The Profits of Religion
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Upton Sinclair >> The Profits of Religion
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Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate
of New York, favored me with his justification of his own career
and activities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one
man of the world to another, he said: "The reason I put them into
the hands of Catholics is not religious, but because I find they
are efficient in such matters. They don't ask questions, they do
what you want them to do, and do it economically."
I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the
remark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and
his mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.
When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long
hours and improper working-conditions which drove him to
desperation; they do not ask if police and politicians are
getting a rake-off from the saloon, or if traction magnates are
using it as an agency for the controlling of votes; they do not
plunge into prohibition movements or good government
campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard price, and
the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then
turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is
"charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism.
They have been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome
and unsightly messes--"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and
murder and sudden death." Yet--puzzling as it would seem to
anyone not religious--there were never so many messes, never so
many different kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand
years of charitable activity!
But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building
and rebuilding his web across a doorway; like soldiers under the
command of a ruling class with a "muddling through" tradition--
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
And so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have
messes to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away
quickly and without fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this
service, no matter what their personal religious beliefs or lack
of beliefs may be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of every
steel-mill, every coal-mine or other place of industrial danger,
you will find a Catholic hospital, with its slave-sisters and
attendants. Once when I was "muck-raking" near Pittsburgh, I went
to one of these places to ask information as to the frequency of
industrial accidents and the fate of the victims. The "Mother
Superior" received me with a look of polite dismay. "These
concerns pay us!" she said. "You must see that as a matter of
business it would not do for us to talk about them."
Obey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as
it is with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the
work of vote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and
saloon-keepers and ward-heelers which the Catholic machine
controls. This industry of vote-getting is a comparatively new
one; but the Church has been handling the masses for so many
centuries that she quickly learned this new way of "democracy,"
and has established her supremacy over all rivals. She has the
schools for training the children, the confessional for
controlling the women; she has the intellectual machinery, the
purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme
advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really
believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to
table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings
in order to bolster their hope of the survival of personality
after death!
So it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have
been driven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy.
The Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war
several hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every
year. It is no longer possible to do without Catholics in
America; not merely do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal
mined, and dishes washed, but franchises have to be granted,
tariff-schedules adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police
trained and strikes crushed. Under our native political system,
for these purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes
belong to people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German
and Italian and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and
Portuguese and Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church
can handle these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and
editors and politicians familiar with all these languages?
Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely
moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of
red fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper
advertisements. The rest may come out of the public till, in the
form of exemption from taxation of church buildings and lands, a
share of the public funds for charities and schools, the control
of the police for saloon-keepers and district leaders, the
control of police-courts and magistrates, of municipal
administrations and boards of education, of legislatures and
governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to flatter our
sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme Court
Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary prestige,
some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend High
Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and
dignitaries.
You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,
ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic shades,
absorbed in "the passionless pursuit of passionless
intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the
pit! You ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little
charities," pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your
families of one or two lovely children--while Irish and
French-Canadians and Italians and Portuguese and Hungarians are
breeding their dozens and scores, and preparing to turn you out
of your country!
God's Armor
You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the
psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware
of modern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants
to have beauty about him, to be a "cabin passenger":
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else;
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.
He wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands
that faith is all-important--
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.
But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!
He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he
asks what there would be in it for him--
State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world--
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you.
Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,--not to him
More than St. Paul!
So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of
the contempt of intellectual people.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking virgin as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,
And am a knave.
But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of
faith, that is what
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,
With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax that hold.
So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of
shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and
"ragamuffin saints."
I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop
Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints
here in this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire
the information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit
my purse. America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being
drafted to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a
firmly bound little pamphlet called "God's Armor, a Prayer Book
for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by the G. R. C.
Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor
Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first fail
to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do
you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past
creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is
the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis
sound mysterious!
In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes
of war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have
played throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not
even find anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the
resolve of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule.
Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and
who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body
and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with
crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the
trenches--how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter
by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since
first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the hearts of
men!
I quote from this little book:
Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer
yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin. Make
the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore Thee and give
Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be for Thy Glory, and
for the salvation of my immortal soul.
During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your prayers
need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few of these short
ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat them. They will serve
to recall God to your heart and will strengthen you and comfort
you.
You remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the
Thibetans. The Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan,
and is less progressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices
for saving labor. You have to use your own vocal apparatus to
keep yourself from hell; but the process has been made as
economical as possible by kindly dispensations of the Pope. Thus,
each time that you say "My God and my all," you get fifty days
indulgence; the same for "My Jesus, mercy," and the same for
"Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things." For "Jesus, Mary,
Joseph," you get three hundred days--which would seem by all odds
the best investment of your spare breath.
And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle";
"Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer
before and after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a
long March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those
in their Agony"--I cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them.
I remember standing in a cathedral "somewhere in France" during
the celebration of some special Big Magic. There was brilliant
white light, and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a
huge organ, and a clamor of voices, high, clear voices of young
boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of men in a pit reaching
up, trying to climb over the top of one another. It sent a
shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in the
modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the
ancient nightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental
life of mankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their
frantic and ceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the
sex-spell; and the poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps
spent the night with a prostitute, now prostrates himself before
a holy Woman-being who is lifted high above the shames of the
flesh, and who stirs the thrills of awe and affection which his
mother brought to him in early childhood. Read over the phrases
of this "Litany of the Blessed Virgin":
Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin of
Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother most
pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother undefiled.
Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable. Mother of good
counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our Savior. Virgin most
prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most renowned. Virgin most
powerful. Virgin most merciful. Virgin most faithful. Mirror of
justice. Seat of wisdom. Cause of our Joy. Spiritual vessel.
Vessel of honor. Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose.
