textfiles-politics/pythonCode/personTestingOutput/mccabe12.xml

<xml><p> 31 page printout</p>

<p> Reproducible <ent type='ORG'>Electronic Publishing</ent> can defeat censorship.</p>

<p> This file, its printout, or copies of either
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
**** ****</p>

<p>Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</p>

<p>THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL No. 12</p>

<p> THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> CATHOLICS THE MOST PRIEST-RIDDEN OF ALL PEOPLE</p>

<p> by Joseph McCabe</p>

<p> HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD -- : -- KANSAS</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> CHAPTER</p>

<p> I Poisoning the Mind of the Young ......... 1</p>

<p> II The Priest Rules the Family ............. 8</p>

<p> III The Priestly Censors of Morals .......... 16</p>

<p> IV The Shame of the Confessional ........... 22</p>

<p> V <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action a Clerical Maneuver ........... 27</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> Chapter I</p>

<p> POISONING THE MIND OF THE YOUNG</p>

<p> In the preceding booklet I showed that the structure of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> is such that an alliance with <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> powers is its
inevitable attitude. It is an institution that survives from the
Feudal Age and, since it is not now permitted to exercise the
physical tyranny over men which it still claim's, it must, whenever
wealth and privilege are threatened, associate with any forces
which disown the democratic restraints of our age and by violence
and bloodshed suppress the critics of privilege and seek an
extension of their wealth and power. Historically it always did
this; and nearly all who are not <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, and very many
Catholic's, now see that this is in our time the meaning of the
diplomatic activity of the Vatican during the last ten years, the
shameless applauding of bestiality by the high priests of <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>
and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, the treason of the priests of <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>, Fiance, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Czechoslovakia</ent>, and the support of
isolationism in <ent type='GPE'>the British Empire</ent> until 1939 and in <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent>
States until 1941, and in <ent type='LOC'>South America</ent> today.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
1
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> But how do the half-million agents of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent>
contrive to win the support for such a policy of tens of millions
of men and women half of whom professed to be free Citizens of
democratic lands until the Papal-<ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> paralysis began to creep
over them and a very large part still live in such countries and
swear loyalty to their ideals? I have shown and will further show
in the fifth booklet of this series, that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> priests and
writers change their political philosophy with startling rapidity
when their country turns <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>. In country after country in which
but a few years ago they talked about the principles of freedom and
democracy with all the gush that is so familiar on clerical lips in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> -- in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, in <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and Salazar
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, in <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent> <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>
-- they now find those principles as demoded as drawers or corsets,
even "poisonous" and inconsistent with the authoritarian state
which the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> urges upon all good <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>. They have not yet
reached the stage in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>. Will they do so? And if
not how can <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> use the vast sums it extracts
from the people to help on a regime of tyranny and exploitation?</p>

<p> First let us get a clear idea of the body of subscribing
members of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. How many Catholic's there are in the world
it is less easy to say than to ascertain the number of bacteria in
a cubic inch of soil. Comparing the figures given even by <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
is an ironic pastime. They are meticulously "accurate" down to the
last unit, yet they differ from each other by tens of millions;
which surely afford's some excuse even for a hardened skeptic like
myself. I consult the new Encyclopedia <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>na, which has an odor
of sanctity as well as of scholarship, and learn, in an article by
a member of the editorial board (and apparently a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>) that
the number of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in the world is 294583000. That sounds
admirably precise and moderate compared with the 350000000 or
even 398277000 (<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Directory) which other <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
writers claim, but study how the figure is made up. In Europe, says
the writer, there are 183760000; and he then analyzes this into
35000000 in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> (where optimistic <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> do not claim more
than 10000000), 20000000 in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> (where, when there were free
elections, the people so long overruled <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that it had to
take to the long knife), 26000000 in <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent> (where the total
population is only 7000000), 13000000 in Hungary (where the
population is about 9000000 and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are about half),
and so on.</p>

<p> It is a greater miracle than the Immaculate Conception. But
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> absorb miracles as babies absorb milk. A distinguished
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> journalist D. <ent type='PERSON'>Gwynn</ent> (Pius XI, 1932) quotes with approval
the agstirqnec of <ent type='PERSON'>Macaulay</ent> that "there were certainly not fewer
than 150000000" in 1840. The population of most countries has
trebled since then, where not greatly affected by the birth control
of these wicked skeptics, yet <ent type='PERSON'>Gwynn</ent> thinks that the growth of these
150000000 into 350000000 (his figure) in a century, and with
fertility joyous and unrestrained, "must astonish all inquirers."
And this writer, who is an expert on <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, knows that the total
figure of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> he gives includes 30000000 <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>men and
proves in his special work on the subject (The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Reaction in
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, 1924) that there cannot even be 10000000.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
2
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> Similarly in regard to the number of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>,
which concerns us most. The Encyclopedia <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>na gives 50000000
for <ent type='PERSON'>North</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, of whom 20000000 are in <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States. As
there are only about 4000000 <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent> and the whole
population of <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent> (which the Vatican does not regard as very
orthodox) is only 16000000, the arithmetic again transcends my
profane intelligence. But when I turn to <ent type='ORG'>the Census</ent> of Religion,
taken (that is to say, supplied by the clergy) in 1936 and
published as the official record in 1940, I learn that <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States number only 19914957; and you
really must trust a figure that is so definite even to the last
unit. The official compiler reflects on the remarkable growth since
1926 (18605003 -- not a baby or a village idiot left out, you
notice). But an unconsecrated calculation seems to yield that in
that decade the general population of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, in spite of a
tremendous traffic in contraceptive's rose by more than 8 percent
while the <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, who abhor those diabolical devices, increased
by less than 7 percent.</p>

<p> I should love to linger in this pious and stimulating field of
the statistics published by <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> but we have
sterner business to approach, and I have written much elsewhere on
the subject. I have concluded, after many weary days spent in
analyzing the results of months of research, that the number of
genuine <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in the world is between 150000000 and
200000000, and it seems generous to use for practical purpose the
round figure of 190000000. It will be understood that I do not
include here the new compulsory <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent>, etc. If an <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> is
proud of them, and insists on including them let him do so; but is
it too much to ask that he state also, at least to himself, that
they have "returned to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>" only while every priest is ready
to denounce rebel's to the firing squad or the torturer?</p>

<p> But our figure invites further consideration. It includes
about 50000000 illiterate <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Indians</ent>. Add the illiterates
of the <ent type='GPE'>Philippines</ent> (7000000), and the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Belgian</ent>, and
<ent type='NORP'>Portuguese</ent> colonies, a large percentage of the peasants of <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, etc., and you see that more than a
third of the grand <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> total are folk whom we need not
consider here. It is no mystery how the priests keep them servile.
It is hardly more mysterious how they keep their despotic hold on
further tens of millions: the peasants of <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent>
and <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> who are called literate because they mastered their A B
C's and the dense masses of descendants of these who fester in the
poorer quarters of our cities and industrial towns. The domination
of these also by priests requires no profound explanation; and
quite a large number at the other end of the social scale are very
easy victims of clerical bossing of a subtler sort. Of the
remaining half of this grand total of 180000000 more than one-third are children.</p>

<p> We will discuss in the next book the whole question of
ignorance or culture, and varieties of culture, in the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, but it is well to get clearly in mind here that when the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writer boasts of his 300000000 or 350000000, "Subjects
of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>," or when a statesman thinks that this gross figure </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
3
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>compels him to speak with profound respect of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> and his
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, the suggestion is nonsensical. We shall further see that
the stuff imposed upon pupils in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> secondary schools and
colleges as "science" and "history" is a gorgeous tissue of untruth
that differs from the reality almost as much as a Theosophist's
view of ancient <ent type='GPE'>Egypt</ent> differs from that of an <ent type='GPE'>Egypt</ent>ologist, so that
even in their case we are not greatly puzzled. However, let us
take the matter broadly. Leaving out of account the babes and
sucklings and the poor folk who either never open a book or could
not read one, how does <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> ensure the submissiveness
to a body of generally ignorant priests of some millions of men and
women in modern civilization?</p>

<p> The first part of the answer is the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school. Cardinal
Hayes, who had an astounding success in talking rank nonsense with
the utmost gravity, once said, referring to <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n preeminence in
education: "It is the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> contribution which has enabled the
United States to take the world's leadership in this field." Horace
Mann was, I suppose, a <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, not a skeptic as the
Dictionary of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n Biography represents him. . . . But, no one
will expect me to argue on that point. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> hierarchy in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> never professed to have any other aim in collecting vast
sums -- they spent $23000000 on new schools in 1927 -- for the
erection of schools of their own than "the good of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>," the
safeguarding of the faith (the docility to the clerical <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>) of
their people. They care nothing whatever about the general cultural
level of a country. They just whip up the laity to a fanatical zeal
for having schools of their own. <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> ladies have told me,
defiantly, in <ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, where a question about the treatment -- that
is to say, the amount of subsidy they will vote out of public funds
-- of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools is prepared by the clergy and sternly
pressed upon candidates for election, that they would not for a
moment hesitate to vote for a candidate who promised to favor their
schools no matter what his views were on national or local policy.
Once the question of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school was raised by the priests
at an election they ignored every other issue.</p>

<p> The zeal of the priests to whip up this fanaticism suggests at
once in what the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> differs from the national school. In most
parts of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> today where there are large bodies of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
the national school dare not permit a teacher or a class-book to
say a word that <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> resent. Educational experts have shown
that in <ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> clergy, acting through
their lay dupes, control education in this respect in the national
as well as their own schools. Even from third or fourth-rate towns
mothers have written me that the teachers of their children in the
national schools were so subject to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> influence that they
used real <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> language. Possibly this partly explains why in
<ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools, of all grades, have a less
proportion of pupils to the general membership of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> than
in other countries. There are not many more than 2000000 pupils
in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> elementary schools, and if you multiply this by five,
the usual ratio of such pupils to total membership in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
quarters, it would give <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> only 10000000 <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>. One of
the drives of the hierarchy in recent years has been to spread
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> or <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism over the more thinly-populated regions so
as to get everywhere sufficient to claim a school or to eviscerate
the teaching in the local national school.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
4
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> It is, of course, chiefly in regard to history, science, and
general knowledge classes (with reference to current events and
institutions) that the priests are so keen to, "protect" the child,
but even more important than this, <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> says, is "the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> atmosphere." Every school is a church. Statues of <ent type='PERSON'>Mary</ent> and
the more popular saints, painted in all the colors of the rainbow,
and <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> colored pictures crowd the walls and window-ledges.
Prayers and hymns open and close the day, and specific lessons on
the faith are given or the children march to the church to hear
them. Holidays may be given in honor of distinguished
ecclesiastical visitors or important <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> events. <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent> must be
heard on <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s "holy days" and children of seven and over
are conducted to the church periodically to confess their "sins."
From the age of five to sixteen or seventeen -- it is just the same
in the secondary school and the "academy" for girls -- the hypnotic
influence continues. <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> books of the most mendacious
character are given as prizes. Semi-magical talisman's (blessed
medals, little pictures, scapulars, Agnus Deis or tiny wax lambs
enclosed in cloths, etc.) must be bought and worn next the skin
night and day. A <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> adult goes to church once a week: a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> child spends half the day in it every day. And the theme
of the myriad influences that seep into the child's mind all the
time is "Our Holy Faith:" our unique, incomparably superior,
exclusive, god-given creed.</p>

