textfiles-politics/pythonCode/personTestingOutput/mccabe17.xml

<xml><p> 28 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><ent type='ORG'>THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL</ent> No. 17</p>

<p> HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> THE UNIQUE APPARATUS OF <ent type='ORG'>THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL</ent>
TO SECURE LOYALTY</p>

<p> by Joseph McCabe</p>

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

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

<p> CHAPTER</p>

<p> I Death and Damnation for the Unbeliever ........ 1</p>

<p> II Blinkers for the Believers .............. 8</p>

<p> III Drawing the Dragon's Teeth ............. 16</p>

<p> IV Sugar Plums for the Loyal .............. 23</p>

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

<p> Chapter I</p>

<p> DEATH AND DAMNATION FOR THE UNBELIEVER</p>

<p> In 1928 <ent type='PERSON'>Bertrand Russell</ent> said in the course of an address to
<ent type='ORG'>the British Rationalist Press</ent> Association that "in fifty years the
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> will dominate <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>." For once I fail to
follow the reasoning of the distinguished mathematician. If we take
the estimate of the number of their members which the clergy supply
to the public authorities we find that in 1900 they claimed to be
15.7 of the entire population, in 1910 they had sunk to 14.1, in
1920 they claimed to be 16.9, in 1930 16.2, and in 1940, according
to the figures supplied to <ent type='ORG'>the Federal Council</ent> of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es,
15.9. Instead of a stately and convincing growth toward the
necessary 60 or 70 percent, much less an abnormally rapid growth,
we have here a curve of progress that gets back to its starting-point in nearly half a century. It is not necessary to add that
until 1930 the growth of population was entirely different from
that in the other countries, for from 1900 until that date there
were about 17000000 immigrants, and more than half of these were </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
1
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p><ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s: a fact strangely overlooked by all writers who are moved
to make profound observations when they see the decennial increases
of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> population.</p>

<p> On the other hand even many <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns will not know that not
only has the flood of immigration subsided to a modest stream but
there is evidence, which is accepted by <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> authorities, that
the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> birth rate is being deliberately checked by parents.
About 80 percent of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s live in cities or towns, and in even
the most <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> of these there has been a notable drop of the
birth rate. From 1920 to 1938 it sank in the towns and cities of
<ent type='GPE'>Massachusetts</ent>, where <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s are strongest, from 23.7 to 13.8. In
<ent type='GPE'>New York City</ent> it fell from 23.4 to 14.4. Commenting on these
figures the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Commonweal said:</p>

<p> The urban <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> have long since stopped even reproducing
themselves, and the urban <ent type='NORP'>Italians</ent> and <ent type='NORP'>Slavs</ent> are rapidly following
their example.</p>

<p> From the temperate language of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writer you would
not suspect that his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> puts the use of contraceptives on much
the same level as murder but, of course, he is distracting
attention from an obvious inference. It is one more proof, like
that I gave in the last book, of a serious defection from the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. However, what we have to note here is that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
body as estimated by the authorities is losing its treasured
advantage of a full birth rate as well as the advantage of
immigration. If we further recall that they claim only about 20000
to 25000 converts a year we feel that even <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> arithmetic
will be severely strained to show the faintest glimmer of hope of
ever becoming the majority.</p>

<p> But we have already seen the worthlessness of these <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
statistics. A common-sense appreciation of the evidence puts the
number of real <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> at about 9000000 in 1900 and
about 15000000 today. The general population has increased by
nearly 80 percent: the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> population, in spite of all its
peculiarities, by less than 70 percent. The only "miracle" of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> growth is that it is really a growth downward.</p>

<p> But after all, you will say, the fact that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> gets
15000000 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns to subscribe to such a creed as I described in
the last book requires some explanation. Indeed, they seem not
simply to subscribe to it but, according to the apologists and the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press, to be more enthusiastic about their "holy faith"
than the members of any other civilized religion; except,
significantly enough, the semi-civilized <ent type='NORP'>Moslem</ent> fanatics who break
each other's polls in <ent type='LOC'>the Near East</ent> or the corresponding fanatics
in India. They take, we are told, such pride in it as a little girl
does in her first doll: they quite solemnly say that they have a
right to demand tolerance for themselves and refuse it to others:
and they swallow the excuses of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> for its
support of the vilest characters as smoothly as we swallow oysters.
Yet beyond any question the creed is as I stated it. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
who questions a single one of the dogmas, literally interpreted,
not only incurs hell but plainly questions the very foundations of
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> authority; and the Canon Law lays it down that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
incurs this sentence if he confines his "liberalism" within his own
mind.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
2
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> Yet again the miracle quickly loses its glamour when you
examine it closely. Of 15000000 people in <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States one-third are under the age of 16, and you will not ask me to study
their beliefs. Indeed, with due acknowledgement of that respect for
youth which we old folk are learning I doubt if the beliefs of
youths and girls under 20 matter very much, and that means nearly
a half of them. To be quite blunt about it, in fact, I see nothing
to boast about in the belief of the majority of the remainder. Can
you speak of beliefs or merely practices? The religious life of a
good half of them consists in dodging the devil by going to <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
once a week for half an hour and faintly hearing a priest in the
far distance mumble prayers in <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent>. The ease with which such folk
were swept away from the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in millions in Europe and South
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> as long as there was freedom of discussion shows what
shallow and feeble roots their faith has.</p>

