain ought to be still easier. but when a non-
Catholic writer like Seldes assures America that all are Catholics
in Spain except 100,000 we wonder. At the time when Seldes said
this (The Catholic Crisis, 1939) an anti-ecclesiastical government,
established at one free election after another in spite of the
hysterical curses of the hierarchy, had ruled Spain and defied the
Pope and Church for five years, and it took the sweepings of
Europe, assisted by a British Society for Non-Intervention (or for
Protecting Intervention) and an American Embargo, to put Humpty
Dumpty back on the wall, where he wobbles until the day of freedom
returns. The Irish Jesuit -- and if you know anything more orthodox
come up and see me some time -- Fr. Gannon said in the Irish Times,
January 23, 1937, that there are in Spain "ten or fifteen million
Catholics." Split the difference and say 12,000,000, mostly
belonging to the illiterate 40 percent of the nation, and strike
another 15,000,000 off the Catholic total for Europe.
In that total the Americana counts 26,060,000 for Austria and
13,000,000 for Hungary. The Catholic writer is, of course, aware
that this is a reference -- and not accurate even as such -- to the
population of Austria-Hungary before 1919. Nearly 20 years before
he wrote this article Austria had been reduced to a population of
7,000,000 and Hungary to one of 9,000,000. In Austria, moreover,
the Socialists had been in the majority and held power in Vienna
and several other cities for years, so that the Catholics, mostly
peasants, were not 93 percent (Orbis) of the population but,
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
certainly not more than two-thirds. In Hungary, which recoiled into
Fascism after the unfortunate Communist episode, they are not
13,000,000 but are officially returned as 65 percent of the actual
population or 6,000,000. Deduct a further 12,000,000.
In Russia, which the Orbis significantly overlooks, the
Americana audaciously claims 11,000,000 Roman Catholics! How the
... you ask. It is like so many frauds, simple. The Catholic writer
refer's -- and again inaccurately -- to the Russia of more than 20
years earlier, when it ruled Poland. Well, you may say, any man of
common sense will allow for that, but you do not see the point. The
Americana says that Catholics number 294,000,000 today and through
this geographical shuffle is able to count many twice. We shall see
a very pretty specimen of this pious work presently.
Belgium (population 8,000,000) is credited with 7,000,000
Catholics (Americana) or "most of the people" (Orbis). I lived (as
a monk) for a year there, and the Belgian friars forbade me to
appear in my robes on the streets of Brussels as the ensuing
blasphemy would be painful. This was 45 years ago, and the
Catholics have waged an even battle with the contemptuously anti-
Catholic Liberals and Socialists ever since until the devout Hitler
murdered the Church's critics for it. Portugal (7,000,000) is said
to be "mostly" Catholic. As it is still 50 percent illiterate I
would not mind much, but the fact is that it kicked out its
Catholic king 32 years ago and kept its angry Church to heel until
the butcher Salazar joined the Butchers Union of Europe. Czecho-
Slovakia (15,000,000 until 1939) is described in the Orbis as 80
percent Catholic. Turn over No 5 of the last series and see how the
leading Catholic weekly in Britain acknowledged a loss of 2,000,000
in five years after 1919. The Church was in ruins until Hitler's
salvage Corps set it up again in Slovakia, one of the most
illiterate regions of Europe.
But we need not run over all these smaller countries. The
Americana says that there are 183,000,000 Catholics in Europe. How
consoling to Americans! But on the safest of grounds -- full
particulars and authorities in earlier numbers -- we have had to
strike off something like 100,000,000 of these and in the next
chapter we shall see the quality of what is left. Let us first get
the number.
We turn to America, and here the writers in the Americana
ought to be careful and conscientious because, while the
Encyclopedia is weak culturally, it is great on American
statistics. He says that there are 50,000,000 Catholics in North
America and 44,000,000 in the South. Not being an American I have
to be modest, but as the population of South America is about
90,000,000 and half its inhabitants are illiterate, I should be
inclined to grant it at least 50,000,000 Catholic's. On the other
hand, even if we grant the 20,000,000 Catholics demanded in the
States and the 4,500,000 claimed in Canada, and the 14,000,000
claimed in Mexico, I hardly see how they amount, even in Catholic
arithmetic, to 50,000,000. Pray do not be impatient with my little
jokes. I am showing you how the Catholic total is made up.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
To claim 90 percent (Orbis) of the Mexicans is, in view of the
notorious political development of recent years, so fatuous that I
won't linger over it. Yes, I am quite aware that any sensible
Catholic will admit that, but does he realize that the grand
Catholic total which he flourishes is based upon such tricks? South
America, on the other hand, is too big a field to cover here. I
will be content to claim that in earlier booklets I have shown that
the middle-class is substantially skeptical though outwardly more
reverent to the Black International since it entered into a
definite and highly respectable alliance with Fascism; and that the
very rapid spread of Communism after 1920 took some tens of
millions of the urban and industrial workers out of the Church.
Nine-tenths of the population of 90,000,000 are usually claimed in
the Catholic total, and at least 20,000,000 must be subtracted.
It is of greater interest here to examine the situation in the
United States. Let us first get a clear general idea what
Catholicism in America means. It consists of immigrants from Europe
(and partly from Quebec and Mexico) and their descendants. And in
this connection I have to notice the funny and learned book of
Father Professor Shaugnessy,'Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith?'
(1925). The zealous priest had noticed that a dozen Catholic
authorities asserted that there has been a monstrous secession --
their estimates vary from 15,000,000 to 25,000,000 -- from the
Church of these immigrants and their descendants, and he sets out
to rebuke all this nonsense by a "scientific" analysis of the
official statistics. He does not condescend to notice that I
published a severe analysis of these figures in 1909 and proved
that there was a leakage of over 15,000,000. Even in his lengthy
and learned-looking bibliography my book is not mentioned. That is
how Catholics are treated even by their "professors." But I will
not imitate his rudeness by ignoring his book.
He proves triumphantly that the immigrants have kept the faith
and that there has been no serious leakage, but one illustration of
his method will suffice here. In a final summary table he gives the
number of immigrants between 1820 and 1920 as 14,592,613 from
"Catholic countries" and 19,062,190 from "non-Catholic countries."
You at once notice something peculiar. In the former category he
includes only 165,000 Poles, and he must have known that in 1920
there were, according to the official census, 284,000 persons in
New York and Chicago alone who had been actually born in Poland!
Surely, you will say, everybody knows that there have been millions
of Catholic Polish immigrants. Observe the cleverness of Catholic
science. Before 1920 there was no Poland. The country was mainly
under Russia, and Russia is a "non-Catholic" country, so the
immigrants are all put under Russia. Germany again, which sent
nearly a fourth of the immigrants, is a "non-Catholic" country. But
during that period it was one-third Catholic, and its immigrants
came predominantly from Catholic provinces. In fine, if you add the
millions of Catholic German and Polish immigrants to the total from
Catholic countries (taking off a small percentage for non-
Catholics) you get well over 20,000,000 Catholic immigrants; and
since the majority of these came in between 50 and 100 years ago
they ought now to number between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000! "Where
are the snows of yesteryear?"
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
Apart from these little oddities of apologetic literature
American Catholic statistics are weird and wonderful. In the last
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was revised by
Catholic's in order to secure accuracy about their Church, it is
said that the "official figure" for the year 1928 was 19,689,049 --
the Catholic Press Directory said 21,453,928 -- the "generally
accepted" figure, 22,733,254, and the "true" figure 25,000,000.
Observe the accuracy down to a unit of most of these figures,
though they differ from each other by millions. However, the
"official" figure in the latest census of religions, after ten
year's of glorious fertility of Irish, Polish, Italian, and German
Catholic families, a fair amount of further immigration, and half
a million converts, is 19,914,937, and the Orbis Catholicus,
Encyclopedia Americana, and Catholic Directory are content with
20,000,000. Catholic statistics in America are farcical and their
"remarkable growth," as Catholic officials in the Census Bureau are
allowed to call it, is a myth. Even their own figures do not show
the Church growing, in spite of its higher birth rate, at the same
pace as the general population.
How many really are there? They do not know themselves. The
official (Census) figure is made up of claims by the priests and
the bishops. The egregious Fr. Shaugnessy goes so far as to say
that the parish priests often deliberately understate (which means
lie about) the number of their parishioners so that the bishop will
not be tempted to split the parish (and -- the apologist does not
say this -- halve the income of the priest). What a disreputable
suggestion! I mean, the priests do notoriously lie, or, inflate the
numbers, but it is for the glory of the Church and is covered by
the canonical principle that a seceder is still a Catholic.