<p> Why should one call this poisoning the mind? Isn't it a
scheme, devised and perfected by thousand's of educators of the
young before <ent type='PERSON'>Pestalozzi</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Froebel</ent> were born, for forming the
character of the child or training it in habits of decency, self-restraint, truthfulness, and regard for others? When you read a
non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writer who says that sort of thing inquire if he has
ever taken the least trouble to ascertain whether the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
children who have spent nine or ten years in this atmosphere are in
fact any better than any body of children who have been reared in
a purely, or almost purely, secular school-atmosphere. I wager that
you will find that these "liberal" writers have never even glanced
at the question. They could discover with very little trouble that
in any of the blacker areas of our cities -- the areas in which
chronic poverty and ignorance have created a tradition of unsocial
conduct -- the <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are not a bit less drunken, violent, and
prone to vice and crime than their neighbors. They could learn
authoritatively that Catholic's have a higher percentage in the
jails and brothels than they have in the general population. They
can learn the facts about social behavior in <ent type='GPE'>Ireland</ent> or any
predominantly <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> country. They know that in our class or
social environment <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are not superior to others in sound
qualities. of character.</p>

<p> The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> primary school which I attended 60 to 70 years
ago was in a poor industrial suburb of a large city. I often go
back to it to observe the very great progress it has made in
cleanliness, sobriety, restraint, public decency, and all important
social qualities. It was very foul in my boyhood, and I knew all
its vices and crimes. <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> workers as a body behaved like
others all round me, and what a boy did not see he did not fail to
learn from others. Vividly do I remember how, when the master left
us in the higher forms for a half-hour, the older boys from the </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
5
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>poorest and least restrained quarters told us, joyously, every bit
of foulness they had picked up, while <ent type='PERSON'>Mary</ent> and the Saints looked
down at us from the walls, and how behavior out of school was such
as one would expect.</p>

<p> The real function of the school was to make loyal <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> of
us, to din into our ears until it was <ent type='ORG'>ineffaceable</ent> impressed that
our religion was not a religion like that of the Protestant
schoolboys, but the truth from God that could tolerate no
comparison. A favorite sport was for the whole body of us to
"<ent type='GPE'>Scuttle</ent>" (stone) the pupils of some Protestant school and chant
some doggerel like "Prodidog, Prodidog, go to hell, while all the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> ring the bell"; and the priests and teachers never
preached to us on that. They would today, of course; <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> must
show that they are good neighbors; but beneath all the smiles and
recognitions that "there is good in all religions" you see the same
arrogance and intolerance. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are unique. All the world
belongs to us, and will come back to us when the work of the devil,
which began at the Reformation, is finally undone. The parallel
with <ent type='NORP'>Nazism</ent> is again perfect; and the aim is the same -- the power
and wealth of the <ent type='GPE'>Leaderg</ent> and the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>. The whole purpose of
this ceaseless droning about the uniqueness of our Holy <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and
Holy Faith and Holy Mother and Holy everything down to the water
for chasing devils is to make and keep <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> submissive. So
they can be raised, almost without explanation, to a blind fury
against <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>, can be turned into howling mobs to
prevent their neighbors from seeing films which the priests do not
like, can be fooled for years about the real meaning of the policy
in which they are induced to cooperate.</p>

<p> If this blind devotion, with its inevitable submissiveness to
authority, be not thought poisonous enough, remember that it is in
large part secured by a monstrous and mischievous untruth. Belief
in hell and devils belongs to a stage of human development that is
not consistent with modern ideals. Probably the majority of priests
do not believe in them today. But they are as essential to the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school and journalism as a heroine is to a novel. They are
essential, not for moral purposes -- this flimsy scaffolding of
character is one of the chief reasons why the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> training
breaks down in post-school years -- but as an instrument of moral
terrorism and to protect the myth of the holiness and uniqueness of
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, the child gradually learns, has so many
"enemies" (critics) just because it is so holy and precious. The
devil, who is picturesquely represented to every child as a sort of
super-<ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> with a devouring thirst to bring more and more million's
of souls into his overcrowded and insanitary domain, is at the back
of all this opposition to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. The good <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> must not
even listen to what his agents say, most particularly when they
assume the disguise of honest and decent men. For "sins of the
flesh" the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> can get pardon at any time and escape hell by
confessing but to leave <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, to read or hear anything that
might cause one to leave <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, is the most terrible sin of
all because one obviously cuts oneself off from the tribunals of
forgiveness and the "channels of grace" (sacraments). So from the
age of seven the children are made to sing, lustily, hymn's with
lines such as "hell is raging for my soul" and "earth and hell
unite, and swear in lasting bonds to bind us."</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
6
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> It would take a whole book to analyze adequately the
comprehensive poison of this "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> atmosphere." A psychologist
would find it a fascinating study in social psychology but of
course, no psychologist in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> dare publish a book on it. I
will give in the next book some weird evidence, which has just
reached me, of the ripe results of it in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> countries, but I
must here be content with a bare outline of this first part of the
mechanism of the clerical <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> for making and keeping the people
blindly submissive and zealous for "the good of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>."</p>

<p> It is hardly necessary to add that the lessons are carefully
arranged to suit the atmosphere. The Bible is rarely seen -- in my
youth few <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> ever saw a Bible -- but there are lessons, on
Fundamentalist lines on "biblical history" as a gradual preparation
of the world for the coming of Christ and his instructions (mainly
secret) to found the wonderful <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Science is fearfully
mutilated. Colleges can have admirable chemical and physical
laboratories because inorganic science is quite harmless, and
botany is fairly safe. The mutilation begins with geology and
paleontology. They are today manuals of evolution, so you can
imagine what the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> version of them looks like. General
biology and physiology must be adulterated so as sustain the myth
of a "vital principle," and <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> psychology is as far removed
from science as <ent type='EVENT'>the Civil War</ent> is from modern politics. Prehistoric
archeology, the science of prehistoric man, is, when any notice at
all is taken of it, a sheer caricature.</p>

<p> But history is the great field of the poisoner. A very
familiar jibe speaks of liars, damned liars, and statistics. It is
a clumsy absurdity as regards statistics but a neat classification
if you change the word to "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> historians." I need not here
examine the manuals used in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools. In my various works
I have nailed many thousand <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to the counter and shown that
even the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Encyclopedia, the flower of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Romanist</ent>
scholarship, is full of them. You can therefore gather what kind of
stuff they impose upon their own children in their own schools and
colleges.</p>

<p> I repeat that it is not merely mendacious but poisonous. When
a <ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent> can say in what all <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> consider to be the
cream of their scholarship (the Encyclopedia) that all branches of
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> recognized the supremacy of the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> in the first four
centuries, which is the exact opposite of the truth, you know what
to expect. The version of history, from the alleged and mythical
years of <ent type='PERSON'>Peter</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> to the exploits of the present <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, that is
imposed upon <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, beginning in the elementary school, is the
richest tissue of brazen lies that I know. And, which one need not
tear one's hair because children are taught as history those lives
of saints and martyrs which <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> authorities denounce as
forgeries, the story as a whole is profoundly mischievous and
antisocial. Its one aim is like the purpose of all the rest, to
keep <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> so submissive to their caste of consecrated guides
that they will swallow every statement or instruction without
serious inquiry into its justice or injustice.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
7
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> Chapter II</p>

<p> THE PRIEST RULES THE FAMILY</p>

<p> It would be a mistake to imagine the troops of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> boys
and girls who issue from the primary or the secondary school every
year as just as solidly enthusiastic for their Holy Faith as a
troop of boys or girls issuing from an <ent type='ORG'>Adolf Hitler School</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>. I take it that the conditions are much the same in urban
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> as in urban <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, and in the latter there is plenty of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> evidence that boys desert <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> in very large numbers
during the three or four years after leaving school. At <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
conferences of teachers and priests it has been stated that in
<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> cities 30 to 60 percent (in different localities) of the
boys abandon <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. This can surprise only those folk who
lazily admit, as most do, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> boast of "marvelous
numerical progress", in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. In neither country are
they making any numerical progress. I have shown over and over
again, and have in the last chapter pointed out that the latest
<ent type='ORG'>Census</ent> figures confirm this, that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body, in spite of
its higher birth rate, does not increase as much as the general
body of the population. It is a pity there is no <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n who can
force this truth into the official mind at <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>.</p>

<p> The transfer of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> children from the artificial
atmosphere of the school to the secular life is something like
transplanting hot house seedlings to the open air in a late spring.
There would, in fact, be a still larger number of casualties if it
were not for the fact that the boy has already spent two hours on
the street or outside the school for every hour he has spent in its
theatrically insincere atmosphere. He has already learned that
there is considerable doubt about these picturesque devils who are
raging for his little soul and about the holiness of his priests
and popes. The girl who passes from the nuns' academy to a city
store or workshop finds that the section of her anatomy which the
good sisters told her, with bated, breath and downcast eyes, is the
Temple of the Holy Ghost now learns that that is not the general
view. Of course they have been prepared for this by warnings that
"the world" is like "the flesh" and the devil, a deadly enemy of
the good <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>. Somehow the world, when the child enters it,
does, not quite resemble the villain of an old-time melodrama. The
hold of the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> begins to slip.</p>