<p> Let us try to get a realistic view of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> instead of repeating all this frothy nonsense, which seems
to impress politicians, about 20000000 devout and enthusiastic
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s who put their faith above everything. Of the forty to
fifty million <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> immigrants and their descendants the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>,
with its vast organization of priests, schools, newspapers, radio,
etc., and its colossal wealth has managed to retain within its fold
some 5000000 children, 5000000 folk who are under 20 or are on
so poor a cultural level that we are not interested in their
beliefs, and 5000000 men and women of sufficient education (often
only primary) and intelligence to suggest that they hold their
beliefs deliberately.</p>

<p> We are not here concerned with the Angle of the politician who
counts votes, or the newspaper-proprietor, who counts dollars, or
the professor or writer, who counts readers. We are just trying to
understand how <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> can maintain its baleful
activity in the 20th Century, and it is most instructive to study
its basis in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>. This that I have described is its basis. All
talk about 20000000 <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s who are the spiritual cream of the
country is bunk; and all talk about a triumphant progress that
promises to "make <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>" is double-distilled bunk. And,
as I have shown, the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is in modern times in the same
not very impressive condition in every country except where the
<ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> has won back, by a combination of national
treachery and vile association with corrupt powers, its old power
of coercion.</p>

<p> There is, therefore, not even a fascinating problem of
psychology in the survival of this medieval faith, as some imagine.
Sociologists and social psychologists, in fact, become politicians
when they notice "the venerable <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>." It is a massive fact in
the social fabric, but they do not care to look too closely into
it. They suspect it may be as dirty and unhealthy, if you go too
close, as one of those thatched cottages in an old English village
which look so "cute" to the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n who passes in an automobile.
We are not here examining the survival of the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> faith in the
20th Century, or inquiring how grown-up and often educated men and
women can be induced to call it a "holy faith" and a beautiful
system, from any psychological interest. We are verifying our
suspicion that the faith is protected by just the same trickery, </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
3
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>deceit, and coercion as the Axis powers used in working their way
into a formidable position, and therefore the alliance, which seems
impossible or improbable to those who prefer to admire the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> from a distance, is entirely natural and was inevitable once
the reaction against democracy began.</p>

<p> There was in every age a core of believers, of a particular
temperament, who did not need any action of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent>
to bind them to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and who in very large part were of high
character; though their chastity was apt to be tinged with
intolerance and inhumanity and their charity associated with a sour
fanaticism. It is waste of time for writers to remind us of these
"many good men and women." It is the institution and its methods,
the general situation, that matters. And I have amply shown that
ever since the first "great <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>," Leo I (440-61), began to use
forgery in the interest of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and to burn heretics,
deception and violence were the weapons on which it relied rather
than upon argument. It is enough here to recall four critical
stages in the history of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. When in the 11th and 12th
centuries it was alarmed by the reawakening of the minds of Europe
it retorted with the Inquisition. When Protestantism broke its
power in the 16th Century it tried to drown it in blood in the
Thirty Years War. When the European powers conquered the <ent type='NORP'>French</ent>
revolutionary spirit and <ent type='NORP'>Napoleonic</ent> liberalism in the 19th Century
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> allied itself intimately with the most corrupt of them
in a murderous attack on freedom and democracy. And when in our own
time <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> in a narrow and discreditable
view of their own interests permitted new and popular anti-democratic forces to gather strength, the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> at once entered
into alliance with them.</p>