I made a very thorough study of the matter, following upon the
analysis of official statistics in my Decay of the Church of Rome
(1909), in No. 1 of the Appeal to Reason Library (ch. 5, 1925).
There I give Catholic evidence, largely taken from J.F. Moore's
useful book 'Will America Become Catholic?', (1931), that priests
do in fact, and are sometimes so advised by the bishops, deceive
the public by counting lapsed as actual Catholics. A check on their
figures in Milwaukee showed that they claimed 10,000 Italians and
only 1,000 of them attended church. In another city 28 percent of
the supposed Catholics never went to church: in a third city 42
percent: in a fourth 38 percent. There is abundant evidence that at
least one-third must be deducted from official figures. The number
of children in Catholic primary schools confirms this. The Black
International may object that they have not schools for all their
children, but this weakness is offset by the fact that in the
cities very large numbers quit the Church during the post-school
years. The main fact to bear in mind is, however, the emphatic
Catholic law and teaching that baptized persons whether they
profess to have rejected the creed or not, are members of the
Church and must be entered in its statistics.
Let us still be generous and take off only one-quarter: a very
modest deduction when we remember that the claims of these priests
for other countries are as we saw, exaggerated by from 100 to 600
percent. There are not more than 15,000,000 genuine Catholics in
America. There are possibly not more than 13,000,000 or one-tenth
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
of the population. The world-total of Catholics is not 390,000,000
or 290,000,000. It is not 200,000,000 and is probably round about
180,000,000. These are the contributing members of an economic
corporation the governing caucus of which at Rome, apart from the
national branches, gets something like a billion dollars a year,
and largely in American money, for its international plotting and
for the comfort of the Italian hierarchy.
Chapter II
THE MINIMUM OF SCHOLARSHIP AND
THE MAXIMUM OF CRIME
My London papers report today (March 13) that "Washington has
protested to the Vatican 'because it is encouraging' a Jap Bid to
Stir up Trouble." What precisely the State Department objects to is
not clear but the public is informed that it is to "the
establishment of relations between Japan and the Holy See, as asked
for by Tokyo." Those relations were, as I have repeatedly
explained, established year's ago. Five years ago I told how the
Vatican entered into friendly relations with Japan after the
Manchurian outrage (1931), when it was vital to the future of
civilization that the bandits should be condemned and punished by
the whole world, and how the friendship ripened into a cordial
diplomatic alliance (1935) with exchange of ambassadors and the
most graceful courtesies, exactly in proportion as the Japs sank
deeper into crime and corruption. In booklets (No. 2 and No. 4) of
the first series on the Black International I traced the whole
story and told from the Pope's own newspaper, how one of the vilest
of Japanese agents Matsuoka, fresh from the final meeting of the
bloody conspirators in Berlin (1941), was received with special
honor and warmth at the Vatican and granted a gold medal by the
Pope.
And the press would now like us to believe that after ten
years of this unconcealed courtship Washington has just discovered,
presumably through its Secret Service, that the Japs have
approached the Vatican! What is really wrong about the matter? Very
certainly Washington knew every step in the development of the
relations of the Vatican and the Japs, and there must have been few
editorial offices of any importance in the United States in which
they were not known. Why were they concealed from the public or
mentioned only in obscure paragraphs as items of little
significance?
We are not fanatical and do not ascribe every evil of our time
to the Black International. The interest's of trade had a good deal
to do with the suppression of discussion as far as Japan is
concerned. But there was little to discuss in Japan seeking an ally
in Europe. The monstrous thing was the closer and closer approach
of the Vatican to Japan as it strode foully and bloodily from one
province of China to another. Can there be the slightest doubt that
one of the advantages the Japs sought in the alliance was that the
Catholic influence should counteract in all countries, and
particularly in America, the growing concern of serious people at
their aggressions! That, at all events, is what happened.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
It is one illustration of the evil that is done by the Black
International in America in putting its own interests before
national interests or those of the race. The aspect of this that
concerns us here is that press and politicians say that the Church
of Rome is so important an institution in America that they are
bound to consult its wishes and are naturally reluctant to see
anything wrong in its proceedings. Most of us will not accept the
apology. Many American papers told in 1935 how the Vatican and
Tokyo were arranging an alliance; and many others told in the same
year how Japan seethed with patriotic societies, some of them two
to three million strong, which demanded the expulsion of all
Americans and Europeans from Asia, and how tableaux depicting just
such a destruction of part of the American fleet as occurred
recently in Pearl Harbor were publicly exhibited to jubilant crowds
in the chief streets of the cities. But there were no editorials or
feature articles pointing out the connection such as there were
denouncing Russia. The world-press bears a terrible share of the
responsibility for the world-tragedy; and one reason is that it is
to a lamentable extent under the influence of the Catholic Church.
One of the chief aims of the present series of booklets is to
show that in submitting to this influence the press took the Church
at its own valuation yet could, if it had taken half the trouble it
takes over an obscure murder, have discovered that the valuation is
monstrously false. We have now seen this as far as the size of the
Church is concerned. There are not 25,000,000, not 20,000,000, but
something less than 15,000,000 Catholics in America. The Pope has
not 390,000,000 but less than 200,000,000 subjects. Seeing,
however, that the chief excuse given for subservience to the Roman
Church is that it contributes materially to American civilization,
it is still more important to examine the quality of the Pope's
subjects.
We have already seen the hypocrisy of the Roman claim of moral
influence. The priests are very eloquent about sex-matters, in
regard to which Catholics do not appear to be different from other
folk, while the theories of ancient history with which they try to
prove a connection between sexual freedom and the decay of
civilization ought not to impress even a politician. Of the evils
which do deeply affect the social welfare -- crime, corruption, and
greed -- they take no effective notice. They are, in fact, amongst
the stoutest defenders of the greed which forbids the full
development of our resources and the betterment of the condition of
the mass of the people.
But the cultural pretensions of the Roman Church are even
worse. It puts, and has always put, a blight on the higher culture
which assuredly is a valuable element of civilization, and at every
level it restricts the mental development of the people in its own
interest. There is a well-known analysis of the religious
"preferences" of the 40,000 Americans, presumably of distinction,
in Who's Who in America. We recognize the limitations of the work.
Whether or no it is true that any clergyman or any nun who has
written a book or two can get into that Valhalla of the living by
pledging himself to buy a copy of the book every year, as is the
case with some books of reference, it is obvious that the business
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
of the work is to supply information about any man or woman who at
the time is in the public eye or ear, whether they be singled out
for skill in literature, sport, the cinema, church-organization,
banking, or striptease.
With this qualification we see a pregnant significance in the
analysis of the names which Professors Huntington and Whitney
published in their Builders of America a few years ago. They found
that Catholics are represented in Who's Who by only 7.4 per 100,000
of their body (7 men and 0.4 women), and these are very largely --
but the professors do not point out this -- ecclesiastics. You will
gather what this means when I add that even the Mormons, with 11
men and 5 women to the 100,000, outshine them; while the Methodists
have 18 men and 0.6 women. The Episcopalians have 156 men and 18
women: the Unitarians (who are largely freethinkers in America)
have 1,185 men and 103 women per 100,000. In other words, the
farther a Church is removed from the Roman -- belonging to the
Episcopalian is, of course, a matter of respectability -- the
higher its cultural distinction.
What do the Catholics say to that? They say that it merely
shows the snobbishness of non-Catholics and the manly modesty of
Catholics! I should like these Catholic writers who have this fine
American contempt for snobbery to study the British Catholic. Who's
Who. It is, at least, published in London, but Al Smith and other
"great Americans" figure in it. In discussing this cultural poverty
of the Roman Church in America, to which he quotes several Catholic
witnesses, J.F. Moore (Will America Become Catholic?) speaks of
Romanism in Britain as more distinguished. There are, he says, no
Catholic writers in America to compare with Chesterton, Noyes,
Shane Leslie, Benson, (Father) Martindale, (Father) Knox, and
Sheila Kaye-Smith. If you have read these you will reflect that the
American Catholic body must be very poor indeed, in illumination if
it is outshone by that galaxy: especially as Chesterton's
brilliance -- if you care to use the word -- was increasingly
dimmed and his influence increasingly more mischievous after he
joined the Church of Rome and became a sort of pensioner of it. The
"brilliance" of Father Martindale and Father R. Knox must be a
little joke of Mr. Moore's, as he is usually judicious. However,
against these British giants of the pen American Catholics can, he
says, put only Joyce Kilmer -- what a pity he died nearly a quarter
of a century ago -- though he elsewhere adds Carlton Hayes, Michael
Williams, G.W. Schuster, Kathleen Norris, and Agnes Repplier. You
will have heard of some of them. He adds that American Catholicism
is still poorer in science. A score of American physicists have an
international reputation, and none of them are Catholics, while on
the biological side the Church is still poorer.