<p> The priest prepares for this by his grip on the family.
I say that <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are the most priest-ridden of all people but
it will not be forgotten that the power of the priest differs
enormously in different places: in <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent> and in <ent type='GPE'>Ohio</ent>, in rural
<ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent> and in <ent type='GPE'>New York City</ent>, with every shade of
difference between those two extremes. No one who knows the "really
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> country" (even Eire) will question that the people are far
more priest-ridden, more bullied and intimidated by the clergy,
than people are in rural Protestant areas, to say nothing of people
under <ent type='NORP'>Buddhist</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Hindu</ent>, Shinto, <ent type='NORP'>Taoist</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Moslem</ent>, or <ent type='NORP'>Jewish</ent>
authorities. The <ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Moslem</ent> have no priests, in the ordinary
sense, and the priests of the <ent type='NORP'>Asiatic</ent> nations do little more than </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
8
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>perform ceremonies. Yet, although the priest in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> has not yet
the despotic power his colleague has in <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> -- he
expects to have it someday -- I am inclined to say that even in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are amongst the most priest-ridden of people.</p>

<p> The clergy dominate the family as they do the school. It is
the priest's duty to visit every home in his parish once in
(usually) three months. Naturally he shirks unattractive homes and
spends more time in those where the company is jovial and the
bottle travels freely. He generally has a little directory or note-book with particulars about each. I do not suggest that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
married women are more pliant than others but it will occur to most
people that the visit of the priest in the afternoon, when the
husband is at his job and the children are in school, comes pretty
close to G.B. Shaw's explanation of the popularity of marriage: it
combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
There is, of course, a good deal of misconduct, for the priest of
amorous disposition can learn on which day the "help" is away, but,
whatever else happens, the priest takes this opportunity to inquire
about the loyalty of the husband and the children who have left
school. An unsatisfactory report will bring him in the evening to
see them.</p>

<p> In order to appreciate the priest's peculiar control over the
family one must understand the power which <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> claims and
exercises over marriage. From the 4th Century it fought for 700
years to get this power, and the laity successfully resisted until
the bloody-minded "saintly" <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s <ent type='PERSON'>Gregory VII</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Innocent III</ent>
perfected the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> scheme of priestcraft, and the "great"
<ent type='GPE'>Schoolmen</ent> proved to demonstration that this scheme, a transparent
clerical fabrication of comparatively recent date, was established
by Christ. How the priests won this power just when gaiety and
skepticism were increasing in Europe must be read elsewhere.
Briefly <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> brought matrimony under its iron authority by
making it a sacrament, an indissoluble contract, a ceremony
essentially requiring the presence of a priest. It discovered
"impediments," some of which were subject to removal by
dispensation (to the great profit of the Vatican) and some,
theoretically, not. This not only led to a prodigious traffic in
dispensations, which still continues in large part as I explained
in the last book, but it gave the archbishops and <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s a very
important authority over the lives of nobles, princes, and monarchs
in the matter of their marriage's.</p>

<p> Three cases which have been fully discussed by <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
critics like Boyd-Barrett, <ent type='PERSON'>Marshall</ent>, and Selde's and may here be
recalled briefly, will illustrate this tyranny. The late <ent type='ORG'>Count</ent>
(then Mr.) <ent type='PERSON'>Marconi</ent> married the Hon. <ent type='ORG'>Beatrice</ent> O'Brien in a
Protestant church in <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> -- "she was a Protestant and he an
apostate" -- in 1905. They had three children but separated in 1918
and were divorced in 1924. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> very generously concedes that
it does not claim authority over non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> marriages, but it
also claims that one who has been baptized a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, as <ent type='PERSON'>Marconi</ent>
had been, remains subject to it. In any case <ent type='PERSON'>Marconi</ent> wanted to
marry the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Count</ent>ess Bizzi-Scala, and he applied to Cardinal
Bourne in <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> for a declaration that his marriage was null and
void from the start: in other words, that he had never been married</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
9
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>to <ent type='ORG'>Beatrice</ent> O'Brieri -- though <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>, with great charity and
ingenuity, declares that the children of these sham marriages are
legitimate. The canonists at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> fastened upon the fact, or the
allegation -- you know what evidence is worth in divorce suits --
that <ent type='PERSON'>Marconi</ent> and his bride had agreed before marriage that if it
proved unhappy they would seek a divorce. Therefore there was no
real marriage, said the learned priests of <ent type='GPE'>London</ent>, pocketing their
fees. But <ent type='ORG'>Beatrice</ent> did not altogether like the idea that her
children were only saved from being bastards by the sophistry of
priests and she appealed to the <ent type='ORG'>Rota</ent> tribunal at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. <ent type='PERSON'>Marconi</ent> was
now rich and he "paid the expenses" of the trial. He got his decree
of nullity, married his countess, and was in high favor at the
Vatican until he died in 1937.</p>

<p> In the second famous case <ent type='PERSON'>Consuelo Vanderbilt</ent>, who had married
the Duke of <ent type='GPE'>Marlborough</ent> in 1895, left him in 1905 (after bearing
two sons) and got a divorce, applied to these learned and ingenious
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> authorities in <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> to ease her conscience by declaring
the marriage null from the start. You see, she now wanted to marry
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Count</ent> Balsan. The <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> authorities had to share so
promising a case with the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Rota</ent>, and the decree of nullity was
granted. She had, she swore, married against her will and because
her mother said that she would die of heart-disease unless <ent type='ORG'>Consuelo</ent>
married the Duke. No internal consent, said <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, so no marriage.
Consult the authors I have named if you want to read the testimony
of these aristocratic folk in detail and learn how the Vatican
authorities proved to the hilt, when a storm arose, that they were
absolutely compelled to declare the marriage null and money had
nothing to do with it. What interests me is <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> here
claims a power that is not only greater than but antagonistic to
that of the State. What, you probably ask, would be the social
situation if every girl who thought her husband a beast could go to
a court and get it to declare that she was not married to him
because "I didn't want to marry him -- mother made me," or "he,
said he would let me get a divorce if I wasn't happy"? But, don't
be too nervous. First, She would get no alimony. Secondly, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>
does not deal with a hundred cases a year and says that half of
them are "free." We already know something about Rome's "free"
services. The certificate may be free, but the frame may cost a
mighty lot of dollars.</p>

<p> A third case confirms us in these cynical reflection's. Miss
<ent type='PERSON'>Anna Gould</ent> -- how the names in these cases do smell of money --
married the Marquis de <ent type='PERSON'>Castellane</ent> in 1895, went through the usual
routine until they quarreled, divorced him in 1906 and married the
Duke de Sagan. He was a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, but with true <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> chivalry he
deserted <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> for his loved (and wealthy) <ent type='PERSON'>Anna</ent>. The elegant
<ent type='PERSON'>Castellane</ent>, being a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, felt himself out in the cold and
applied to <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> for a nullity-decree so that he could marry again.
<ent type='PERSON'>Anna</ent> had, he said, spoken about divorce before their marriage. The
cardinals of the <ent type='ORG'>Rota</ent> rejected his application, accepted it on
appeal, then rejected it again. <ent type='PERSON'>Castellane</ent> appealed to the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>,
who referred the matter to a committee of cardinals, and they
declared the marriage invalid. To be quite sure on so sacred a
point the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> enlarged the committee, and it declared the marriage
valid. Don't imagine that a count, a marquis, or a millionaire
always gets this previous decree. But you might care to ask me </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
10
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>whether all the marquis's money had gone or whether <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
dollars were weighed against his thin <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> francs. I regret that
the finances of these spiritual transactions are kept in a decent
secrecy.</p>

<p> A fourth case differently illustrates this beneficent power of
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> to tie and untie indissoluble marriages. A few years ago
a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n actress fell in love with a married producer.
He got a divorce from his <ent type='NORP'>Jewess</ent> wife but the austere <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> will
no more allow a marriage to a divorced person than it will grant a
divorce. The man however became a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> and married his <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
actress. Now, there's a pretty conundrum: so pretty that when I
published the facts in <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> two years ago one of the chief
writers on one of the chief <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers howled that here I
displayed either my gross ignorance of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> matters or . . .
The rest was silence. They delicately refrain from calling me a
liar -- in print.</p>

<p> But it is simple, and this <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> journalist would have
learned a little about her own religion if she had read the article
"<ent type='PERSON'>Pauline Privilege</ent>" in her <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Encyclopedia. Paul -- remember,
in mitigation, that he did not know that marriage is a sacrament
and indissoluble -- advised lady-members of the little group called
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es that when one was married to a pagan who was contemptuous
of his faith she was free, after gently expostulating with him in
vain, to leave him and marry a <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent>. Those learned theologians
of <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> who made a stalwart defense of the whole scheme
of priestcraft and are now pressed upon us by <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologists
as modern-minded thinkers, worked out that this was quite
consistent with marriage being a sacrament and indissoluble, and it
is part of the law of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> today. In the case I have given
above we have a simple application of it. The gentleman becomes a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, doubtless after profound meditation on the beauty of the
faith and not because priests had told him about the Pauline
Privilege. To meet <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n civil law he has already divorced his
wife, but in the eyes of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> he is still married. All that
he had to do however is to ask his late wife, whose answer you can
imagine if you know the riper Yiddish, if she cares to become a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> or to live with him without ever making any reflections on
his religious adventures. Even from this, however, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> claims
(clause 1211 of the new Canon Law) that it can grant a
dispensation, and, the lady being already divorced, it was probably
not done. The emancipated partner is then free without any further
fuss to marry a good member of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>.</p>

<p> Other aspects of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> law and practice illustrate this
power of the clerical <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>, even to the extent of flouting the
civil law, in a matter which is generally regarded as the supreme
personal concern in the life of a man or woman. Although this
control of marriage is so obviously priest-manufactured that the
laity, as I said, defeated for many centuries every attempt to
obtain its legislation about marriage fills one of the longer
sections of the new Code of Canon Law, and from the elaborate
nature of the clauses you will understand that very large and
profitable body of the appeals to the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> Congregations which I
described. Probably the most lucrative dogmas (to the <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent> </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
11
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>caucus) in the Whole <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> scheme are the sacramental nature of
marriage and the doctrine of purgatory (through indulgences), and
both are transparent medieval fabrications in so far as they are
dogmas.</p>

<p> Notoriously <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> goes beyond any civil law in assigning
the degrees of relationship within which it is forbidden to marry.
In <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> they stretched so far that in a small town or
village everybody was related to everybody, and it was a golden age
of dispensations; or it would have been if folk had taken their
religion seriously in <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent>. The new Canon Law says that
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> must not marry (without a <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> license) if they are
related by blood within three degrees, by marriage, within two
degrees, or by spiritual relationship (god parents in baptism). So
it is no longer possible for canonists to say, as they did in the
Middle Age's, that a marriage from which a rich person wants to
escape, never was a marriage because (as in the case of "Saint"
Louis and the very un-saintly Queen <ent type='PERSON'>Eleanor</ent>) the man is related to
the woman through some incident they have succeeded in discovering
in the lives of their great-great-grandparents, or through an act
of fornication, which in that age might be taken for granted
between their fifth cousins or other remote relatives. But the
field is still rich in possibilities; note carefully that marriages
which are valid in civil law are not valid in <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> law and vice
versa.</p>