<p> This policy of violence is, I showed, actually the law of the
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. While <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n apologists were falsely stating that
the wicked historians of the last century -- the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Lord
<ent type='PERSON'>Acton</ent> used the strongest language of them all -- lied about the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, and that in any case it now abhors coercion and is all
sweetness and light, the Vatican press was issuing one edition
after another of Canon Law in which it is quite indignantly
affirmed, against "liberal" <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s, that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has never
abdicated its "right of the sword": which, they explained, includes
lesser matters like torture or any physical sufferings or material
inflections (prison, fines, exile, confiscation, etc.). I gave the
words of the exact references to Marianus de Luca and Cardinal
Lepicier. The former was professor of Canon Law in the Papal
University, the latter in a Papal college at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, and both had the
Pope's stamp of approval on their books. Indeed, I see by the title
page of De Lucas book, which is quite savage in its long arguments
for the Church's right to kill or maim heretics, that it was
published in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>, Ratisbon, and "Neo-Eboracum." As the latter is
the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> for <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent> it seems that this truculent statement of
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> Law was simultaneously published, privately, in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> for
the clergy, and we may be sure that it has an honored place in
those seminary or college-libraries in which apologists now pen
their assurances to the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n public that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is the
mother of toleration and <ent type='ORG'>the soul</ent> of charity.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
4
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> Professor C.J. <ent type='ORG'>Cadoux</ent> has an interesting chapter on this
aspect of <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>ism (<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism and Freedom, 1936, ch I). He
sums up its long history in the words of Prof. <ent type='PERSON'>Lecky</ent>: "The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> has shed more innocent blood than any other institution
that has ever existed among mankind" (The Rise and Influence of
Rationalism in Europe, II, 32). <ent type='PERSON'>Lecky</ent> is so often quoted by
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s for his (unjust) compliments to the early <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
that this is a hard saying. However, it is the modern development
that is particularly interesting. In 1832, when just such a
clerical-fascist tyranny ruled Europe as does today, <ent type='PERSON'>Gregory XVI</ent>
said in an Encyclical: "Out of this most foul fountain of
indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion or rather
raving that liberty of conscience ought to be asserted and secured
for everybody." <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s were at that time a negligible minority
in <ent type='GPE'>England</ent> and were enthusiastic for religious toleration, but in
the forties the <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> famine drove crowds of them to <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, and
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> became so optimistic that it forgot the mask sometimes.
In 1855 a writer in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Rambler (p. 178) attacked "the
impious and absurd theory of religious liberty" and, answering the
question what the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> would do if he ever got the majority in
<ent type='GPE'>England</ent>, he said: "If it would benefit the cause of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism he
would tolerate you, but if expedient he would imprison you, banish
you, fine you, and possibly he might even hang you."</p>

<p> Notice the date, 1885. The revolutionary wave of 1848 had
spent itself and under the blood-splotched banners of the
reactionary monarchs the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> was again speaking candidly. In
that year the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> issued his famous <ent type='ORG'>Syllabus</ent>, and amongst the
"wicked opinions" which he required <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s all over the world to
regard as "reprobated, proscribed, and condemned" were several such
as the following (literally translated from the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Syllabus</ent>):</p>

<p> 15. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>ry man is free to embrace and profess that religion
which he finds true in the light of human reason.</p>

<p> 17. At least there is hope of the eternal salvation of men who
do not belong to the true <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of Christ.</p>

<p> 80. The <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> Pontiff can and ought to be reconciled with
progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.</p>

<p> And as late as 1864 in the Encyclical Quanta Cura he denounced
this modern fad of "liberty of conscience" as a "liberty of
perdition."</p>

<p> But alas for the Papal Canute. The waves were already fretting
round his feet, and in a few more years he lost the <ent type='ORG'>Temporal Power</ent>
and saw the world coldly indifferent to, or jubilant over, the
defeat of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Democracy, free general education, and a
demand for increasing liberty spread over Europe and <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.
The age of that "accommodation with modern civilization" which Pius
IX had contemptuously rejected set in. There was now no country in
the world in which the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> could exercise the power which it
claimed. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>n in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> rebels against the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, who swarmed in
the cities and the universities, could not be touched unless they
were so advanced in their political views that they could be
branded "<ent type='NORP'>Anarchists</ent>," just as they are now branded <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> or </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
5
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p><ent type='NORP'>Bolsheviks</ent>. Many hundreds were treated thus, and the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n and
<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> press lightly dismissed the murders and tortures as an
unpleasant necessity forced upon these <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> gentlemen by
Anarchist bomb-throwers. It happened that I was in close touch with
one of these "<ent type='NORP'>Anarchists</ent>," <ent type='PERSON'>Francisco Ferrer</ent>, an idealist who
loathed violence and polities and who was judicially murdered
solely to oblige the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. I raised a stink in the whole English-speaking world and got the fact generally recognized, but I could
not convince the public that <ent type='PERSON'>Ferrer</ent> was only one of hundreds of
victims of the <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, and that foul tortures were used on
them in the jails from 1990 to 1910. <ent type='ORG'>The Black International</ent> in all
countries lied and used its power over the press to conceal the
fact that, where it thought it could safely do so, the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> still
exercised its right to maim or kill rebels against itself. It no
longer dressed them in a white sheet. It stuck a red flag in their
hands.</p>

<p> In all the rest of the world except <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> it professed to be
"reconciled with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization," in
the words it had solemnly denounced a few decades earlier. Then
there opened the appalling new chapter in the history of
civilization. The high priests of reaction at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> began to hear
voices which they thought had been stilled forever. <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, needing
the political influence of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, treated it with a new
respect and granted it unexpected privileges and the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent> abandoned the hypocritical language of compromise. The
<ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent> Cardinal Billot, its head, wrote and published a <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent>
Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi (1922) and the <ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent> Professor
Sortain a Traite de Philosophie (1924) in which the clergy were
candidly told that <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> still had the right to use physical
measures including the death-sentence, against heretics. In <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>
<ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> began to deride liberty and liberalism in the language of
Pius IX and, after years of hard bargaining, the clergy clasped the
red hand he held out to them. A new <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> edition of the Canon Law
was issued, and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> in 1929 boldly and emphatically asserted
its claims for all the world to hear (in the letter to <ent type='PERSON'>Gasparri</ent>
which I quoted at length in an earlier booklet). The Japs were the
next to enter into alliance with the resuscitated medieval <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>,
and then <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>....</p>