We will return presently to the question of distinction in
science. It is much easier for an artist to be a Catholic. He has
none of these intellectual prejudices about truth and reality and
is as ready to embrace any creed that is prettily dressed as
anything that is pretty undressed. So we do not wonder at the
number of artists. To the literary artists (British Catholics)
given above add Belloc, Sir P. Gibbs, Compton Mackenzie, W.
Meynell, Christopher Dawson, and a few other good second-raters.
Then there are devout artists like Sir Seymour and Lady Hicks,
Charles Laughton, Sir F. Brangwyn, Sir John Lavery, and Sir G.G.
Scott.
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But the chief reason why I recommend you to see this Catholic
Who's Who is because you will find it the most amusing Book of
Snobs on the market. I should explain that, although it is
published in England it has no patriotic limitations. Chiefly, I
imagine, because the compilers felt that there are a few scurvy
folk who would count how many real intellectuals there are amongst
the thousand names and all that they could find in Great Britain
were three or four teachers of chemistry or mathematics at minor
universities, they searched the whole Empire on which the sun never
sets and the whole English-speaking world, ransacked Eire and Malta
(which are as full of titles as fleas), and dipped into France,
Belgium, Italy, and a few other countries. So they got together a
body of Catholic scientists, with your American Dr. J.J. Walsh as
the supreme representative, who would almost fill a Junker plane.
I forgot how many laborious days it took me to collect from the
book just as many Catholic teachers of science in the area covered
(total population about 250,000,000) as I can count on the fingers
of two hand's.
But that is incidental. The chief purpose of the book is to
give the cream -- and it is very rich cream -- of Catholicism in
Britain, Eire, Malta, etc.: the aristocratic and semi-aristocratic
families down to junior lieutenants of the army and navy provided
they belong to families which never sank to the level of earning
their own living. These and the clergy nearly fill the book.
Titles, diamonds, and gold glitter on every page. The book seems to
cry at you: Look whom you may hope to meet if you join the Catholic
Church. Next in importance are the diplomats -- the gentlemen who
kept the blinds down at Paris, Brusseig, Vienna, Rome, Madrid, and
Lisbon while the bandits armed and the traitors said their prayers
-- the naval and military commanders, and the high civil servants
and legal officials, who are all of great service to the Church.
After that you will surely not be disgruntled because the men of
intellectual distinction, if you grant that description to ordinary
university professors, are less than a dozen out of the, thousands
of professors in the area covered.
Some Catholics meet this by saying that it is a vulgar
business counting heads (unless they bear coronets), or that they
prefer to think about the really great men of science of earlier
times; especially, it seems, of the time when in the eyes of the
Church the only good scientist was a dead scientist. We will return
to that in a later book. These pleas are, in any case, frivolous.
The compilers of the book ranged from California to New Zealand in
search of scientists or other men of intellectual as opposed to
artistic or social distinction and they did not find enough to make
a football-team. There is another, a very impartial and objective,
way of proving this.
I suppose the Nazis have included in their monumental thefts
the seizure of the fund which Alfred Nobel left in Sweden to
provide five rich prizes every year for the world's most
distinguished workers in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature,
and the cause of peace. However, the prizes have been awarded for
nearly 40 years and apart from a little patriotic bias in favor of
Scandinavian and the little nations, the awards, based upon the
reports of competent committees in every country, are the safest
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possible indication of distinction. The Nobel Prize is the greatest
and most coveted in the world, and the award is the most impartial,
yet I doubt if five out of the whole 200 winners are or were
Catholics. It is significant that the Catholic Encyclopedia never
mentions the prize. Naturally the scientific recipients, the great
majority, have never written on religion, but after a careful
analysis I can find only Alexis Carrel who is recognizably a
Catholic.
It is different with the 37 recipients of the literary prize.
Here we should understand that the judges stipulate for "an
idealist tendency" in the works and are themselves religious, so
large numbers of the greater writers of modern tames (Wells,
Conrad, Zola, D'Annunzio, Sudermann, Capek, Galdo's, Ibanez, Gorki,
Tolstoy, Santayana, etc.) have been excluded because they were
freethinkers, while a few sentimental writers belonging to small
countries and hardly known outside these countries have been
included. Yet only 4 or 5 out of the 37 could be claimed as
Catholics of a sort, and the one writer amongst them who definitely
claims to be a convert to the faith, Mrs. Sigfrid Undset, has had
her novels chastised in the American Catholic press for their
"vileness."
The awarding of the Peace Prize is not so significant because
it is sometimes given to politicians or societies and does not in
any case imply any distinction in the subject except a zeal for
peace. Nevertheless, although the award of it was loose and in some
cases frankly ridiculous, I cannot trace more than one dubious
Catholic in the whole 38 recipients. In short, this supreme and
impartial tribunal, basing its judgment upon annual reports from
important committees in every country, for detecting the highest
distinction in science and letters has in 40 years been able to
give its award to only about half a dozen nominal (and mostly
dubious) Catholics, or to only 3 who definitely claimed to be
orthodox Catholics. In Who's Who Catholics are represented by 7.04
per 100,000 of their number: in this select gallery of men of real
cultural distinction they are represented by 1 in 100,000,000.
American Catholics despise and jibe at freethinkers as a rare
and negligible species. Well, of the 37 winners of the literary
prize, the only section in which you can look for public
expressions of opinion about religion, no less than 27 were avowed
freethinkers (and more than half of them Atheists). In the peace
section 13 out of the 29 selected individuals were avowed
freethinkers, and most of the others are not declared. One only was
in some sense a Catholic. In the scientific section few have given
a clue to their creed, as is the way of scientific men today, but
the great majority of those who have expressed themselves on
religion were freethinkers -- even Mme. Curie and her daughter
openly declared their secession from the Church -- and only one is
clearly a Catholic.
To put it differently, Catholics claim that they are a fifth
of the race, and if we grant them five Nobel Prize winners (though
Some are doubtful) they are one-fortieth of the world's leading men
and women of intellectual distinction. But this is still too
flattering to Catholics, They profess to number more than
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300,000,000 of the white race, from which the culturally
distinguished are almost entirely selected. In this sense they
profess to be one-third of the race yet are only one-fortieth of
its more distinguished stratum. And this agrees with what we found
from other sources and is fully confirmed by apologetic lists of
"great Catholic scientists." The names, when they are not
fraudulent, almost all belong to the past. Let them attempt to draw
up a list for this century. Professors of, and original workers in,
science are now ten times as numerous as ever but the Catholic
proportion of them shrinks into invisibility.
Hilaire Belloc said to me (with his characteristic thump of
the table) some years ago: "I don't care what you say, McCabe, the
intellect of Europe has been warped ever since the 16th Century."
It is one of his favorite themes that his Church alone develops the
intellect on sound lines or teaches folk to think clearly. In one
form or other it is a common plea of Catholic apologists. Well,
there is the answer in facts. The Church of Rome puts a blight on
culture and intellect. There is no other possible explanation of
the facts. Of adolescent and adult Catholics (about 100,000,000 in
the world) about one-half are illiterate, as I will show in the
next chapter, and half the remaining have only that paltry degree
of literacy which makes their creed or opinions of no particular
interest. The cultural value of the remainder you can judge by the
number of distinguished men who emerge from the body. When you are
considering a body of ten's of millions of men and women of a score
of races and different environments, the number of them that rise
to the top is a sure indication of the cultural quality of the
body.