<p> Mixed marriages are another interesting field. I have recently
been consulted on two cases in <ent type='GPE'>England</ent>. M has married N (a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>) on a strict agreement of honor between themselves that no
religion shall be imposed upon children of the marriage, who shall
choose their philosophy of life when they grow up. There is one
child, now in her early teen's, and the wife repudiates the
promise, at the priest's order, and she and her relatives choke the
girl with proselytism. In the second case a man wants to marry a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> girl, and she has assured him that there is no law of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> that all children of a mixed marriage shall be baptized and
reared in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<p> I am not concerned with whether these girls lied on their own
account or were directed by the priest to lie -- I beg his pardon,
to make a "mental reservation." Both are equally possible. But the
law of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> is clear. Not only is a dispensation required for
a mixed marriage but it will be granted only on four conditions
(clause 1061). There must be a serious reason: the non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
must promise never to say anything to disturb the Catholic's faith
and must agree to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> baptism and education of all
children: the priest must be morally certain that the promise will
be kept: and he must have the promise in writing. The next clause
(1062) says that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> party (who gets a promise that his or
her faith shall never be interfered with) must solemnly promise to
take every opportunity to interfere with the creed of ("convert")
the non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>. Clause 1070 enacts that such a marriage is
invalid unless the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> has got a dispensation, so that the
promises cannot be evaded by concealing the marriage from the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<div> </div>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
12
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> Another provision which flouts civil law and has led to a vast
amount of social trouble is that a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> (a baptized person,
whether he or she has left <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> or not) does not enter into
a valid marriage unless it is performed by a priest (1904). This
was enacted by <ent type='ORG'>the Council</ent> of Trent so as to prevent <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
secretly slipping from the power of the priest. When <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
multiplied in Protestant countries, some of which bitterly resented
such interference, <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> often suspended it, but in 1908 it was
declared to be in force in all countries. You see one consequence
of it. The millions in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> who were baptized in <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and
later left it and married like other citizens are to their <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
friends, not married, and their children are bastards.</p>

<p> There is a similar defiance of civil law in the enactment that
a couple who had committed adultery before marriage, or ex-nuns and
priests who had once taken a vow of celibacy are not validly
married. On the other hand, this very peculiar code of law about
marriage, which is supposed to have raised civilization in this
respect to a higher level, again drastically flouts civil law by
Saying (1104) that a priest can for "a very serious reason"
celebrate a marriage without witnesses and conceal it from the
civic authorities by entering it in a "secret register," and that
such a marriage is perfectly valid. Further, <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> Law says that
youth's can validly marry at the age of 16 and girls at the age of
14 (which in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> is two years below the legal age of consent).
And in fine this Code of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that never makes a moral
mistake lays great stress on that need of "internal consent" which,
as I showed in the above cases, opens a wide field for perjury and
contempt of the civil law. Some of the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n judges who tell
their fellow-citizens how the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> "does good" and
strengthens <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n civilization would not exactly be embarrassed
if married folk applied to them for divorce on the simple ground
that they were prepared to swear that they "did not really consent"
when they said "I do." They would order them out of court.</p>

<p> I am not in this book concerned with the defiance of civil law
and authority which is implied, if not flouted, in these clauses,
and the defiance of our modern ethic of sex-relations we will
consider in a later book. For the moment it is enough that here we
have an invasion of the most personal concerns of men and women
which really beats the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>. Concerned as the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent>s are about
copulation and children, they are content with one drastic law-forbidding copulation with <ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent> -- and leave the rest to the
influence of their "ideals." What will occur to any reader, even if
he is entirely ignorant of the history of these matters or does not
know that the laws were framed in an age of intense priestcraft, is
that they so obviously mean power and wealth to the clergy. To say
that they have an important moral or social significance is
preposterous. Some of the laws are plainly created for the profit
of selling dispensations from them, and all are designed to extend
and emphasize the power of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> over the laity.
The <ent type='PERSON'>Fuhrer</ent> has framed them: the <ent type='NORP'>Gauleiter</ent> and the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> see to
the observance of them.</p>

<p> I have said little about divorce, though <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s refusal
to recognize the validity of it is clearly a monstrous invasion of
the civic rights of a man or woman. It is as useless to talk about
<ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> duty as about the sanctity of marriage and social </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
13
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>interests. Until the 11th Century <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> recognized more
grounds of divorce than the majority of states do today. The <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent>
and most of the Protestant <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es, who know just as much about
<ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> duty but less about priestcraft, recognize divorce. And
the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> at once, when it suppressed divorce as part of its
comprehensive assertion of power over the laity, permitted an
extraordinary development of those nullity-decrees which I
illustrated in the foregoing cases. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> who had money were as
free to change partners as folk are in most of the states of the
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n Union today. That is no reckless statement. The highest
authority on <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> in the beautiful 13th Century, Prof. <ent type='PERSON'>Luchaire</ent>,
often claimed to be a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> and certainly not anti-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>,
says that women of the noble class "had a minimum of three or four
(successive) husbands." I have fully dealt with that elsewhere and
must not be tempted to enlarge upon it here.</p>

<p> The law against birth-control is an even more audacious, more
purely clerical, and more recent invasion of the rights of the
individual and the family. The motive for that sacred fury of
priests and bishops against the use of contraceptives which causes
them to hound women like <ent type='PERSON'>Margaret Sanger</ent>, get <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> mobs to
break up meetings, and make insolent attacks on medical or civic
authorities who favor the establishment of clinics has in reality
nothing to do with either morals or religion. It is an occasion for
asserting and thereby increasing their power in the community, and
it is one way of impressing more deeply on their own people the
prohibition of birth-control. It keeps up the fiction that it is
"filthy."</p>

<p> There are few points on which the claim of the Black
International is as plainly based on their own material interest as
it is here. There is nothing in traditional <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> theology that
makes birth control sinful. The question did not arise until the
19th Century when the birth rate began to gain on the death rate
and when the extensive use of crude contraceptive's began in
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent>. It then became apparent to the clergy that if non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
checked their natural increase by the use of preventives and
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> could be intimidated from using these by a threat of
eternal punishment <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> might hope in this way to cover to
some extent its large numerical losses. A <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> mother told me
that her priest had frankly said this at one of their "mother's
meetings." It is, at all events, not only the true but the obvious
inspiration of the clerical opposition to birth control; and it is
one of the grossest pieces of <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> tyranny over the family and
the individual. It is one of the points on which the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> most
naturally allied himself with <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>. They wanted
as many potential soldiers as possible: <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> wanted as many
contributing members as possible. Neither cared the toss of a coin
about the other reasons.</p>

<p> It is here frankly ridiculous to ask us to pay serious
attention to the solemn statements of grounds for the opposition
which <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are now invited to insert even in our
Encyclopedias. To quote the "divine command" to "increase and
multiply" from a piece of ancient <ent type='NORP'>Jewish</ent> fiction is an insult to
our intelligence; especially on the part of priests and nuns who
pretend to be superior to the rest of us precisely by ignoring the </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
14
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>command and regarding the mechanism of multiplication as even more
repulsive than defecation. But the usual argument that God's will
and purpose in the organs of generation is defied, is not much
better. This also is stultified by the doctrine of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that
priests, monks, and nun's, who are presumably equipped with those
organs, are much dearer to God just because they forswear the use
of them. But the argument is in itself absurd. It was used against
the use of anesthetics in difficult childbirth. It is answered by
the Catholic's own defense of celibacy: that provided a sufficient
number of people marry and couple to maintain the population the
"divine purpose" is met.</p>

<p> In any case, now that medicine and surgery are increasingly
reducing the death rate an unrestrained birth rate is a growing
evil. When <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and the <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese government forbade
<ent type='NORP'>Malthusian</ent> propaganda and whipped up the birth rate explicitly as
a preparation for war, were they cooperating with the divine
purpose? Is a great war, which checks the growth of the population,
part of that purpose? Are bacteria and fatal diseases?
Overpopulation is, notoriously, an outstanding cause of poverty,
suffering, unemployment, even war. But overpopulation would be
grave in our own time if it were not for the general use of
contraceptives and in the future it would reach heights which these
opponents of birth control on social grounds never dare consider.
Without birth control or immigration (which is ceasing) the
population of <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States would be 500000000 in the year
2000, 4000000000 in 2110. . . . Need I continue.</p>

<p> The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> clerical attitude is a piece of blatant
hypocrisy. Its real purpose is to strengthen the power of the
clergy and multiply those who support them. Its ostensible grounds
are so flimsy that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> men and women are in this respect
defying their priests to such an extent that the matter is now
openly discussed in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> literature. For their more comfortable
and better educated people they have had to say that it is
permissible to restrict births by refusing to have intercourse
except in the wife's sterile period, but they cheat even these
because the Ogino-Kraus theory of sterility which they follow is --
and the clerical leaders must know it -- rejected by the great
majority of medical authorities. Most of us would like to
characterize their interference in such matters in even stronger
language, because at the best it is based upon a view of sexual
intercourse at which the modern world smiles, but we must be
content to point out that we have here a tyranny over a man's life
which goes far beyond the claims and practices of the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>.</p>

<p> A final illustration of the tyranny over the family is the
childish ceremony of "churching" or Purification. When a child is
born it is rushed to church at the earliest date the doctor permits
for "baptism." This is Supposed by those who take a "broad view" of
the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> to be just a registration of the newcomer in the
ranks of the faithful. It is, of course, nothing of the kind. It is
part of the scheme of clerical control and is based upon a priest-made superstition that seems to any properly educated person
revolting. The idea of it is that all men are born with the
sentence of eternal punishment, or at least of eternal exclusion </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
15
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>from heaven, hanging over them (original sin) because a legendary
<ent type='PERSON'>Adam</ent> broke into a legendary orchard ages ago. That pink morsel of
flesh is, on <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teaching, to suffer, privately, forever for
Adam's sin if it died before it is put through the weird rites
known as baptism!</p>