<p> We have seen the story. But <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
continued to dupe the public and forbid the press to publish the
worst of the news -- like the <ent type='PERSON'>Gasparri</ent> letter, the approach to the.
Japs, and the deal with <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> -- that came from Europe. At the
very time when the Vatican was negotiating with <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> to sell
its assistance in crushing religious liberty in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> the <ent type='PERSON'>Culvert</ent>
Associates, the <ent type='ORG'>weightiest</ent> propagandist body of the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, issued its <ent type='ORG'>Culvert Handbook</ent> of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Facts, using the
names of the President (<ent type='PERSON'>Coolidge</ent>) and several heads of professors
of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n universities as "Sponsors." In this, while the Vatican
was driving a hard bargain for the suppression of the liberties of
non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, they audaciously reproduced, as
frontispiece, the letter in which <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent> rejoices that "in this
land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of
bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship
God according to the dictates of his own heart." <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>n <ent type='PERSON'>Leo XIII</ent>, we
saw, had ridiculed that sentiment. And in the text of the book
these <ent type='PERSON'>Culvert</ent> Associates, sheltering under the patronage of leaders</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
6
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n culture and business, assured the public that the
charge that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> had used violence was based upon lies and
misrepresentation and that it is in principle in favor of the
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n rule of religious liberty for all.</p>

<p> People had already forgotten in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, and the press was
careful not to recall, something that had created a mild sensation
in 1910. President <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> told the ambassador at <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> that he
was going to visit the king of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and would like a visit to the
<ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> also arranged. The Vatican replied that it would welcome the
visit "if nothing like the recent <ent type='PERSON'>Fairbanks</ent> incident arose to
prevent it." Vice-President <ent type='PERSON'>Fairbanks</ent> had committed the
"unspeakable outrage on the common father of <ent type='ORG'>Christendom</ent>" (as the
<ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent> paper <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> called it) of calling at the Methodist Mission
in <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> after visiting the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>! So <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> was not to visit the
king of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> if he wanted to see the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>. <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> promptly and
vigorously withdrew his proposal to call at the Vatican. A few
years later he entertained me at a lunch of honor at the Harvard
Club. If it were wildly conceivable that the President <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> of
today were to confer some such honor on me, I wonder what the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, or even the ordinary, press would say.</p>

<p> It illustrates what one would almost call the strangle-hold
that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has secured in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> since 1918, and one use to
which it puts this is a complete deception of the public in regard
to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> Law on tolerance and coercion. The irony is that its
position is based entirely upon the unique beauty and efficacy of
the creed I described in the last book. This is so precious to men
that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> must guard them against losing it by burning
aggressive heretics at the stake and claiming the right to inflict
any sort of material penalty on men who are even "suspected of
heresy." Msgr. <ent type='PERSON'>Ryan</ent>, the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n Church's arch-apologist, thinks
it prudent never to discuss the monstrous claims of the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> Canon
Law but in one amazing passage he gives away the principle. In 'The
State and the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>' he says:</p>

<p> "The fact that the individual may in good faith think that his
false religion is true gives no more right to propagandize it than
the sincerity of the alien anarchist entitles him to advocate his
abominable political theories in <ent type='GPE'>the United</ent> States . . . Error has
not the same rights as truth. Since the profession and practice of
the erring are contrary to human welfare how can error have
rights?"</p>

<p> And the man who writes this mush of priestly arrogance,
cunning appeal to prejudice, and bad logic is treated in <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>
as part of the cream of the national life. Does he mean that it
must be left to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> to say what is absolutely true and
what is absolutely false? No. He obviously means that the medieval
hash of hell and devils, of <ent type='PERSON'>Jesus Christ</ent> in the vest pocket and
little children suffering torture for all eternity, of blatant
forgeries and transparently fabricated doctrines, which I described
in the last book is so self-evidently true that all other religions
or philosophics of life must be suppressed; and his Canon Law
argues from the same principle that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has the right and
the duty to kill, maim, torture, or ruin any who attempt to spread
them. In the same book <ent type='PERSON'>Ryan</ent> assures you that his <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is not one </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
7
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>in perfect harmony with but actually inspired <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n sentiment on
these matters! And a <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> cardinal, <ent type='PERSON'>Gasquet</ent>, tells you that the
critics of the dear <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are "merchants of filth and garbage" who
pour out such a "<ent type='GPE'>Mississippi</ent> of lies" that he is bound to wonder if
they are "in good faith!"</p>