All of which points infallibly to the conclusion that the
Church itself is responsible. One of those fine-natured writers who
are always trying to say a good word for Catholicism, which they
never study, asks all sweetly reasonable folk to see that mental
concern about religion must help to develop the mind and promote
thinking. We might admit this on one condition: that the man or
woman does really think about religion by reading both sides and
conscientiously weighing their arguments. That is just what the
Roman Church uses its heaviest weapons to prevent. The Catholic
book is a holy book: the critical book is a "bad" book and is on
the same level as the kind of book you cannot buy openly. If we are
agreed that democracy is the ideal political form, we agree also
that to teach all people to think critically and inquire without
restriction is the only way to get it to work satisfactorily. The
law of the Roman Church is just the opposite. You must not inquire
outside your own creed and you must not think critically even
within its range.
The second source of blight is that Catholic doctrine is so
really absurd that it repels the properly developed intellect. You
read of 40,000 converts a year -- about one to every priest in the
United State's -- but you rarely hear much about their mental
quality. They are mostly either people with money and not much
brain, or artistic people who do not take creeds literally, or men
and women who pass over for social reasons (marriage, etc.). And
while you hear a lot about the 40,000 a year who go in you hear
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nothing about the 100,000 a year who drop out, though even the
figures given in the official decennial census show such a lapse.
All sorts of motives draw people in, but it is always the falseness
or absurdity of the creed that drives them out.
Catholics with considerable general knowledge and mental
vitality will generally be found to take the creed with great
license. Pope Pius X, the peasant-Pope, in his blundering campaign
against Modernism was at least honest in trying to drive all these
people -- the real "bad Catholics" -- out of the Church, and there
was a notable exodus of cultivated people. Unlike the American
apologist the Pope did not care two pins about cultural quality. He
wanted folk who recited the creed every Sunday to mean what they
said. But every history of that campaign will tell you that while
a few conscientious men like Tyrell walked out the great majority
protected themselves by silence or, if they were in official
positions, foreswore the truth. "The great advantage of the
Catholic Church is the freedom it allows you," said a leading
Catholic writer and scholar to me. When I retorted, "Yes, if you'll
keep your mouth closed," he was silent. Most of the literary men
and artists who adorn the Catholic list never defend Catholic
doctrines (hell, original sin, etc.) in detail. You never know what
they really believe. As one of them said to me, they admire the
Church "as a whole." But the man whose main interest in life is
intellectual, the man who dislikes feudal systems for the mind,
despises this attitude. Hence that appalling poverty of the Church
in the higher culture which infallibly betrays that it puts a
blight on thinking. And this is the Church that demands privileges
in America because it contributes so materially to the higher life
of American civilization: the Church that keeps a staff in
Washington (as well as boon companions in the White House) to give
the government the profound advantage of "the Catholic view."
Below the college-trained -- let us say Catholic-college-
trained, as this is a very different matter -- stratum is the thick
stratum of the illiterate and semi-illiterate. I doubt if many
realize the importance of this in the Catholic Church, and I leave
it for adequate treatment in the next chapter. Here let us make
clear one of the most startling facts about the Church. It is very
poor in cultural distinction but exceptionally well represented in
the criminal class.
I have recently examined a dozen up-to-date American manual's
of sociology and penology. Crime, naturally, is discussed at great
length in them. Not only have the adventures of the G Men caught
the imagination of the nation but experts have worked out the cost
of the total volume of crime and shown folk that it is an
intolerable species of parasitism on the industrious community. One
result has been that in the last ten years much has been done to
create a real criminological literature in America. The division of
functions between Federal and State governments and corruption in
high places left America with the poorest criminal statistics in
the civilized world, but sociologists are steadily improving the
situation. We get not only gross totals but analyses which show the
incidence of crime as regards sex, age, environment, etc. But I
have not found one single sociologist who discusses, and
illustrates by statistics, the relation of crime to the religion or
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irreligion of the criminal's. It is left to journalists, essayists,
and apologists to stamp it upon the public mind that religion is
the great corrective. But whether it is so in fact they are
incapable of studying, and the scientific experts will not help
them. Because the Churches, and very particularly the Roman Church,
do not want the facts known. The whole of American literature is
not available to me but the more important works are, and when not
only these but such works as the Encyclopedia of Education, the
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and the Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, which ought to give the facts on this
important social-moral issue, are completely silent, I look for the
clerical censor. To adapt a phrase of Huxley's, there is a
barricade to sociological research with the notice: "No Road, by
Order of the Pope."
A few sets of figures have got out. In 1932 an Irish chaplain
at Sing Sing made an inquiry into the religion of the prisoners and
in the warmth of his indignation he sent the figures to be
published in The Commonweal (Dec. 14). He had found that 855 out of
1,581 prisoners described themselves as Catholics and were accepted
as such by him. This could be checked by a similar inquiry in the
jails of Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. but, of
course, no such inquiry was made. In D.C. Culver's exhaustive two-
volume Bibliography of Crime and Criminal Justice (1934 and 1939),
with about a thousand pages of literature, works on "Crime and
Religion" fill a few lines and list one paltry Catholic book and a
few apologetic articles. It is so much easier to talk rhetorically
about how Catholic training must help to keep down crime and
dismiss these prisoners as "not real Catholics"; though as baptized
persons they help to swell Catholic statistics.
But experience in other countries shows that the Sing Sing
statistics are normal and reliable. In Great Britain the religion
of prisoners is no longer published. The clergy do not approve of
the practice. But I find in a government publication of 10 years
ago when the religious analysis was still published, that in the
jails of Great Britain on March 28, 1906, there were 5,378 Roman
Catholic prisoners in a total of about 25,000, and it is stated
that this means that the Roman Catholics were represented in the
criminal population by 247 per 100,000 of their body. Even the
Church of England, to which large numbers of convicts profess to
belong (since officials insist on some creed) whether they do or
not, had only 118 per 100,000. The Methodists had 10, the Baptists
9, per 100,000.
In 1913 I discussed the subject in his office with my friend
Sir Robert Stout, Chief Justice of New Zealand, and he got his
staff to work out for me the figures for that Dominion. It
transpired that while Catholics were only 14.07 percent of the
total population they were 41.74 percent of the prison population.
In the same year a leading government official at Melbourne gave me
the figures for Victoria, and they told just the same story. But
Australia continues to publish this religious analysis, and anybody
may see the figures. The Victorian government reported in 1936 that
Catholics were 18 percent of the population of the province but
29.61 percent of the criminal population. The government of New
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South Wales reported (Statistical Register, p. 216) that 505
prisoners out of 1,330 in its jails were Catholics, though
Catholics are less than one-fifth of the total population of the
province.
And if any man still hesitates to see that these figures mean
that the Irish, with Roman Catholic training, are more apt to
become criminals than the English, Welsh, and Scottish -- the
English figures given above include a strong Irish element in
London, Liverpool, Newcastle, etc. -- let him study the statistics
of crime in Catholic countries. It is impossible to get complete
figures, as Catholic countries, being less efficient in such
matters than Protestant countries, rarely gave reliable statistics
until, recently (if at all), but the data in Mulhall's Dictionary
of Statistics for the last century and Webb's continuation of the
same work for the first decade of this century fully confirm the
truth as far as they go. Whatever allowance you make for different
standards of classification and degrees of police efficiency, the
more criminal status of Catholic countries and the far greater
success in reducing crime of non-Catholic countries leap to the
eye, as the French say.
One requires great caution in handling criminal statistics,
particularly in the relation of crime to religion. Countries like
Spain and Portugal, for instance, and especially the Latin-American
Republic's had far more crime than the figures published by the
inefficient police. I will return to the subject in the last book,
but certain undisputed facts may be given here.
Great Britain, in which the Catholics (mostly Irish) are less
than one-twentieth of the population and have no influence whatever
on the formation of the national character (except to swell the
criminal statistics) has the finest-record in the modern world in
reducing every class of crime and delinquency. The few figures
given in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (which has not
dared to touch the question of crime and religion) are confused,
but Mulhall gives authoritative tables. From these we learn that
since 1840 grave crime has been reduced to one-third of what it
used to be though the population has nearly trebled. Other social
offenses have been reduced in the same proportion. France has the
next best record in Europe, especially since 1880, when education
was taken out of the hands of the clergy, the Church was shut out
of public life, and Catholics fell to one-sixth or one-seventh of
the population.. Germany, where until the last few years Catholics
claimed to be a third, and were at all events more than a fourth,
of the population, has a less flattering record; but it is better
in Protestant Prussia than in the Catholic provinces. Italy had one
of the worst crime records in Europe until the Papacy was deprived
of secular rule in 1870, and it fell back -- as any, person can see
by the official Italian figures in the Statesman's Year Book --
into a terrible increase of crime when Mussolini handed back the
schools to the clergy.