Tower of David. Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the
covenant. Gate of heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick.
Refuge of sinners. Comforter of the afflicted. Help of
Christians. Queen of Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of
Prophets. Queen of Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of
Confessors. Queen of Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen
conceived without original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary.
Queen of Peace, Pray for us.
Thanksgivings
For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain
thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the
"Messenger of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New
York, the issue for October, 1917. There are pages of
advertisements of schools and colleges with strange titles:
"Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross Academy", "Holy Ghost
Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child Jesus". The
leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the Apostleship
of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa" writes a
poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a story
called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us
about the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July,
1917, it distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of
57,714 hours of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form
of letter which they are to write to the Honorable Baker,
Secretary of War, imploring him to intimate to the French
government that France should withdraw from one of her advances
in civilization, and join with mediaeval America in exempting
priests from being drafted to fight for their country. And then
there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst newspapers, only
instead of asking whether she should allow him to kiss her before
he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what is the
Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is Robert a
saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy
Communion. (No, I am not inventing this.)
I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any
squeamishness in dealing with its "million imbeciles", its
"rough, purblind mass". There is a department of the little
magazine entitled "Thanksgiving", and a statement at the top that
"the total number of Thanksgivings for the month is 2,143,911." I
am suspicious of that, as of German reports of prisoners taken;
but I give the statement as it stands, not going through the list
and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they come,
classified by states:
GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and publication
were promised, for others the Badge of Promoter's Cross was used,
for others the prayers of the Associates had been asked.
Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during
storm.
Alaska--Safe return, goods found.
Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness
averted, safe delivery.
British Honduras--Successful operation.
California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two successful
examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in salary, return
to religious duties, sight regained, medal won, Baptism,
preservation from disease, contract obtained, success in
business, hearing restored, Easter duty made, happy death,
automobile sold, mind restored, house found, house rented,
successful journey, business sold, quarrel averted, return of
friends, two successful operations.
And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient
fervor which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As
Christopher Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a
wonderful thing. By means of gold we can even get souls into
Paradise."
The Holy Roman Empire
The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its
squalor; but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous
than the Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But
the very essence of the Catholic Church is that it does not
change; semper eadem is its motto: the same yesterday, today and
forever--the same in Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in
a modern democracy as in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is
not primarily a religious organization; it is a political
organization, and proclaims the fact, and defies those who would
shut it up in the religious field, The Rev. S. B. Smith, a
Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements of
Ecclesiastical Law":
Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church consists
in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to
command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a
perfect society or sovereign state. This theory is false; for the
Church, as was seen, is vested Jure divino with power, (1) to
make laws; (2) to define and apply them (potestas judicialis);
(3) to punish those who violate her laws (potestas coercitiva).
And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated
proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of
Errors", issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in
precise language that
The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess
and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.
It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall
require the permission of the civil power in order to the
exercise of its authority.
Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
affirmed thus:
She has the right to require the state not to leave every man
free to profess his own religion.
She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or
consent of the state.
She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and state.
She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be
the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others.
She has the right to prevent the state from granting the public
exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating from it.
She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
expression of opinion.
You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization,
ought at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about
the matter. Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About
Protestantism of Today", a book published in Boston and
extensively circulated by American Catholics:
Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is likewise
the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It is one of those
impossibilities which only the levity of a superficial reason can
regard as admissable. But a sound mind, that does not feed on
empty words, looks upon this freedom of thought only as simply
absurd, and, what is more, as sinful.
You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe
because the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this
"Law" applies to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that
they are bound by the restraints that bind you? Here is Pope Leo
XIII, in his Encyclical of 1890--and please remember that Leo
XIII was the beau ideal of our capitalist statesmen and editors,
as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever roasted a
heretic. He says:
If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws of
God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set at naught the
authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in the Supreme Pontiff,
then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to render
obedience.
And consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a
democratic state do and forever must contravene the "laws of God"
as interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that
the Pope, in his decree Ne Temere, has declared that all persons
who have been married by civil authorities or by Protestant
clergymen are living in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the
same way, the problems of education, burial, prison discipline,
blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious
endowments, vows of celibacy. To the above list, as given by
Gladstone, one might add many issues, such as birth control,
which have arisen since his time.
What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of
expressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and
haughtiest and most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal
Manning, in the Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name
of the Pope:
I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; I
claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and
director of the consciences of men---of the peasant that tills
the field, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the
household of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for
kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge of what is right and
wrong.
Temporal Power
What this means is, that here in our American democracy the
Catholic Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time,
watching for the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no
secret of his intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true
believers in America, instructed them as to their attitude in
captivity:
The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation,
protected against violence by the common laws and the
impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without
hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very
erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought
the type of the most desirable status of the church, or that it
would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to
be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that
Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying
a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the
fecundity with which God has endowed His Church .... But she
would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to
liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the
public authority.
Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his
flock in the "Western Watchman", June 27, 1913:
Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen
afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between
the church and the civil government we take the side of the
church; of course we do. Why, if the government of the United
States were at war with the church, we would say tomorrow, To
hell with the government of the United States; and if the church
and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say,
To hell with all the governments of the world .... Why is it that
in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the
population, the Catholic church is so much feared? She is loved
by all her children and feared by everybody. Why is it that the
Pope has such tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the
world. All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the
presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine. The
Pope is the ruler of the world.
You recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to
control the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to
shape fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a
man swollen to bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy
robes, with his holy incense in his nostrils, and the faces of
the faithful gazing up at him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:
The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the judge
of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and duties of the
state.
And lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist
arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", April 6, 1912, speaking
for Cardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:
It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,
O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and
members of an American hierachy, yet they are as cardinals
foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as one
of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation to
concede the same honors that they receive abroad.
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