<p> Naturally the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> will never again burn heretics. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>n if
it ever got a large majority of sincere believers in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent> it would not dare to apply its law for fear of
the reaction in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>. Only if all the leading
countries became solidly <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> would it venture to do so -- and
it then certainly would apply the law -- and one might as well
think of a new Ice Age. The world has sunk low in recent years, but
the supposition that <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, would
ever by a large majority accept the childish creed and crooked
principles of Dr. Ryan's <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is too eccentric to consider. I
enlarge on the creed and its maxims only to remind the reader that
all baptized persons (<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> or, if properly baptized,
Protestant) are its subjects, and that it holds the power of life
and death and all penalties over its subjects, so you understand
how its leaders come to ally themselves with arch-criminals when
these promise to restore its moth-eaten powers: how they can stoop,
as they do in <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent> to put the false
brand of <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent> or murderous <ent type='ORG'>Reds</ent> on their critics so that
sycophantic statesmen will kill or torture them and the world-press
will say nothing.</p>

<p> Chapter II</p>

<p> BLINKERS FOR THE BELIEVER</p>

<p> The loathsome little toad <ent type='PERSON'>Goebbels</ent> has never forgotten his
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> education. The entire scheme by means of which he has
apparently, poisoned the minds of the overwhelming majority of the
<ent type='NORP'>German</ent> people is based upon <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> principles and practice. The
scheme has, notoriously, two main features. The first is to print
deep upon the mind by hourly appeals to eye and ear the essential
<ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> formulae: that the <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> race is far superior to any other,
that its head is a particularly august and gifted man who must have
absolute obedience and any sacrifice he demands, and that there is
no salvation for any other nation except in the unity of <ent type='NORP'>German</ent>
culture and under <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> control. These assertions are repeated
every moment at every class in school and college, boomed out in
the streets, the workshops, and the restaurants, radioed every hour
into every home, repeated in every column of every paper, on every
page of every book and magazine, sung at every concert and village-dance, incorporated in every drama and film, and implied in the
"Heil <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent>" which you must repeat when you call in the dog or buy
a pint of shrimps.</p>

<p> The second feature is that nothing must enter the eye or ear
of any <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> to interfere with this good work. There is no private
radio, and you are shot if you listen to foreign transmissions.
<ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>ry paper, magazine, book, song, play, lecture, church, library,
pageant, or sports meeting, etc., in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> falls under the
control of a very extensive and elaborate Reichskulturkammer with </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>a network of ramifications into every village. The social
psychology is perfect. The older folk may have memories of facts or
lessons learned in earlier years that may, in rare hours of
privacy, feebly conflict with this monopolistic message. The
younger folk have, on the street lines of modern science, no other
contents of "mind" -- ideas and sentiments, in the old language --
than these which <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> education has implanted.</p>

<p> <ent type='ORG'>The Black International</ent> must be green with envy. You might say
that at all events it has the advantage over <ent type='PERSON'>Goebbels</ent> that it can
threaten folk who listen to any alien message with eternal torment,
but in practice it was always more effective to threaten torture
here and now than in the future. They recite the new Lord's Prayer:</p>

<p>"<ent type='PERSON'>Lieber Herr Gott</ent>, mach' <ent type='PERSON'>mich dumm</ent>,
<ent type='PERSON'>Damit Ich</ent> nicht in <ent type='LOC'>Dachau</ent> Komm."</p>

<p>much more fervently than they did the old. Young women who but a
few years ago were "Children of <ent type='PERSON'>Mary</ent>" and lustily sang "Immaculate,
Immaculate" now carry favor by singing unpleasant suggestions about
<ent type='PERSON'>Miriam Cohen</ent>, which they insist was Mary's full name. For the great
majority the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> or the Protestant faith was skin-deep. The
<ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> faith is pumped into the marrow of their bones.</p>

<p> The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> recognizes that the procedure is ideal but
it is in most countries prevented by "the world" (with the devil
behind it), the wickedness of which it never ceases to deplore from
carrying it out in all its purity as <ent type='PERSON'>Goebbels</ent> does. In <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>, in
spite of the disgraceful sacrifices it has made, to get power, it
is very far from having a monopoly of the culture-stream. In Vichy,
<ent type='GPE'>France</ent>, it has, up to the present, been still more disappointed,
and it remains to be seen how <ent type='PERSON'>Laval</ent> will earn his Papal
decorations. In <ent type='GPE'>Poland</ent> it almost had a Black Paradise but its <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent>
friends have chased it out. Only in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>, in <ent type='GPE'>Brazil</ent>
and some of the smaller <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n republics, and in stupid
little states like <ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent> which the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent>s tolerate for the time
being, has it got something like a monopoly of the mechanism for
making what we call "minds."</p>