But we have to consider crime and vice in Catholic countries
in the last book of this series -- we shall find that the reproach
extends to drunkenness, bastardy, etc. -- and I will there give the
available figures. I have established the second point of the
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present book. The government of the United States is confronted
with a claim that it must pay special heed to a Pope who has
300,000,000 subjects and a national Catholic Church which is not
only the largest religious body but the finest educational and
moral agency in America. Well, the Pope has not 300,000,000
subjects unless you care to count the millions who rot in the jails
or cower under the spiritual police in Italy, Spain, Portugal,
France, and South America. The Roman Church in America compiles its
total of 20,000,000 by the same dishonest method and is neither an
educational nor a moral force. Its priesthood so confines the
intelligence that few men and women of real intellectual power
associate with it, and its religious-moral education is of such a
nature that it actually supplies more to the criminal class than
any other Church does. It is the poorest in the kind of higher
culture which is a real factor in the advance of a civilization and
the richest in criminal or potentially criminal elements.
Chapter III
ROME LOVES THE POOR ILLITERATE
Just as I write my mail brings me a letter in which an
estimable lady, one who is eager to have the truth about the Roman
Church known, gently chides me for the "brutality" of the way in
which I put that truth before the public. She sends me authentic
information about life today in a Catholic country, a country whose
ruler is always treated with great respect in the British and
American press, which, when I hand it on -- probably in the next
book -- will make your hair stand on end. But I am urged to put it
more courteously. "Brutality" is, of course, a friendly
exaggeration, and I gather that the idea is that it would be more
effective to "let the facts speak for themselves."
I occasionally get such letter's. A few weeks ago a university
professor argued with me in the same vein. I "defeat my own end"
and so forth. And to all of it I reply that 45 years of experience
in such work, not bad temper, dictate the tone of my writings on
the Roman Church. Forty years ago I wrote a little work on the
Church of Rome which so astonished Hilaire Belloc, to whom a friend
lent it, that he thought, that in view of its extreme moderation,
it must be a forgery. It was a more dismal failure than any other
book I have ever written, whereas books in which my pen was allowed
to take its natural caustic course have had numbers of Catholic
readers and hundreds of thousands of others. Most people don't want
appeasement. When facts are brutal and doctrines are stupid say so.
Although this information which just reaches me is startlingly
picturesque and largely relevant to issues of the day no newspaper
in London would admit it, and no publisher would accept a book on
it. That goes also for America. They must not "offend Catholics."
And you will not alter that by simply telling facts. You need to
kindle indignation and resentment in your readers and persuade them
to pass on the facts to others. Courteous talk about Catholic
matters is so often merely a sign of prudence and calculation in
the writers that the kind of man or woman I want to read me resents
or suspects it.
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If I so; often blame the press I shall not be misunderstood.
No one expects a paper to defy a Catholic threat to injure its
circulation or cut off its Catholic advertiser's. I have worked on
several papers, as an outside member of the staff, and we
understand each other. I attack the system which imposes this
humiliating subservience on them, and more than one journalist or
publisher has wished me more power to my elbow.
And one of the most important moves in the attack on the
system is to expose the fraud of the Black International in
representing that the Church is far larger and more useful than it
is. Fraud? There you have at once the illustration of what I have
been saying about "strong" and "tactful" language. The Catholic
representation is fraudulent, and you do not tell half the truth
unless you say so. Every Catholic writer knows as well as I do that
his figure of 300,000,000 includes the 100,000,000 who, as I
showed, have left the Church, and he knows that the general public
does not suspect this, He knows as well as I do the cultural
poverty of the Church and its richness in crime, and he tries to
confuse the public mind about these facts by rhetoric and
sophistry. He knows, while he represents the Church as the mother
of education, the patroness of learning, the inspiration of clear
and honest thinking, that, as I will now show, it prefers people
who do not think at all, and the majority of its actual 180,000,000
subjects are either children or illiterate.
Practically all statistics that would give us sound material
for settling such a question as the social value of religion are
either fantastic or gravely defective. Our sociologists continue to
include religion amongst the factors of civilization, and our
politicians, journalists, and essayists are quite sure of it. But
in an age in which most other statistics are precise to a doctrinal
point the statistics which bear upon this question are grossly
neglected. We saw this in regard to the number of Catholic's and
the relation of Catholicism to crime. It is the same in regard to
Catholicism and illiteracy; and, I Might add, in regard to
Catholicism and drink, illegitimacy, and other relevant matters.
Statistics of illiteracy are in any case poor. Most countries
do not require a declaration in the census. They may report the
number of recruits when they are called up for military service or
the partners to a marriage who cannot sign their names, but the
backward countries are more apt today, when a high percentage of
illiteracy is a reproach, to give a false or arbitrary figure. Some
countries again include infants among the illiterate, some only
citizens over the age of 5, 10, or 15. With an allowance for their
difficulties I reproduce the table from the Columbia University
Encyclopedia of Education (article "Illiteracy") which is the most
reliable authority and the most recent, fairly full list I can
find. It has the advantage also that in nearly every case the
percentage of the population means over the age of ten. The list is
in alphabetical order, but the point we are considering will be
clearer if I rearrange the items in the order of educational
efficiency.
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One other caution is necessary. There are no annual reports on
this point. The leading civilizations boast of their very low
percentage of illiterates, but backward nations are coy, and you
get little help from the usual year-books such as the Statesman's
Year Book and World Almanac. This list therefore relates to the
situation in the first decade of the present century. That has its
advantages, and I will point out presently the immense alterations
which have to be made today in some cases (Russia, Mexico, Spain,
etc.). But first let me give this impartially compiled list:
Illiterates Illiterates
percent of percent of
Country population Country population
Germany (over 20) 0.03 Serbia (over 20) 36
Denmark 0.2 Hungary 40
Sweden (over 20) 0.3 Italy 48
Switzerland (over 20) 0.5 Argentina 54
Holland (over 20) 1.4 Greece 57
Finland 1-5 Spain 58
Scotland (over 20) 1.6 Poland 59
England and Wales 1.7 Rumania 61
United States (negroes Bulgaria 65
and immigrants) 7.7 Russia 70
France 14 Portugal 73
Ireland 17
Belgium 18 Bolivia 82
Austria 26 Brazil (total population)85
It need not be said that the countries -- nearly all non-
Catholic -- in which the percentage is only of the adult population
have slightly better records than they appear to have, and that the
quickening of educational work since 1900 by the pressure of world-
opinion and the rise to power of Liberal governments has greatly
lowered the worse figures. From the scattered data in the
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences for 1920 - 1925, moreover, I
find that still all countries with less than 1 percent illiteracy
(Denmark, Sweden, England, Holland, Scotland, and Switzerland) are
non-Catholic, all countries with 5 to 25 percent are non-Catholic
with a very high proportion of Catholics and were formerly under
Catholic rule, and all countries with 30 percent or over illiterate
are solidly Catholic. It further appears that Poland had still 32.8
percent, Chile 40.8 percent, Mexico 62.2 percent, and Brazil 71.2
(and probably higher) percent in 1920-1925.
In discussing social questions, such as the genuine social
value of an institution, an ounce of fact is worth a ton of
rhetoric. In the foregoing table, the items of which are not
selected by men, but by the highest educational authority in the
United Sates, you have the facts, and they make a mockery of the
claim that the Roman Church is the mother or inspiration of
education. They show that it is, on the contrary, the enemy of
education. It professes a zeal for it only when a large non-
Catholic majority watches it critically. In the Columbia table all
countries with less than 2 percent had small Catholic minorities of
no public influence in 1900. Germany is an exception but,
notoriously, it was Protestant Prussia that forced the educational
development. On the other hand all countries with over 30 percent
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illiterates had in 1900 Catholic (Roman or Greek) governments and
majorities; and the higher the figure of illiterates the higher the
Catholic majority. The intermediate countries had smaller Catholic
majorities or (as in France) had recently secularized education.
If I were able to give the full figures for all countries of
Europe and America they would be in harmony with the above. Norway
has little illiteracy: the Latin-American Republics generally have
a high percentage. So the plain teaching of facts is that where the
clergy have, or until recently had, great influence on the
government through a Catholic majority, education is bad.
And the deeper we go into the situation the worse we find it.