<p> Most people think that the tyranny and absurdity -- one would
almost say obscenity -- end there but they do not. Because ages ago
in the dawn of Hebrew civilization, when savage superstitions still
lingered in the tribes, the priests laid it down (Leviticus, XII:2)
that a woman was "unclean" after bearing a child -- for seven days
if it was a boy and fourteen if it was a girl -- and must go to the
priest to be purified, priests get the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> women of <ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>New York</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent> to act upon the same childish superstition
today. It is voluntary, but the priests urge it upon every "good"
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> mother. Polite non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> say that it is just a pretty
symbolical ceremony. As usual, they decline to look up the facts.
The ritual enjoins that the woman must remain, as a sort of sinner,
"at the door of the church" until the priest's magic has "purified"
her, and then leads her into the church. He has made an honest
woman of her. Photographs of the ceremony in the 20th Century ought
to be preserved amongst those records of contemporary life which
are stored in some places for the future sociologist.</p>

<p> Chapter III</p>

<p> THE PRIESTLY CENSORS OF MORALS</p>

<p> These points do not tell the whole story of that tyranny over
the family which the priest exercises, largely through his
afternoon visitations. He wants to know if parents and children
have joined the various societies and fraternities, suited to every
age and both sexes, which are organized for the purpose of carrying
his school-control over later years, We return to these in the last
chapter. He inquires if any fail to attend the church every <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent>,
what they read, what shows and dances they attend, whether the
children who have left school have fallen into "bad company," and
so on. Whether he is really concerned about their morals or no
depends upon the character of the priest, which is generally
doubtful, but every priest is very keen on keeping them in the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Where the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body is strong and includes a number of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> employers the priest has a very persuasive argument for
loyalty. I have known a priest in a <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> town of medium size to
walk into a shop in which a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> had a score of employees and
order him to dismiss non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> and hire <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> recommended
by himself, or order a woman who kept a small store, to cancel her
purchase's from non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> sources and deal with <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>. But
here we are mainly concerned with that form of tyranny which the
priest calls concern about the morals of <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>.</p>

<p> Here the "unprejudiced" non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> -- it is remarkable how
often a writer whose circulation can be injured or promoted by the
clergy or a politician with an eye on the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> vote -- becomes
ironical. Do we, he asks, first deny that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> "does good"
and then quarrel with it for attempting to do good by a paternal
vigilance over the morals of the community? Or do we deny that </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
16
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>moral culture has anything to do with the welfare and progress of
a civilization? I must defer to a later book the reply to the
second question, in which we must discriminate, but we may remind
these "liberal" folk of one or two matters that concern the answer
to the first, which he regards as so easy.</p>

<p> One point is that the concern of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> about
conduct is far less than its concern about loyalty and is largely
hypocritical. Ever since the early part of <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has insisted on its dual guardianship of faith and morals,
yet I have abundantly shown in my historical works that, while it
adopted murderous methods of guarding the faith of the people it
was so really unconcerned about their morals that the period when
the power of priests and <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s was supreme (the 11th to the 16th
Century) was the most immoral in the history of normal
civilization. I do not here take the word morals to refer chiefly
to sexual morals. I say that there was more fiendish cruelty, more
ghastly injustice to the poorer nine-tenth's of the community, more
contempt of the idea of honor and good faith, than in any other 400
years of history apart from the Dark Ages. But the verdict is
particularly sound if you make the <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> sex-code one of the
chief points of your ethical scheme of conduct; and this state of
things -- see my large History of Morals -- lasted well into the
19th Century and lingered longer in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> than in non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
countries.</p>

<p> To express surprise or incredulity at this statement is to
confess that one has never made a serious study of it. At its best
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> code is false to the realities of life and largely
based upon superstitions about sex that the candid mind at once
rejects. Further, it is framed in a doctrinal system on the level
of the crude boogie-will-get-you-if-you-are-naughty of the nursery.
The moment the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> goes out into life, either on leaving the
school or (in the case of the <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>), by emigration to a better
educated country, the framework begins to yield to the acid in the
new atmosphere. <ent type='LOC'>Thirdly</ent> <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> has frustrated its moral
efforts, as far as we can respect these, by making it easy for the
people to escape what it calls "the consequences of sin" (the
confessional, indulgences, etc.). And fourthly the clergy
themselves have throughout the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> countries shown, and in
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> countries continue to show, a monumental example of
vicious conduct: lying, intolerance, cruelty, greed, and disloyalty
to their vows. I have fully developed these points elsewhere and
need only summarily recall them. The fourth point applies less in
our age, since the clergy are compelled by public opinion to mind
their own conduct, but they still apply.</p>

<p> But is not the zeal of the priests for good morals in our time
something new and of valuable service to the community? Is it not
on this ground that they unite with other <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es -- with "good
people everywhere," in a current phrase -- and so promote the
interests of the state that <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> is bound to treat them with
respect? Are they not now so really resentful of vicious conduct
that they go out beyond the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> family and parish and have a
deep influence on the morals of the whole community?</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
17
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> In discussing these matters we are up against a large problem
-- the question which moral code or which clauses of it are
socially important -- that must be deferred to the sixth book of
this series, where we will boldly challenge the whole ideal of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. But we can make a provisional reply. It is that the priest
certainly wants to control the morals of the entire community. He
does not merely forbid his own people to go to see a film in which
his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> finds immorality but he brings heavy pressure to bear on
film companies and fires his <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent> and Dames of the
Holy Grail to intimidate exhibitors so that even non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>
shall not see them. His <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> brings the same pressure to bear on
authors, publishers, and booksellers to prevent them from supplying
the general non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> public. He threatens civic authorities
with the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> vote unless they send the police to stamp down on
these "filthy" and "swinish" discussions (which he has never beard)
on birth control. Of all that there is so little question that I do
not think it necessary to give here proofs of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
interference. <ent type='PERSON'>Selde</ent>s and other writers give plenty of evidence, but
in point of fact <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> boast of what thy do in this field, and
I do not suppose there is an <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n who has not heard of <ent type='PERSON'>Breen</ent>
and the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> spiritual guides of the pious colony of artists at
<ent type='GPE'>Hollywood</ent> or of the campaign against birth control.</p>

<p> What is more important is to understand why they assert this
moral censorship. A distinguished <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> social writer, the late
John A. <ent type='PERSON'>Hobson</ent>, being pressed to defend the puritanical code which
(from force of environment) he upheld though he was a skeptic and
generally addressed himself to skeptics, replied that he placed it
on an aesthetic basis. Logically that is unassailable. A man has as
much right to prefer a certain type of character as a certain type
of female figure; though, naturally, this gives him no right to
quarrel with a neighbor's different taste. But this theory at once
removes the question of chastity from the field of sociology. The
stability of civilization does not depend upon tastes but upon hard
facts, and it is now generally agreed by men who do not allow
priests to dictate their opinions that whether, for instance, an
actress in a film or on a stage has too narrow a diaper or how many
young folks decline to wait until they are married are not issues
of any serious social significance. The priest, of course, raises
a vague suggestion that civilization crumbles if we permit are to
raise the temperature a degree or two and mumbles about ancient
<ent type='GPE'>Greece</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> (which were really more virtuous even in this
respect than his Beautiful 13th Century), but most of us have got
beyond those fairy-tales of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> history.</p>

<p> Why then is <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> so frothy with
sacred fury about morals? Mainly because it gives them an important
place in public life and furnishes a nice-sounding excuse to the
politicians and other's who find it profitable to give them
prestige and influence or dangerous to refuse them. The priests
help to guard the foundations of the state, the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n home and
family. And so on. Many of these politicians, civic authorities,
editors, etc., who smile beside the priests on public platforms may
even believe what they say because none of them know the facts,
about morals in past ages or the genuine sociological position of
morals. You might as well expect them to make deep economic study
to ascertain the truth when bankers and industrialists assure them </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
18
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>that unrestricted competition is the second chief foundation of the
state or to inquire, when they are told that something is un-<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n, whether <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> is really better off without it. Anyhow,
statesmen, bankers, editors, judges, and employer's just take the
word of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> that it is doing a most important work and pass
on the good news to the public. The priest goes back to his people
and says: you see whit a splendid position we have won for the once
despised <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. And his brewers take out their wallets
and brewers' widows open their checkbooks.</p>

<p> But you do not need to study either history or sociology, and
these people know it. Sex-morals have so little to do with social
welfare that the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n civilization, which is the second
greatest (after <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>) in the world is also the most advanced
sexually. It tries to shut out an idealist like <ent type='PERSON'>Bertrand Russell</ent>
for moral turpitude and then has to have a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> League of
Decency and other whole armies of amateurs helping the police to
prevent artists and showmen from giving the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n people what
they decidedly want. One of these censors would be the first to
paint a terrible picture of the license that would ensue in novels,
magazines. theaters, films, and cabarets if you just left the
purveying to the familiar law of supply and demand. I find <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
novels at a decent literary level better than <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> and much
better than <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> or <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>, and at least two-thirds, if not four-fifths, of them reflect an attitude to sex in the middle-class
readers that is far from puritanical, in spite of such censorship
as there is. The sale of <ent type='ORG'>sexological</ent> literature confirms this.</p>

<p> On the other hand the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n civilization has some grave
defects which are not found in the <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>n. Notoriously there is an
abnormal amount of corruption in business, politics (local and
federal), and juridical and penal circles. There is too high a
proportion of serious crime, too much suffering of the poor and
helpless, too much wanton extravagance of the rich. But do you hear
(he <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> thundering against these evils? Or do you hear
bankers and statesmen applauding it for some crusade against them?
Never. The G-Men made more impression in a year on the real moral
evils which injure civilization than <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> made in a
generation. Tammany, which has been one of the cess-pools of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> for a century has always been, and is, tied up with the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Do not talk to me about <ent type='PERSON'>Coughlin</ent>. Half his followers are
not <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, and it is just because he gets some millions of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns to respect a priest, and therefore in a vague way the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> to which he belongs, that the authorities permit for the
present the blatant and -- as has repeatedly been shown --
insincere ravings of the <ent type='ORG'>mountebank</ent>. Just where he does represent
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and violates Justice and decency (in his anti-Semitism
and libeling of <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent>) he is neither moral nor a promoter of
the real interests of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.</p>

<p> For the last few years the sacred fury of the priests has
expended itself in a crusade against <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>ns and Communism. I
might add the pitiless campaign of lying about democratic <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> as,
although the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> laity were divided, the clergy were almost
wholly on the side of the rebel who has murdered thousands in cold
blood and is torturing tens of thousands. But examine the ferocious
attacks on Communism in which the clergy generally carried the </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>laity with them. To call this a moral crusade is a mockery. The
attempts to justify it by repeating discredited libels from the
<ent type='GPE'>London</ent> Times were exposed repeatedly yet this had not the least
influence in restraining the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> onslaught. Apart from these
bogus outrages the attack was not moral but immoral. A man has as
much right on decent principles and under <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n law to try to
persuade others that all the means of production ought to be a
national possession and all commodities and services equally shared
as he has to argue for the New Deal or universal conscription -- to
say nothing of a right to poison the minds of children and delude
adults with false statements.</p>