<p> <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent> may be indignant at being excluded from this small
group of enslaved states but it is not quite on the present level
of <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>. In spite of the scandalous reticence of the
press generally most folk who are likely to read this know the
orgies of murder and torture in which <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent>, under the eyes of
complacent <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n and <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> ministers, has indulged since he
won <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent> for the Santa Fe. It has been going on for years in
<ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent>. Read the section on <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> (pp. 278-86) in Seldes's
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Crisis. After quoting what <ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent>s admiringly tell <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
about it -- that it is "an applied resume of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> political
philosophy" and a land of profound peace, prosperity, and happiness
-- he gives this passage from <ent type='ORG'>Duff</ent>, the official of the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>
Foreign Office who wrote as "<ent type='PERSON'>Carlos Prieto</ent>":</p>

<p> "Political prisoners are tortured in a manner which prevailed
during the Inquisition. . . . As reported by those who suffered
[Time and Tide, September 12, 1936], they include thumb-screws,</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
9
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>burning of the soles of the feet, squeezing the head in book-presses, hanging by wrists and ankles, nude imprisonment in
temperatures below zero, and walking in a circle until the prisoner
drops.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Salazar</ent> being a scientific man has added an electric chair,
not to kill but to torture, which is more beastly. This was written
six years ago, when <ent type='GPE'>Portugal</ent> was generally described as a happy
little state under its holy <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> trinity of General <ent type='PERSON'>Carmona</ent>,
Premier <ent type='PERSON'>Salazar</ent>, and Cardinal Cerejeira.</p>

<p> In blissful lands like this, in which the majority of the
workers are totally illiterate and would regard a radio receiver as
a new trick of the devil, where the clergy and a small minority of
interested supporters enjoy the bulk of what wealth there is, the
<ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> can fairly emulate the success of <ent type='PERSON'>Goebbels</ent>. In
countries like <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> they apply the two principles as effectively
as the wicked world allows them. They rely chiefly upon the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press, and the threat of hell for
reading "bad books" or listening to critics.</p>

<p> I described the operation of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools in an
earlier book of this series. The apologist wants the public to
believe that -- here he puts on his most affable expression -- it
is just an institution like any other school for making efficient
citizens so is entitled to a full share of public funds, but the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> provides the schools and asks only that it be, allowed to
give a few lessons to the children in their own faith. I gave the
words in which the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> in his open letter to Cardinal <ent type='PERSON'>Gasparri</ent> in
1929 expressly condemned that version of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> education. He
claimed not only that the education of children belongs primarily
to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> not the state but he went on to say that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
would not agree to being "confined to the subsidized teaching of
religious truth:" that is to say, to including lessons on religion
by paid priests or teachers in the ordinary curriculum. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
must have the whole school. Its predominant purpose is to make
life-long <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s, The <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> (Pius XI) made his meaning clear
enough in his encyclical on <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> education:</p>

<p> "A school does not become conformable to the rights of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and of the <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> family and worthy to be attended by
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> children simply because religious instruction is given. .
. . That a school may be such all its teaching, all its
arrangements, teachers, program, and books, at all levels, must be
inspired by the <ent type='NORP'>Christian</ent> spirit, under the direction and maternal
vigilance of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, so that religion may be truly both the
foundation and the crown of all instruction, in all grades, not
only primary but also intermediate and higher."</p>

<p> The school, in other words, must be a perfect Goebbelesque
institution. It must strike one note -- Holy Faith, Holy Father,
Holy Mother -- and see that it is not disturbed by any other note.
I do not know about <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> but in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> clergy get
about 50 percent of the cost of this sort of thing met out of
public funds and fire their people with a cry that they are treated
with gross injustice and prejudice because it is not more.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
10
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> I told in an earlier book how, not satisfied with this, they
tried to get the teaching, especially the historical lessons, in
the public schools modelled on <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> lines. J.W. Poynter, who
was at the time in the inner circle or plotting center of <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism, describes the conspiracy in <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s and School
History Books (1930). It amazed and disgusted him even while he was
a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>. They operated with such stealth that, although he was
a member of their <ent type='ORG'>Vigilance Committee</ent>, they tried to keep him in
ignorance, but he contrived to see a copy of the privately printed
two-volume work (1400 pages) of the "errors" they wanted corrected
in the books in use in government schools. <ent type='PERSON'>Luther</ent> was to be
described as "an unworthy <ent type='NORP'>German</ent> friar" and Bloody <ent type='PERSON'>Mary</ent> -- the most
truculent fanatic who ever sat on the English throne -- as a gentle
lady who was all for religious freedom. They relied on <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
Trade Unionists and <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> officials in <ent type='ORG'>the Education Department</ent>
to secure this monstrous gain for them. Is that what they have done
in <ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent> and other <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n cities?</p>