Thirty years ago I had occasion to study the situation in Spain,
where an occasional rise to power of the Liberals had at least done
more for education than was done in more priest-ridden Portugal. I
found that the real proportion of illiterates was said by eminent
educationists to be 68 percent (78 in Portugal), not 58 as reported
by Columbia, but what was called "literacy" was often so ridiculous
an accomplishment that the figure of percentage meant little.
Teachers received -- when they were paid -- $100 per year, but the
state would not pay it, and the parents generally refused. A law
was passed that there should be no, bull-fights where people would
not pay for a teacher, so in some places they gaily drove the
master to the ring and baited him instead of a bull. The schools
were barns, and the teachers had to do other work to get a living
of $3 a week. All the summer the children were wanted for
agricultural work. In short, until the Socialist-Liberal government
of 1932-36, which the Church ruined, began real education, half the
supposed literate one-third of the nation might be dismissed as
illiterate. That is true of Portugal and, apart from Mexico and
Argentina, of Spanish and Portuguese America today. In Spain itself
Franco and the hierarchy have demolished the splendid school-system
which the wicked Reds (with the cordial cooperation of most of the
university professors) had set up.
But all the figures I have given relate to the present
century, and by 1900 the Church had been compelled by the advance
of civilization to dissemble its hostility to the education of the
workers. What it did or did not do for education when it had
supreme power in the Middle Ages we will briefly consider in the
next chapter. All that concerns us in this book is the quality of
the 180,000,000 actual subjects of the Pope. It is, however,
necessary to be quite clear that the reduction of illiteracy in
Catholic countries points to no zeal on the part of the Church but
to the pressure of critics. Study the language used by the Vichy
group of pious traitors today. Petain is honest, if senile, and
must embarrass the Darlans and Lavals, if not the Vatican. He sees
a monstrous evil in the industrial development, the growth of a
large educated urban population that very soon sees through the
imposture of the priests. The world must return to the placid,
bovine, agricultural life, so that it can be more easily ruled by
the priests and squires.
We must make short work of this point, and fortunately it is
easy to do so. Glance at Europe in 1800, or at the date of the
French Revolution, I have shown elsewhere that except in three
countries 95 percent at least of the workers were illiterate and
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incredibly ignorant. The three countries of which I make an
exception were Protestant Prussia, Holland, and Switzerland, Great
Britain was the next to become civilized in this respect, but its
clergy had been little better than the Roman priests, and in 1800
certainly more than 90 percent of the worker's were illiterate. In
France, too, the anti-clerical, the Revolutionaries and Napoleon,
had made a beginning of education, though this was lost in the
Catholic reaction after Waterloo.
Catholic countries did not for many decades, and only then
under anti-clerical pressure, show any, sympathy with this zeal for
educating the workers. The leaders in the reform -- Frederick the
Great, Tallyrand, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Roberi Owen, Bentham, etc.
-- were all skeptics. Once the Holy Alliance and the true Reds or
Anti-Bolsheviks of those days, had extinguished idealism for the
Papacy in Southern Europe all this itching to educate the workers
was destroyed and the priests settled down everywhere to a renewed
lease, as they thought, of their medieval power and exploitation of
the people. It will be enough to consider the case of Italy, one-
third of which was ruled by the Popes and administered almost
exclusively by priests, while the southern section in addition was
in the closest touch with and subservient to the Vatican.
The southern part of Italy, the kingdom of Naples, is as
conspicuous a monument of the real Roman spirit as the Statue of
Liberty is of American ideals. Before the French Revolution
Voltairean statesmen and a liberal-minded monarch had made it one
of the most progressive areas in Europe. The troops of the
Revolution overran all Italy and strengthened the anti-clerical
humanitarianism of Naples. But when they were forced to withdraw,
the royalty and clergy, acting in the closest collaboration, had a
fearful revenge. Neapolitan historians of the time, the chief of
whom was a Catholic and royalist, insist that in the course of the
next 40 years the reactionaries slew 250,000 men, women, and
children of the reform party, and tens of thousands were in each
decade packed in the horrible jails. All educational and social
work was, of course, extinguished. The party which had advocated
such work and had had even in so small a kingdom at least half a
million followers also was extinguished, and the region became one
of the most backward in Europe. And our elegant essayists instead
of looking up this bloody story of the extinction of sound stocks,
which our manuals of history will not tell today from fear of
offending Catholics, talk in their charming way about the
Neapolitan and Sicilian character with its "dolce far niente," its
amiable laziness and impenetrability to modern ideas as if it were
as normal a feature of the sunny land as the olives and roses. It
is, on the contrary, the work of priests.
The kingdom of the Popes in Central Italy was just as bad. It
was, according to all authorities, one of the foulest areas in
Europe from the moral-social angle. It will be enough to quote the
official figures for 1901, when the national government had been
conducting for 30 years such educational work as the poor resources
permitted. Still 44 percent of Italians over the age of 20 were
illiterate, but it is the distribution of the illiteracy that is
most significant. In the north (Piedmont), where the Austrians had
not entirely neglected education when they ruled it and the
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Sardinian government which succeeded them had done more, the
illiterate's were 28.3 percent; and the statesmen who had thus
reduced illiteracy were under the Pope's ban of excommunication. In
the central and formerly Papal provinces (including Rome) the
illiterates were 51.5 percent, and in the southern provinces they
were 69.7 percent. In Piedmont, the old center of the damned
Italians and very anti-clerical, the illiterates were 17.69
percent: in Calabria, which was solidly Catholic, they were 78.70
percent.
Well, there's the real Rome for you. That is what the Catholic
Church does for education, when it runs a state or has, as in
Naples, absolute power over the kingdom. You will find these
figures in any of the older works of reference -- the Columbia
Encyclopedia, we saw, gives 48 percent for the whole country -- and
the facts about the condition of the Pope's own kingdom are in
every older historian, even in the standard Cambridge Modern
History (Vol XI). Your historians and sociologists of today won't
tell them. It would hurt the feelings of our Catholic fellow-
citizens -- to say nothing of hurting the circulation of the book.
So the Catholic apologists break into raptures about the Church's
zeal for education, about the way in which this misguided modern
world thwarts its noble efforts to teach folk to think clearly,
about the fearlessness with which it confronts all facts and all
truth. . . . It appears that some people expect me to talk politely
about these matters.
South America is notoriously worse than Italy, Spain, and
Portugal, and the more solidly Catholic the Republic the more
ignorant it is. Perhaps we shall be reminded of their poverty.
Brazil, with a capital which is a paradise of millionaires and its
vast hinterland which is described by expert's as one huge, squalid
hospital, has the most illiteracy. Is it poor? Then find out, why
a country with such stupendous resources can be poor, and You will
come back to the refusal to educate; and Brazil is today the worst
area on the American Continent for the Catholic persecution of
idealists. Add the Philippines and the French, Belgian, and
Portuguese colonies. Notice how the little states which Hitler is
permitting the Vatican to set up in the wilderness his troops make
-- Slovakia, Croatia, etc. -- are patches of deep Catholicism and
dense illiteracy. Read how the moment a state falls back under
priestly domination, after a spell of anti-clerical control its
educational system is destroyed or eviscerated. Ten years or less
ago American and international paedagogists were talking with great
admiration of the fine educational work at Madrid, Prague, and
Vienna. They are now silent. The cultural blight spreads from Spain
and Austria to France, Belgium, the Catholic provinces of Holland,
Czecho-Slovakia, and wherever the Butchers smirkingly lead back
their friends the priests to power. Rome loves the illiterate. They
are so easily persuaded to burn heretics and kiss bogus relics.
Above all examine carefully this sacred fury of the Vatican
against Reds, Communists, or Bolsheviks. As I have earlier pointed
out, the Vatican dare not say that its anger is kindled by the
political and economic theory of the Marxists; nor can we suppose
it to be particularly interested in their choice of a color. The
bitter hostility to them which was roused by the Popes throughout
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the Catholic world was based upon a tissue of lies about outrages
and one admitted fact -- that wherever Communism spread the Roman
Church lost millions of followers. And the reason why people fell
away from the Church in such crowds was that for the first time
their eyes had been opened -- by formal education in the school
(child and adult) followed up by special enlightenment on religion.