<p> Whenever You apply a genuine moral test to the work of the
clergy they fail, yet the country grants them an amazing power in
the only respect claimed to be moral but certainly not moral in the
social sense and challenged by some of the best writers in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
and probably at least half the educated class. It is the familiar
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> story. Claim that you are rendering a service to civilization
by preventing people from seeing a film like The Birth of a Baby or
by getting censors at <ent type='GPE'>Hollywood</ent> who will cut out a bit of saucy
dialogue (at which the entire audience would break into laughter)
or order the alteration of a bath-room scene, and then when a
writer seriously challenges the utility of the work and the moral
standard of the censors get his book suppressed.</p>

<p> Indeed in the matter of films the so-called moral censorship
is in large part a pretext for preventing a disturbance of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
propaganda and has been so used in notorious cases. Anyone who has
seen or read G.B. Shaw's Saint <ent type='PERSON'>Joan</ent> knows that, in his usual
defiant way (certainly not for profit) he was attacking
freethinkers and playing to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> gallery. His Inquisition
scene, for instance, was a concession to <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> at the dire cost
of historical truth. Yet the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> censors cracked their whips
and threatened an all-<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n boycott because it did not represent
as they wanted the official sanctity of <ent type='PERSON'>Joan</ent>. It was much the same
with The Informer, which showed the real combination of cruelty and
piety in the priest-ridden <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>, and with <ent type='ORG'>Blockade</ent> which exposed
the lies which the priests were telling about the <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> people.</p>

<p> It is, however, the principle, the fact that the religious
leaders of about 15000000 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns are allowed to control the
entertainment of the entire population, that matters. It is all the
more exasperating to any man who remembers that in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
lands of Southern Europe the most licentious spectacles were
permitted by priests (who then did represent the entire community).
In the pious <ent type='EVENT'>Middle Ages</ent> pageants and parodies of the <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent> were
permitted in the churches and cathedrals which would make a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent> lady faint, and orgies followed on the streets
which, if they were now perpetrated in private, would rouse <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>
policemen to break in with axes and mercilessly beat the audience.
If you can read <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>, and if there is a copy of it in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>,
try to see M. du Tilliot's Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de la
Fete des Foax (1741). The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> author, who devoted years to his
inquiry, gives a richly documented account of monstrous scenes that
the clergy permitted (and often took part in) in the cathedrals and
churches of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> (and <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, etc.) wild orgies on the
streets on "holy" days all through the Ages of Faith. On some of </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
20
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>the illustrations he gives, from banners that had headed
processions on these days, we see men performing in the public
street acts which one of the most distinguished <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> writers, V.
Marguerite, was expelled from the <ent type='ORG'>Academy</ent>, at the insistence of the
clergy, twenty years ago for attributing in a novel (La garconne)
as secret practices to a few morbid men and women of the richer
class! Until quite recent times -- for all I know it may still be
true -- spectacles were exhibited semi-publicly -- you had merely
to charge for admission to the room and exclude children -- which
would not have been tolerated in ancient <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. I often saw myself
when I lived in the South of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, 40 years ago, the poster at
the door announcing such shows as La mademoiselle et l' ane. That
means "The young lady and the donkey," and that is all I dare tell
you about it. In those days the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> priests were pale with
indignation because a few morbid folk in <ent type='GPE'>Paris</ent> were said
(questionably) to attend <ent type='ORG'>Black Masses</ent>, in great secrecy, but
hundreds of thousands nightly paid to see these really public
shows.</p>

<p> Here is one more -- I could give scores -- illustration of
this hypocritical delicacy about sex. Until 1878 castrated soprano
singers were used instead of females in many churches (and operas)
of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and even in the Papal choir at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. This was as notorious
a fact as the venality of Papal officials and was noticed in nearly
every book of travel of visitors. I have met old men who have
lunched and discussed with these eunuchs in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. The Encyclopedia
Britannica (article "Eunuchs") continued until the latest edition
to say that these emasculated men "driven long ago from the stage
by public opinion remained the musical glory and the moral shame of
the Papal choir till the accession of <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent>." The recent
edition was revised by <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent>, and not only is the reference to
the churches suppressed, but it is audaciously stated that <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent>
simply found the custom in vogue in the opera. Clerical writers,
having thus suppressed the most accessible and weighty evidence,
have already begun -- I have had proof in the last few weeks -- to
say that this story is another libel of the Holy <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>! But apart
from the unexpurgated earlier editions of the Britannica it is
stated as an ordinary musical fact in Grove's standard Dictionary
of Music ("Soprani") and all the older dictionaries and books on
church-life in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. Every <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, every nun, in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> knew that the
castrati ("the castrated," as they were commonly called) or <ent type='ORG'>soprani</ent>
in the Papal and other church choirs were men who had been, for
church purposes, treated as men used to treat each other in the
wildest of <ent type='LOC'>the Wild West</ent>. Now <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> wants to
dictate to <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> on the ground that its <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has an age-old
tradition of extreme delicacy in regard to sex! The claim is even
more preposterous than the shoddy version of history which
attributes the fall of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, etc., to sexual freedom. The real aim
is the same as in the furious campaign against <ent type='NORP'>Spaniards</ent> and
<ent type='NORP'>Bolsheviks</ent>, the alliance with the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> scum of the modern world
the sycophancy to the rich -- care for the power and wealth of the
Black International.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
21
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> Chapter IV</p>

<p> THE SHAME OF THE CONFESSIONAL</p>

<p> In discussing this <ent type='NORP'>catholic</ent> censorship of art and
entertainment I have inevitably moved beyond the priest's tyranny
over his own people and considered the outrageous interference of
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> hierarchy with the freedom and tastes of the general
population. If any doubt still lingers in the mind of the reader
about the truth of my statement that the real aim of this is simply
to increase the power and prestige of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> let him reflect
that the clerical <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> has in this respect a power to control
its own subjects which is far greater than the power of other
ministers of religion. A priest may tell you that in claiming a
national censorship his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> merely wants to remove "temptation"
from the eyes of its followers. That again is a hollow claim. Its
real plea is that it is rendering a <ent type='ORG'>Service</ent> to <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
civilization and must therefore be respected as a valuable national
institution. In the domestic sphere <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> boasts that it
enables folk to "resist temptation" far more effectively than any
other <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> does. The chief reference here is to its doctrine of
mortal sin and the confessional, and it is an important part of the
tyranny of the spiritual <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>.</p>

<p> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teaching, stamped upon the mind from childhood onward
by myriads of sermons, books, hymns, services, etc., is that some
sins are venial (pardonable or lighter) and some mortal (or
punished with eternal torment unless they are confessed to a priest
and absolution received). Reading books or seeing pictures or shows
that in any degree stir the sexual feelings is declared very
emphatically by <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> to be one of these mortal sins. One
should understand clearly how unique the position of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
is. He believes that after reading even a passage of a book that
criticizes the faith or the clergy or seeing a film that gives him
a sexual feeling, he is under sentence of eternal damnation and if
he dies suddenly -- a street accident, bombing, heart-failure, etc.
before he has confessed this to a priest he will infallibly and
with no hope whatever of escaping it suffer terrible torture for
all eternity.</p>

<p> It is well also to understand the position of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
friend who smiles and tells you that he does not take this
literally. If he does not he rejects the teaching of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> on
a point which it makes as vital to the creed as the divinity of
Christ or the atonement: more <ent type='ORG'>Vital</ent>, indeed, since the power of the
priests is based to a far greater extent on the doctrine of hell.
In rejecting or ignoring this dogma a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> necessarily rejects
the basic dogma of the teaching authority of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and opens
the door wide to general skepticism. He cannot honestly repeat the
simplest form of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> creed and, if he is a writer, he dare
not even remotely hint at his position. is he a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>? Please
yourself, but you will have little difficulty in realizing that
this peculiar attitude toward one of the most fundamental dogmas of
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> is very uncommon in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body. From <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>
angle the man who says this is in worse plight than the crook or
the fornicator. If he does not act on the belief which he
professes, to reject and confess his sins at least once a year he, </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
22
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> theology, may still be a member of the "body" of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> but not of its "soul." In plain English he is only a nominal
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> and keeps his position for social or other reasons. Any
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> who tells you that he is free to question or reject thins
fundamental doctrine lies. He certainly knows better.</p>

<p> It is through the further doctrines of confession and
indulgences that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> makes this dogma one of the most
profitable in its theology and the chief source of its despotic
power. People who indolently, or from an amiable ignorance of the
subject, say that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is much the same as any other
are very far astray. The Protestant bows to the commands of the
Lord and what he believes to be doctrines in <ent type='EVENT'>the New Testament</ent>.
Even <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>England</ent> and the Protestant Episcopal <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> lay it down in the 39 Articles that the <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> need not
listen to any command or doctrine that is not found in the
Scriptures. But the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> imposes as a binding dogma --
binding under the usual penalty of hell -- that "Commandments of
<ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>" are on the same footing as the Ten Commandments. They
put on the same level as an act of grave injustice the failure of
a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> to attend <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent> on <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent> morning, to abstain from meat
on Friday, or to neglect confession at Easter. The penalty is the
same for murder, adultery, or defrauding the widow or orphan --
hell.</p>

<p> A pleasant thought, isn't it, that some 10000000 adult
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n's believe this. Hell and the devil have dominated their
minds from the time when they were in the infant-school. Naturally
there are millions of Protestants who are in the same condition,
but (in no Protestant <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> do the authorities say that it is hell
to transgress their commands), in none is a man prevented by
priestly inquisition and periodical confession from taking a more
liberal view. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> can deal out sentence of hell and
annul the sentence of hell when it pleases.</p>

<p> That is the chief root of the strange tyranny I have so far
described. A <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologist would resent the word tyranny. His
people, he would say voluntarily submit to the priest who dictates
what they shall read or not-read, what shows they shall see or not
see, whom and in what conditions they shall marry, and so on. Does
he mean that they like it? Oh. no: but they hold a creed that
reconciles them to the system. And the fundamental article of that
creed is that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> take's the place of Christ and can condemn
a child of eight years to hell or acquit a man who is as encrusted
with sins as an old ship is with barnacles. It may all sound very
flatulent to you, but you will never understand <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> life and
action unless you know it.</p>