<p> The books they use in their own schools and shower upon the
children as prizes are poisonous and crammed with lies about saints
and martyrs, <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>s, the medieval <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, the Reformation, and so
on. I have before me a book written for children and child-like
adults by the <ent type='NORP'>Australian</ent> Archbishop <ent type='PERSON'>Sheehan</ent> and much used in
<ent type='GPE'>Ireland</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Australia</ent> (A Simple Course of Religion, 1938). It is
deliciously Illustrated. There is a half-tone illustration of <ent type='PERSON'>Adam</ent>
and <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent> with less clothing on than <ent type='PERSON'>Tarzan</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Maureen</ent>. There is
another -- but in this case the child is conscientiously warned
that it is "not a real picture" -- of the Holy Trinity and (an old
man, a Nordic type of young man, and a pigeon): one showing the boy
<ent type='PERSON'>Jesus</ent> ("he who made the starry skies") holding a board while Papa
planes it: one of <ent type='PERSON'>Jesus</ent> giving "<ent type='ORG'>Holy Communion</ent>" to the apostles
1900 years ago in the form of wafers from a modem silver chalice:
one showing a soul, which is a duplicate of the body, being taken
up to heaven by angels. Most children will take these to be
photographs of the actual persons and events.</p>

<p> The learned archbishop might plead that it is lawful to tell
children fairy-tales and open their eyes later, but almost as
childish is another book I have, by Bishop H.G. <ent type='PERSON'>Graham</ent> (What Faith
Really Means, 1914), that is intended for grown-ups. Some of you
may still boggle at my description of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> doctrine of the
<ent type='NORP'>Eucharist</ent>: that the real living body of <ent type='PERSON'>Jesus</ent> is physically present
in every consecrated wafer and drop of wine. <ent type='PERSON'>Graham</ent> to clinch the
matter, tells his readers that <ent type='PERSON'>Jesus</ent> "often appeared to holy
priests at <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent> under the sweet figure of a little child" (p. 92).
I told, I think, how another of these pious fairy-tales is that
blood often spurts from the wafer when wicked <ent type='NORP'>Freemasons</ent> and
<ent type='ORG'>Satanists</ent> stab it. We are not told that <ent type='PERSON'>Jesus</ent> ever does anything
when he is handled (in the <ent type='PERSON'>Mass</ent>) by priests who smile at the dogma
or sleep with their domestic servants. However, these doctrines are
so luminously true that it is "impossible to shake a Catholic's
faith," the bishop says. Then how about these millions of
acknowledged <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>? There is no such
thing as a quite honest <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>, <ent type='PERSON'>Graham</ent> -- in full accord with
Canon Law -- says. Referring to the man who professes that he has
left the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> he says: "We know for certain that he has gone
wrong, and that he has culpably lost the gift of faith": when a </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
11
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>priest secedes <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s who become aware of it -- the fact is
denied unless the scoundrel takes to writing books and it can be
denied no longer -- are always taught that the reason was either
pride, lust of women, or to get more drink; as if the apostate
priest, who generally takes years to earn a moderate living, got
one-tenth the opportunities for fornication or had one-tenth the
chances to get drunk that he had in the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<p> This zone of poison-gas to protect the "precious gift of
faith" which is planted in the child's mind begins to be formed in
the school. But in a non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> country the defenses are very
imperfect. From the exotic atmosphere of the school the child
rushes, especially in the late afternoon, into a very different
atmosphere. <ent type='PERSON'>Distinguished paedagogists</ent> and psychologists have
inquired very learnedly into the frequency of religious conversion
in the adolescent. That sort of inquiry is legitimate. It does not
offend <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s. But no academic authority ever studies the
immensely greater frequency of religious de-version (if I may use
the word) amongst the adolescent, especially <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> boys and
youths. It is a common subject of discussion at conferences of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teachers, and I have earlier quoted the admissions of
various priests that from 50 to 80 percent of the boys who attend
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schools give up the faith when they leave. <ent type='PERSON'>Goebbels</ent> can
keep the blinkers on <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> boys during all their waking hours. The
world outside the school is as saturated with the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> creed as the
school itself. But the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> boy tears off his blinkers when the
five or Six hours in school are over and sees the world of reality.</p>

<p> I broadly described the system by means of which the priests
try to protect in post-school years the "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> mind" they have
built up. The weekly sermon, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press and literature, and
now the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Radio Hour are the chief agencies, and the main
purpose of them is to keep the faithful in their blinkers. The
pretence that the sole object is to maintain a high moral character
in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> body is disproved by the actual character of that
body, as I have shown in earlier books and will further show in the
final book of this series; and the pretence that it is to attract
outsiders to the faith is disproved by the miserable trickle of
25000 converts (often for social or other non-religious grounds)
a year. The greatest concern of the national branches of the Black
International in all non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> or mixed countries is to protect
the belief of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s themselves by a smoke-screen.</p>

<p> I am not sure if I ought not to say, as I hinted above, a
poison-gas zone to keep the believers from straying into alien
pastures. It is another of the discreditable distinctions of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> that its priests and writers consistently use fowler
language about their critics and opponents than do the writers or
clergy of any other <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. The law of libel alone restrains them.
During the forty-five years in which I have criticized the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
-- and they will probably say that I am its most formidable critic
-- I have never known them to put in print -- they, of course, put
all sorts of picturesque rumors into whispered circulation -- one
single word reflecting on my character in such form that I could
have the matter settled in court, yet it is the almost universal
practice to say that opponents of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are dishonest and
mendacious. I quoted the most learned cleric of the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p><ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, Cardinal <ent type='PERSON'>Gasquet</ent> affirming that we pour out a
"<ent type='GPE'>Mississippi</ent> of lies." But you probably know this feature of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> literature and propaganda. These booklets contain hundreds
of examples.</p>