Is this a coincidence? When, as I told in an earlier booklet,
the Pope opened his campaign, he said that Bolshevism must be
destroyed in Russia, China, Spain, and Mexico; and at that time the
educational world everywhere was discussing with lively interest
the remarkable progress in education that was taking place in
Russia, Spain, Mexico, and the Communist provinces of China! The
Pope would have added Austria but he had already got his agents in
Vienna and their Fascist allies to destroy that great social
enterprise. He could count upon his "chivalrous" Japanese friends
to undo the work in China, and he blessed the savage vandalism of
his allies in Spain, where for three years educational progress had
commanded the respect of all experts. There remained two countries
in which education was making rapid progress, Mexico and Russia,
and the Vatican and the whole Roman Church continued to shriek for
the blood of these.
It is not a point on which I can linger here, but I say, and
have proved in earlier works (especially in the Appeal to Reason
Library), that the most rapid and devoted work in the world in
educating the workers was found ten years ago in Austria, Spain,
Mexico, and China, and that there is no dispute on that point in
paedagogical literature. We have seen what the Vatican did in Spain
and Austria and tried to get done in Mexico. I say again that the
most wonderful educational work in all history was being done in
Russia, as leading educationists in America admitted, and the Roman
Church was one of the guiltiest agencies in the world in slandering
Russia and calling upon Germany and Japan to annihilate the
government and all its work. On the other hand, the vilest
prostitution of education in modern history was at the same time
proceeding in Japan, Germany, and Italy. And the Pope pressed his
affection upon the Nazis, cooperated in education in Italy, and
gave gold medals and paternal blessings to the Japanese. But I
remember my manners and will just conclude politely that I really
do not think that the Church of Rome is a friend of education.
Chapter IV
THE MYTH OF ITS PATRONAGE OF LEARNING
We are now in a position to reply to the question which I put
on an earlier page of this book: Who are these Roman Catholics?
They claim a privileged position in America on the ground that they
are the largest religious body in the country and their Church is
the largest and most important in the world. On the first point we
reflect that the fact that Catholics form one-eighth -- it is
probably nearer one-tenth -- of the population of the United States
seems an amazing reason for seeking, as they do, to interfere with
the lives and literature of the non-Catholic seven-eighths and for
thinking that they ought to be consulted by the head of the state.
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That they do so interfere we have seen in every chapter. They
dictated policy on the Civil War in Spain and attempted to dictate
it in regard to: Mexico and the European War. They fly at medical
and civic authorities who would relieve non-Catholic mothers of
excessive child-bearing, take the lead in fomenting racial
bitterness against the Jews, dominate the school-system (even non-
Catholic) in some cities, arrogate a most insolent control of
public instruction by newspapers, books, and libraries, impose
their narrow-minded views on all theaters and cinemas, and so on.
It is really extraordinary how the American who boasts of his
freedom and independence submits to this sort of feudal insolence.
Back of it all, apparently, is respect for the larger claim,
that the Church of Rome really is unique in its colossal
membership, its world-wide organization, and its massive service.
In this book I am exposing the fallacy of this idea. On the face of
it there is a monstrous deception of the public because priests
know, and are aware that the public does not know, that the total
of 300,000,000 Catholics contains at least 100,000,000 who have
left the Church. The simplest analysis of the figures at once shows
that, as we saw. It is reasonable to put the genuine total at
something like 180,000,000.
Of these 180,000,000 a little over one-fourth are children
under the age of 10. The official American census gives that as the
proportion. As Catholics generally leave the Church after that age
and many seceded parents let their women-folk or relatives have the
infants baptized -- a good booze hallows every cause, to paraphrase
Nietzsche -- the proportion of children under ten is probably
higher in the Roman Church, with its high fertility-rate in
backward countries. However, we will, as usual, be moderate and say
that about 50,000,000 of the 180,000,000 are children under 10
whose allegiance to the Pope is not very clearly a thing to boast
about.
This applies also to many millions over the age of 10 and
under 20, but what we learned in the last chapter opens up a
different perspective. The fact is, apparently, that of the
130,000,000 subjects of the Pope over the age of 10 at least
90,000,000 are totally illiterate. Turn back to the table I gave.
Taking one Latin-American Republic with another the gross
illiteracy of the whole 80,000,000 people is over 60 percent. The
Encyclopedia Americana gives Columbia 68, Nicaragua 60, and so on.
For the whole, 60 percent is moderate, and it will hardly be
disputed that these illiterates are not the millions of workers
who, joined by many men of a middle-class which has a long
tradition of anti-clericalism, made the Vatican shudder 10 years
ago. You can very safely say that 50,000,000 adult Catholics from
Mexico to Patagonia are as illiterate as babies of a weird and
wonderful ignorance. The state of Portugal and the Portuguese
possession's is as bad, and particularly all the illiterates of
Spain and Italy are good Catholics. Add the millions of the
Philippine Islands, the West Indies, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland,
Eire, and the foreign missions. The grand total of illiterate
subjects of the Pope must approach 100,000,000. Add these to the
50,000,000 under the age of ten.
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Pray do not think me as snobbish as the Catholics who write
glittering Who's Who. I have had many a friendly talk with these
folk in Mexico and Cuba, in Spain and Italy. But when your Catholic
friend throws his 3,00,000,000 at your head you would like to know
just how significant the number is. Perhaps between 30,000,000 and
40,000,000 of them could sign their names or read a newspaper. I am
sorry if I am wasting your time but I fancy that that is news to
you. Yet it follows inexorably from the facts I have given in this
book. The Pope has certainly not 50,000,000 subjects who could
write their own names. And, not to put too fine a point on it, what
is the value or significance of the beliefs of most of the
"literate" 30,000,000 or (if you prefer) 40,000,000? The majority
in Catholic countries -- and even in Germany -- are peasants; and
you probably know more than I do about the majority of the Irish,
Polish, Italian, etc., Catholic workers of America.
In short, in how many cases is the faith of even a literate
Catholic intellectually impressive? I described the work of the
school; and very few of those who pass through it have the courage
to defy the prohibition under pain of hell or read in later years
a book that tells them the truth about their creed and Popes. Their
colleges and academies are just as narrow, and the youths and young
women in their Normal Schools naturally learn history only as they
have to teach it. The kind of lecture on science, history, or
philosophy that is delivered in the Catholic University you can
judge at any time by the publications of the professors and by the
articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia. The upshot of it all is
plainly seen in the miserable representation of Catholics in higher
culture which I described. There is a blight on the whole system.
I sometimes imagine myself getting an American statesman in a
quite corner and putting these things to him. I fancy he would nod
and listen and then say: "You damned fool, they have 10,000,000
votes and those are worth more than a hundred scientists and
philosophers." If I tried an editor he would point out that they
have rich advertisers and a shocking power to shift a body of
readers from any paper they denounced to one that plays up to them.
If I turn to a publisher he reminds me, regretfully, that Catholics
forbid the press to bring my, name or my works to the notice of the
public. And this pernicious system will explain to you the vague
reputation which the Church has -- for learning and the patronage
of learning. Its apologists can say what they like with little fear
of contradiction.
Their case, when they go into detail, is the usual mixture of
mendacity and sophistry. First, it was the Church of Rome that,
when it emerged from the catacombs, "gave the world schools." And
since there is not a manual of the history of education, not an
encyclopedic article, published in the last 50 or more years that
does not describe how the pagan Roman Empire had a system of
universal and free schools for the people, "mendacity" is the only
word to use here. The few paltry schools which the Church opened in
one or two cities, were, of course, like the Catholic schools
today, to prevent their own children from going to the pagan
schools. And there is no more dispute about the fact that the Roman
school system was entirely destroyed when the Roman Church obtained
power over Europe, and that during the next five centuries you
could count on your fingers the schools existing at any time.
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Next is the hoary old untruth that after all the monks of the
Dark Age "preserved the classics for us." lt took Italian scholars
nearly two centuries to dig up such Latin classics as we have, and
some of these and all the Greek classics were not preserved at all
in Europe. The leaders of this enterprise -- Petrarch, Boccaccio,
etc. -- despised the Popes, and the work was nearly complete when
the first Pope to take an interest in it, the not very religious
Engenius IV, mounted the Papal throne.
Well, says the apologist, these classics were in very large
part, if not for the most part, erotic poetry and comedy -- the
works of Aristotle were got from the Arabs and those of Plato from
the Greeks -- and the revival led to a terrible lot of immorality.
Was that why the good monks preserved them? Never mind that, says,
your apologist, but think of the zeal for schools and learning
which beyond any question swept Europe (except Rome, let me
interject) from the 11th Century onward.