<p> This doctrine of hell and its annex, purgatory, is turned into
a source of power and wealth chiefly by the further doctrines of
penance and indulgences. A mortal sin -- for instance, when you
kiss a girl too ardently even for a few seconds -- incurs sentence
of hell instantaneously by an automatic spiritual machinery. All
sorts of things are mortal sins and, though, you may find it
incredible, <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> believe that the majority of themselves walk
the streets, cheerfully, under the dire sentence. The curse holds
until the act -- in case they have forgotten this fateful act, as </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
23
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>they commonly do, they run over a charming and exhaustive list of
sins (in their prayer-books) before confessing -- is confessed to
a priest and he gives absolution. <ent type='NORP'>Theologians</ent>, who are really not
quite as obtuse as the gentle lady saint who in a vision saw
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> falling every minute "like snowflakes" into hell have
thought out the mitigation that when one is going to die without
the possibility of seeing a priest an act of sorrow will do the
trick. I doubt if many Catholic's know that piece. The only sure
way to escape the sentence is to confess. The obligation is to do
this. once a year, but fraternity rules and custom generally
prescribe once a month.</p>

<p> Many would like to ask one psychological question about the
mind of a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>. Gladys for instance, goes to confession on
February 28 and is not due again until March 31. But she has a date
on March 7 (or 17th especially) and . . . Does she go about in fear
and trembling in the meantime? Not in the least. You must work it
out for yourself but be sure of one thing: <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> really believe
all this stuff. Nervousness about it is unusual. A priest in a poor
quarter of <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> told me this experience. I believe it has become
"a story" since I wrote it 45 years ago, but it's true. He was
assisting an <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> laborer, of lurid life, in his last hour and
found the man terribly afraid. When he explained how merciful God
is the man murmured: "It's not 'im, it's the other b____.</p>

<p> Once the "soul" has gone to hell it is all over. Almost the
one thing which the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> "cannot do is to get a soul out of hell.
It sounds remarkable but the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> way of salvation is almost
fool-proof, and <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> rarely think about going to hell.
Confession to a priest means that you glance back, in quarter of an
hour or so of preparation, over the month (or year) with the aid of
your list of sins and then tell him which you committed and how
often in each case. One priest I knew used to tell of a bright boy
who, with admirable succinctness, reeled off his load speedily as:
"Thirty b-s, 25 p-s, and 40 d-s. It is not necessary to tell venial
sins, and better-behaved children are often puzzled. A sharp little
girl, of inquiring mind, once accused herself to me -- the reader
probably knows that I was a father-confessor for years -- of
adultery. But of tales of the confessional there would be no end.
See my Twelve Years in a <ent type='ORG'>Monastery</ent>.</p>

<p> Another essential difference of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism is that the priest
does not assure the penitent "that God forgives him" or her. He
says, and means "I absolve thee." It was part of the power-policy
of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> to shape the institution (or sacrament) of penance on
those lines. Confession. to a priest is, of course, an old
religious practice. It was as familiar in ancient <ent type='GPE'>Babylonia</ent> as it
is in a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> country, though the priest did not release from a
sentence of hell, in which no <ent type='GPE'>Babylonia</ent>n believed. Their idea was
that for sin the great God <ent type='PERSON'>Marduk</ent> let the devils have a go at a
man, and it was relief from the tooth-aches, head-aches, belly-aches, etc., consequent upon sin that he sought. Confession to a
priest was as common in ancient as in modern <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>.</p>

<p> But all that must be read elsewhere. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> theory is
that after the priest's magic formula and wave of the hand the
devil retires, baffled, and all that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> has to look
forward to its purgatory. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> may assure you that it is one </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
24
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>of the beauties of their creed that it avoids the stark and inhuman
alternative of hell or heaven for eternity. It says that lighter
sins or those who have escaped hell by confessing must suffer or be
"purified" for a time in purgatory. It is not now essential to
believe that the torture is by fire, though the learned (and very
modern) <ent type='PERSON'>Thomas Aquinas</ent> proved to the hilt that souls could feel
torture by fire, and since it is a spiritual state, there is no
question of time. But <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> finds it hopeless to impress the
dogma without this material terminology. A popular hymn exhorts
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> to "Pray for the Holy Souls that burn, This hour amidst
the cleansing flames," and the indulgences which they "win" or buy
speak of shortening the purgatorial punishment by 30 days or 100
days, or abolishing it altogether.</p>

<p> In short, this purgatory and indulgence business, however
beautiful and humane you may think it, has been the most profitable
religious doctrine that was invented. We need not go back to the
<ent type='EVENT'>Middle Ages</ent>, when indulgences were sold as literally as cigars are,
or think of the sale of them by the millions a year in <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> lands -- no doubt <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> has restored it -- until recent
years. In discussing <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>'s finances I said that a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
pays for every <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent> that each of the 250000 priests says every
day, and the aim is usually an indulgence. I described the enormous
traffic in medals, small pictures, relies, scapulars (little
pictures on cloth strung over the shoulders and worn next the
skin), etc. The normal aim of all this is to secure indulgences.
But the subject is too large to be treated here.</p>

<p> What concerns us more is that the doctrine of hell, of a
barbarously conceived penalty for a sin from which the priest must
absolve a man, is obviously the main source of the power of the
clerical <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>. Let us admit that the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> did not invent
the dogma of hell, as it did that of purgatory, and that priests do
not now receive money for absolution, though they assuredly did
this in <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent>. But as a source of power over the laity it
is a doctrine of unrivalled value. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> could not have any
hope of putting its own commandments in regard to church-attendance, fasting, marriage, divorce, birth-control, reading
critical literature, etc., on the same footing as the <ent type='ORG'>Decalogue</ent> if
it had not first lodged the belief in eternal punishment and in its
own right to declare when and how this punishment was incurred In
the mind of the laity.</p>

<p> Confession is obviously and essentially based upon the dogma.
Unless one appreciates this the spectacle of 10000000 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns
whispering periodically to a priest how many times they Swore or
lied, how many times they just thought that a girl was desirable --
hell drops in with the first thought -- or handled themselves,
seems grotesque. The "liberal" view, that <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> esteem the
practice because it eases their consciences and gets them spiritual
guidance, is preposterous nonsense. Most <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> detest the need
of it and, as a rule, hurry through it mechanically. But only the
small minority who are <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in name only, for social or
business reasons, shirk it. One of the first questions the visiting
priest asks the mother at Easter time is whether all members of the
family have "been to their Easter duties." The minimum obligation
is confession and communion once a year "and that at Easter or
there abouts." The priest keeps a tally.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
25
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p> And the most intriguing feature of the whole business is that
this "sacrament of penance" with its dire obligation to confess to
a priest at least once a year is one of the most obviously priest-made dogmas in the whole weird structure of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teaching and
discipline. The <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, one of many ascetic developments
of the <ent type='NORP'>Greek</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> world, did assuredly start with a lively concern
about sins. The end of the world and general judgment -- idea which
had been borrowed from the <ent type='NORP'>Persians</ent> -- were believed to be near at
hand. The practice arose, therefore, of compelling members who had
strayed to confess their sins, generally in the sense of expressing
sorrow for sins which were known to the others, before admitting
them to the mystic supper. Doubtless the "overseer" (bishop) or
presiding "elder" (priest) recited some sort of formula of
absolution. In the 2nd Century, as the idea of priesthood
developed, it was claimed that the clergy could forgive sins, and
a clause in support of this was worked into <ent type='EVENT'>the New Testament</ent>
(<ent type='PERSON'>Matthew XVI</ent>, 19). The next step in the fabrication of the priest's
power was to declare that forgiveness could be obtained only
through the priest's absolution and the laity must be compelled to
ask for it periodically. This was so clearly an ecclesiastical move
that even the people of the Dark Age resisted it, as they resisted
the priestly control of marriage, and there was no law of
compulsory confession until the year 1215, when the truculent and
despotic <ent type='PERSON'>Innocent III</ent> had completed the fabric of ecclesiastical
power.</p>

<p> It is too large a subject for discussion here, and we are
concerned only to point out how this rounds off the power of the
priest over the laity and gives him an authority and right of
inquisition that the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> might envy. But one further point
must be noticed briefly.</p>

<p> Protestant writers insist that the confessional is actually a
corrupting institution while non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> apologists for
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism claim -- they never examine facts -- that it must be an
effective moral agency. In a careful analysis of my experience as
a confessor and of discussions with others I have shown (in my
Twelve Years in a <ent type='ORG'>Monastery</ent>) that the Protestant contention is, if
certain excesses are struck out, correct to a very wide extent. It
is true that there is no misconduct in the confessional, in which
priest and penitent are separated by a wooden partition, and of
wire grille, but assignations can be made, and the priest often
hears confessions in places where there is no separation. I have
known a priest who systematically got young women to pretend
illness, go to bed, and send for him to come and hear their
confessions. It is rare. More common is the demoralizing effect on
girls and certain types of women of the intimate sexual talk that
is not merely permitted but required by the priest. He cannot pass
a vague self-accusation of a girl that she has been "immodest" (as
the nuns teach her to say) or indecent. He must ask. Does she mean
a solitary act and how far did it go? Was it with another girl or
with a man, and just how far did that go? Was the man married or a
priest? Was it with a dog (not uncommon with certain types) and how
far did that go? If she that she saw a film or read a book he has
to know if the bad thoughts culminated in the usual way, and so on.
Since most priests are normally "fleshy" and the woman is
stimulated by the sort of sacred license the occasion permits her, </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
26
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>any man can guess what the emotional development is likely to be.
The cinema from which the priest is so eager to banish temptation
for the sake of his <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> girls, rarely reaches the temperature
that the confessional so often does.</p>

<p> Chapter V</p>

<p> CATHOLIC ACTION A <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> MANEUVER</p>

<p> Writers who find it more convenient to make reflections on the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> without making a close study of its history and life
-- it is much easier to pay it compliments in this way --
generously describe it as a vast body of 300000000 or
350000000, men and women who are devotedly attached to a
"venerable creed" and are therefore bound to have a priesthood and
hierarchy for organizational purposes and to preserve the necessary
discipline. We have seen, or I have shown in a score of works, that
this view is as false as the theory of a Seventh Day Adventist that
the strata of the earth's crust are heaps of rubbish left by the
great Deluge, There are not 50000000 lay men and women in the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> world who are old enough and sufficiently educated to be
described as deliberately subscribing to a creed. The vast majority
of the 180000000 <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are children, illiterates, or semi-literates; and most of the remainder are duped by a mendacious
literature and fooled by a dogma which prevents them from reading
exposures of its untruth.</p>

<p> From a sociological viewpoint <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> is an
economic corporation of some quarter of a million priests, high and
low. It differs from the ordinary economic corporation in the fact
that the 100000000 more or less adult lay members are not
shareholders but, as in the propagandist societies, just
subscribing members. And it differs from these propagandist or
idealist bodies and societies very profoundly in the fact that it
holds, and has for centuries proceeded on, the principle that these
subscribing members must be held together by violence as well as
deceit: that they cannot leave it when they profess to believe its
creed no longer but remain subject to it and may be coerced by any
kind of suffering (privation, jail, torture, even death) when the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> finds it feasible to inflict. Ten years ago you might have
boggled at this conception of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. Very many
Socialists and <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> did, saying that it was a harmless old
wreck and serious people gave all their attention to politico-economic matter's. Now, in their tens of millions, in penury or a
miserable mental slavery, in jail or in mourning for their dead,
they lie like withered swathes of corn across the planet from
<ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent> to <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>.</p>

<p> preserve this structure <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> had not only to
lodge certain childish basic dogmas in the minds of the subscribing
members and guard them from the contamination of truth but to draw
a magic line between clergy and laity. It invented the sacrament of
Holy Orders. It erected a sanctuary rail in the chapel. The priests
were officially "holy men," special proteges of the Holy Ghost,
separated from ordinary folk by sacred vows, rights, privileges,
and powers. They talked to you from a pulpit as if you were </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
27
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THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>children and ordered you to do this and that as if you were slaves.
If you laid a hand on one -- if you came home unexpectedly and
caught him, let us say, at your special bottle -- it was the
terrible crime of sacrilege. They could not be taken to a common
court of law or asked to pay taxes. To ask them to show annual
balance-sheets would be an outrage. Your business was to pay and be
meek.</p>

<p> The laity were always apt to be restive under this system. In
the earlier part of <ent type='LOC'>the Middle Ages</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>s themselves fought
the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s off and on for two centuries for the right to govern
themselves. Everywhere, as I said, they resisted priestly attempts
to control marriage or impose such laws as compulsory confession.
Princes and nobles defied the clergy hundreds of times, but by the
terrors of excommunication and interdict the clergy worked on the
illiterate masses and won. By the 19th Century these terrors were
as vapid as those of the haunted house or the comet, and the
historic disintegration of the old <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> began. The success of
science in mastering disease and death led to a rapid increase of
population, but even this could not be made to conceal the fact
that <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> was losing about a million members a decade. Slowly
and reluctantly the clergy had to turn to new methods, and one of
these, particularly during the last 20 years, is what is called
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action. Some call it <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism with a punch, others a
cooperation of laity and clergy. It is a combination of the two.</p>

<p> The laity began to take action long before the late <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>
organized this new movement or tendency. The fight of the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> against <ent type='ORG'>Bismarck</ent> was mainly conducted by the laity. The
militant <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> Socialism of that county and <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent> was
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action. <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> had several powerful lay movements in the
19th Century, and a Papal Delegate was sent to <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> to curb the
laity long before <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent>, in 1899, gave a public and severe
snub to the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n bishops for their innovations. However, it is
usually said, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> laity won the right of personality, and
in <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action they march side by side with the priests, no
longer mere contributors but militant and largely self-governing
bodies.</p>

<p> Not quite. <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action does not mean either that the
priests were forced to make concessions or that their tyranny is
less. To a larger extent it was not a new movement but a
coordination of developments due to the requirements of modern
life. The multiplication of schools and in so many countries the
exclusion of nuns and religious brothers from them caused the
appearance of a vast army of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teachers, and, since the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school is, as I said, really a chapel, these men and women
formed a kind of "Third Estate," a body more or less intermediate
between the clergy and the laity. The development of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
journalism created another large body of active workers in the
cause of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. Already <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> made considerable use of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> journalists in the employment of the ordinary press, of
teachers in non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools or education departments, of local
politicians, of civil servants in all branches of the national
administration, and so on. Lay <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism already was militant.
Even ordinary folk, especially women, could be wound up to make it
a very spirited fight in the few weeks before an election when </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
28
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>there was question of granting larger subsidies to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
schools. Some day the question of the taxation of <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> property
will be raised and you will see high-pressure <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action
during election-campaigns. Most of the women would sell <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> to
<ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> if concentration on "the danger to <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>" were to imply
this.</p>

<p> The present movement is an extension and organization of all
this. All sorts of existing elements were brought together. In
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> young men's <ent type='ORG'>National Union</ent> goes back to 1875,
and the monstrous <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Welfare Conference, <ent type='ORG'>the National Council</ent>
of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Men, <ent type='ORG'>the National Council</ent> of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Women, the
<ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent> (800000 strong), etc., go back 20 or more
years. Now we have organizations of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Nurses, Teachers,
Actors, Writers, Sociologists, youth, and all sorts of oddments:
<ent type='ORG'>Holy Name Societies</ent>, Dames of the Grail, the Sword of the <ent type='ORG'>Spirit</ent>.
the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, etc. etc., All with horn-rimmed secretaries
and organizers, some with elaborate staffs in <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> or Radio
Hours; and back of all a vast network of newspapers and the
billion-dollar treasury of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. It is estimated that more
than 5000000 zealous adults, apart from the clergy, are organized
for <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and greatly fancy themselves as
soldiers of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>.</p>

<p> I had almost described them as the Shock Troops of the great
campaign to Make <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, but overt action is not their
usual line. Quiet, stealthy, conspiratorial action best suits the
situation. A city must find itself in the grip of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> before
it perceives the white fingers closing round it. The <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of
<ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent> are quite ready to crack skulls at a Birth Control
Conference or a public meeting to tell the truth about <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> or
<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, but they are just as ready to conspire with Wall Street to
bring on a war to annex <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent> or for a peaceful penetration of
<ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent>. During a tour of that <ent type='ORG'>Dominion</ent> I learned that they had
secretly initiated the Premier of <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent> to their ranks.
Journalists (on non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> papers), civil servants, librarians,
councilors on library or education committees, etc., quietly
consult the interests of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent>. A <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> daily was pained to
discover that an important member of its staff altered cables in
favor of <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> before publication. Another has a sub-editor
who controls the correspondence columns in the same interest. The
zealous 5000000 fill <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> with such intrigue. It is publicly
stated by <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n writers that <ent type='PERSON'>Farley</ent> used the influence of his
genial personality to prevent <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> from lifting the rather
disgraceful <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> Embargo; but I should doubt if the more elegant
dames of the movement go as far as the aristocratic <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> lady
who, notoriously, seduced Radical statesmen in the preparation of
the shame of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and triumph of its <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<p> So the tail comes to wag the dog. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> are
about one-tenth of the whole community -- somewhere in this series
of books I will provide the material for a reasonable judgment on
that point -- yet they have such power that the average <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
imagines they must be about one-fourth. They are just, as a body,
the shrunken remainder of the vast body of descendants of the </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
29
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p><ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Polish</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Czech</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>, and other immigrants
of the last 100 years. And they set up in business at <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>
and insist that the President in his decisions shall ask them for
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> view of the matter!</p>

<p> In other countries except <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, where <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action is
much the same as in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> but more subterranean and less
effective, <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action is generally <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>. In <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>
has killed it very dead. In <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Holland</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>, and
<ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent> it worked zealously for the triumph of the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent>-Papal plot. In <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, and now in <ent type='GPE'>Belgium</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>,
it is entirely <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> or <ent type='GPE'>Vichy</ent>, which is the same thing. A
correspondent just gets a letter through to me from a <ent type='NORP'>Portuguese</ent>
town and says that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action and Fascism are identical, hold
their meetings in the churches, and get anybody who criticizes them
sent to jail or penal colonies. <ent type='PERSON'>Selde</ent>s describes the ghastly
medieval tortures that are used on such critic's today in the jails
of <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, under fanatical <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Salazar, who gets nothing but
compliments in the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n-<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> democratic press.</p>

<p> That, in the light of the "great" encyclical (Quadragesimo
Anno.) of the late (assisted by the present) <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>, is the appointed
final phase of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> young men boast that
the priests, instead of exercising a tyranny over them, now welcome
them as co-workers, are fooled. The bishops ultimately control the
policy of every branch. The <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> preside at every meeting of the
plotters. When <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> some years before the war
became a powerful royalist-<ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> movement on lines in harmony
with Vatican policy, the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> scattered it by condemning its
leader's. This was part of a deal of the Vatican with the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>
government. When <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> took the form of a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> democratic movement and became strong enough to stand up
to the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s (often physically), the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> obliged <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> by
driving its priest-leader, <ent type='ORG'>Sturzo</ent>, into oblivion and paralyzing the
movement. <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> complain that the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> betrayed <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
Action in their country to <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>. Make no mistake about it. The
priest rules <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action. The <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n zealots ought to have
realized it when they were taught to respect <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> as the Pope's
ally, when they were lashed to fury against democratic <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and
<ent type='NORP'>Soviet</ent> <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>, when they found themselves rubbing shoulders at
their fervid demonstrations with <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>s and <ent type='NORP'>Italian</ent>s who have been
branded as conspirator's and <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>French</ent> who are not much
better.</p>

<p> But in a later book on <ent type='ORG'>the Church</ent> and democracy we will
consider this antithesis of democratic pretensions and real aims in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism. <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are the most priest-ridden of all
peoples of the civilized world: <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Catholics</ent> are the most
priest-ridden in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. They take orders from their clerical
<ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> as no other religious bodies do. The priests dictate their
schooling, reading, entertainment, courtship, marriage, diet on
certain days, and every aspect of their lives that can be brought
under the broad heading of morals. It is not submission to
dictation, they say, but compliance with a creed of the truth of
which we are convinced. Who gave you the creed? The <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>. Have
you thoroughly and critically examined it? No, the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> forbid.
Why not test the word of your <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> by reading a few critics in </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
30
.
THE TYRANNY OF THE <ent type='ORG'>CLERICAL</ent> GESTAPO</p>

<p>defiance of them? We might lose our faith, and that would be
terrible. Why? The <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent> says so. This reminds us of the story of
the man who, confronted with a difficulty, got under himself and
carried himself across!</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> Reproducible <ent type='ORG'>Electronic Publishing</ent> can defeat censorship.</p>

<p> <ent type='ORG'>The Bank</ent> of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n and world history; the
<ent type='ORG'>Biographies</ent> 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 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> can again become what its Founders intended --</p>

<p> The Free Market-Place of Ideas.</p>

<div> **** ****</div>

<p> <ent type='ORG'>The Bank</ent> 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 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.</p>

<p> **** ****

Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
31
</p></xml>