As my Peter Abelard (1901) is one of the chief studies of the
movement in its first stage and was for years on the reading list
of the historical section of American universities -- I suppose
Catholics got it struck off -- I know rather more than the
apologist about this medieval scholastic movement. But I have
written all about it elsewhere. I will just make three points.
First, it was admittedly inspired by the Arabs of Spain and Sicily,
not by the Church. Secondly, it was at first and for about a
century a splendid if turbulent and frothy free and independent
movement, and most of its more brilliant leaders were condemned by
the Church. Thirdly, when heresy spread to whole provinces in the
wake of the school-movement, the Church destroyed its freedom of
speculation and its incipient teaching of Arab science and turned
the new universities, except a few that remained more or less
independent and trained lawyers and medical men, into schools of
theology for clerics and monks: who reads today the works of the
greatest masters of these schools? Very few priests even.
There, says the apologist, you betray your senility and out-
of-datedness. There is a remarkable revival of interest in the
school-men, as it has been discovered that the inspirational ideas
of the American Revolution and Constitution came from them. Yes --
discovered by Catholic apologists. I confess that it always puzzled
me why they could not fake a better mare's nest to discover for
this purpose than the works by Cardinal Bellarmine until I learned
that the chief reason was that one of Bellarmine's books was found
in Jefferson's library. My godfathers! When I die, in a few years,
they will find in my little library many works of Catholic or
Protestant piety, some on Hindu metaphysics or Theosophy, the
Little Flower of St. Fraieis, the Bible in three or four languages,
Rabelais, Mark Twain's description of conversation at the Court of
Queen Elizabeth. . . . I will take up the point seriously in the
fifth book. The few ideas that do not seem quite mildewed in Thomas
Aquinas were borrowed from Aristotle and the Arabs. He was educated
within a few miles of Arab-Norman Sicily and all his life he read,
translations of Aristotle and Ibn Roshd (Averroes):
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For the rest, if you want to make a substantial test of this
claim of Catholic scholarship without having to wade through a vast
library of trash dip into any impartial histories of literature,
philosophy, and science. To begin with you may care to know that
practically all Catholic works written from the 2nd Century to the
13th Century are contained in the immense Migne Collection. I
should say that the only work in that collection of 1,000 years of
Catholic learning that anybody reads today, in translation, is
Augustine's City of God, and very few read that. Few literary men
would shed a tear if the rest were burned.
Anyhow, take a good short history of literature; and literary
men, as I said, accept or profess Catholic doctrines more easily
than others. It will tell you of a vast and valuable literature,
only partially preserved, of the Greeks and the Romans. It may then
mention Augustine, but from the 4th Century to the 14th Century it
will give ten pages to Arab and Persian literature for any ten
lines it may give to Catholic works. Then names like Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio -- all very independent of the Popes and
the School-men -- perhaps Jehan le Meung, Margaret of Navarre, and
Villon -- a very naughty trio -- Chaucer (a skeptic), and a few
others will represent what are called the palmy days of Roman
Catholicism. Cervantes (clearly not under Church inspiration), the
monk Rabelais (not "for maids and youths"), Montaigne (a skeptic),
Galileo (hounded by the Pope), and a lot of French writers who were
mostly skeptics like Moliere and Boileau shine in the period of
transition, and the gloom settlers again over Catholic lands until
you come to the Joyce Kilmers and G.K. Chestertons of modern times.
For the last 100 years the great maority of the leading Italian,
French, and Spanish writers have been skeptics, not Catholics.
Philosophy you need not read up. Until some recent American
began to flatter the Church a history of philosophy consisted to
the extent of 49 percent of an account of Greek, Hindu, and Arab
speculations and 49 percent of an account of the systems of modern
thinkers. Catholic "thinking" occupied about 1 percent of the space
between the two. What would you expect where Catholic philosophy,
of which I was once professor, described itself from the start and
still describes itself as "the handmaid of theology" -- or the
slave of dogma.
For science take, if you like, the most learned American
history, that of Dr. G. Sarton. It is so little prejudiced against
Catholics that it notices science in the Christian Fathers, which
no one ever discovered before, yet it cannot make out a case for
the Catholic period (400 to 1550). Its best selections are monks
like Roger Bacon and Albert who simply tried to popularize Arab
science until the Church snuffed them out. The work is, like a
history of literature, really divided into three parts: Greek,
Arab-Persian, and Modern Science. As to the pioneers of the modern
development -- Vesalius and Pare, Galileo and Torricelli, Volta and
Galvani, etc. -- no one really knows what most of them thought
about Popery. They lived in an age when men of science adapted the
counsel of St. Paul and said: It is better to go to church than to
be burned.
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I have before me one of the longest lists I can find of "great
Catholic scientists." Most of them lived before the middle of the
18th Century, when science, rudimentary as it was, did not clearly
conflict with religion and when a student of science who lived in
a Catholic country was haunted by a smell of sulphur. What
Copernicus (converted by these writers into a "devout priest" when
he was neither a priest nor devout, and in any case he merely
discovered that the Greeks had discovered the centrality of the
sun), thought about religion we know no more than what Galileo
thought. But let Catholics have their names before 1750. You might
as well boast that all the writers of Spain today are orthodox
Catholics. After that date the apologists have to use their usual
trickery. Spain and Italy, and Portugal produced no "great
scientists" until in recent times the Liberals broke the power of
the Inquisition. France had a splendid series from Buffon and
D'Alembert (both skeptics), onward, and 9 out of 10 were skeptics.
But I have gone through the list Pisewherp. It is enough that when
the arc-lamp was invented "Catholic scientists" became as rare as
haunted houses. Today the Catholic who boasts that his Church
commands the allegiance of half the white race claims only J.J.
Walsh, of whom the science-reading public would never have heard if
it were not for his position in the Church, in America, one or two
minor chemists and mathematicians in Britain, none in Russia,
France, Germany. . . . They have to claim, against the testimony of
the most authoritative biographers, men like Pasteur, Fabre,
Mendel, and Marenni.
But did not the Vatican welcome science by founding a great
astronomical observatory? Yes, in the day's when it was still
understood that "the heavens proclaim the glory of God." At all
events the observatory, of which you do not hear much today,
proclaims the glory of the Vatican. Was not Leo XIII enthusiastic
for historical science, in spite of his ignorance in it, and did he
not throw open the Secret Archives of the Vatican to the world's
scholars? Yes. After -- as the Catholic historian Dr. Pastor tells
us -- removing the more compromising documents. Doesn't the Church
in America spend hundreds of millions on education? Yes, in its own
interest and to give instruction that defies every sound principle
of paedagogy.
But let the apologists speak. One of their chief propaganda
bodies in America is the Calvert Association. and Dr. N. Murray
Butler of Columbia and other American scholars generously sponsor
it. Its chief publication is The Calvert Handbook of Catholic
Facts. This has a section titled "Great Catholics." You will hardly
believe me when I say that besides a few army officers it lists
only Lafayette (notoriously a Deist, though it calls him "a pervert
Catholic"), Marshal Foch, and Charlie Schwab and eight other rich
business-bandits!
But it refers the readers to a previous section titled
"Civilization and Catholicism." Ignoring the writers stroll through
the Middle Ages in search of great men (Ferdinand of Spain, etc.)
I find it lists as great Americans who were Catholics only Thomas,
Lloyd, J.J. Montgomery, and Holland. What, you never heard of them?
For the last 200 years of world-science it gives Volta, Galvani,
Ampere (who vacillated all his life between skepticism and
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ROME PUTS A BLIGHT ON CULTURE
Catholicism), and Morgagni (doubtful). It is painful to add that it
claims also Jenner (of smallpox fame) and Roentgen: on what amazing
grounds even the bold Catholic Encyclopedia does not seem to have
discovered. And of course it claims Fabre and Pasteur, both
apostates, and the devout Abbot Mendel, who is described as a
skeptic in the only authoritative biography.
This list covers. 250 years -- the most recent man on it died
nearly 100 years ago -- and ranges over the whole imperial Church
on which the sun never sets. Of the claimed 300,000,000 Catholics
of today it names none. Do people expect me to write about this
sort of thing without irony and contempt? Or do you agree with me
that the only uniqueness about the Church of Rome is that it is the
most amazingly successful imposture in history?
**** ****
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
The Bank of Wisdom 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.
**** ****
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