<p> The psychology of it is simple. The main element of the
education of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s themselves is that the body of doctrine
is so beautiful, so clearly true and reasonable, that no one can be
in good faith who abandons it and no one can resist its appeal who
really knows it. It is on this basis alone that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s can be
reconciled to the intolerance which claims complete liberty, or
even a privileged position, in a non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> country and flatly
denies liberty to other religions in a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> land, as to the
gross inconsistency of the clergy in urging them to get non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s to read or listen to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> stuff while sternly
forbidding them to read what the non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> says. But even the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, if he happens to stumble upon, for instance, the official
report that 31 percent of the conscripts for the armed forces
confess to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> baptism while only about 20000000 members of
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are claimed (or about 15 percent instead of 31), must
feel that it is rather thin to impute "bad faith" to these millions
of <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s, and that the claim that the faith is irresistible to
those who know it, when the immense annual expenditure on books,
papers, lectures, and radio brings in only a few thousand converts
a year is still thinner.</p>

<p> So the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> imposes on believers the supplementary theory
that their faith is so holy and so necessary for good conduct in
this world and salvation in the next that it is arch-enemies the
world and the devil, engage in a gorgeous campaign of lies and
misrepresentation against it. This may sound melodramatic, but
after what we saw about the real nature of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> dogmas and the
extraordinary pride of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s in them you will expect
melodramatic or childish features. It is a unique religious system,
and it is on that basis alone that we can understand the action of
<ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> in openly conspiring with the enemies of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> and of modern civilization yet retaining the
enthusiastic allegiance of 17000000 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns and <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>ers.</p>

<p> Naturally this line of argument is handed out on every
possible note, from hesitating insinuation to blunt and blatant
affirmation. Most people would be surprised at the extent to which
even educated <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s accept it. Soon after I left the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> I
met on the streets of <ent type='GPE'>London</ent> a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> teacher, master of a school
in a middle-class suburb, who knew me. He turned pale, either with
anger or fear, and asked me, very seriously, if I was not afraid
that the earth would open and let me down to where I belonged.
Another, an older and better-read <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schoolmaster, who had
been all admirer of mine and to whom I proposed to explain my
secession, replied (in a letter reproduced in my Twelve Years in a
<ent type='ORG'>Monastery</ent>) that he would not listen to a word but left me to "the
worm of conscience" and only trusted I would not sink to "the
lowest depths." A well-known priest of high character wrote me that
he supposed he would soon hear that I had "run off with another
man's wife." A <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> novelist can hardly introduce an ex-priest
into his story without leaving him under a dark cloud and souring
the reader against him.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
13
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> All this is part of the blinker-system of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. One, of
course, finds some degree of hostility to or dislike of <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s in
every <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> but in none does it approach the virulent hatred of
<ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s and critics inspired by <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent>. Poynter,
who had been for years on the inner councils of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action,
told me, though I hardly needed the information, that the
instruction given to writers and speakers was that they must not
directly attack name critics of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> -- people might want to
read their books -- but keep up the fiction that all such critics
and apostates are a lot of scurvy knaves, sold to the devil and
cooperating in his frenzy to destroy the beautiful <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> which
alone frustrates his strange passion to pervert the whole race. Dip
into almost any <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> weekly if you want a little clean fun.
Correspondents have often told me of the effect of all this on
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s. They turn pale if my name is maliciously dragged into a
conversation with them, They burn my books when they get an
opportunity. Once, soon after I left the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, a society billed
me in large posters, to lecture in the city of <ent type='GPE'>Manchester</ent>, and most
of the bills were torn off the walls during the night. I may
confess since she came to more liberal views before she died, that
it was my sister, a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> schoolmistress, who spent a night
roaming over the city, dodging the police and tearing down the
posters.</p>

<p> This calculated hatred and slander of critics has the double
effect of preventing <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s from reading them and at the same
time convincing them that their faith really is the most beautiful
and salutary thing in the world seeing that the devil and wicked
men have such a peculiar rage against it. Add that, as Bishop
<ent type='PERSON'>Graham</ent> says and theology and Canon Law expressly teach, it is a
mortal sin (like rape or murder) to have even a doubt about a dogma
of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, and it is equally a mortal sin to expose yourself to
the danger of having a doubt by reading critics, and you have the
particular strength of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> prohibition of the reading of
"bad books." Works or articles which criticize the, faith or the
priests in even the most dignified language are purposely bracketed
by the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> with what it calls obscene books. They are in fact,
proved by that famous <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> logic to be worse than obscene
books. How? Quite easily. The sin of fornication or masturbation to
which the obscene book may lead can be confessed and dismissed from
the mind. But the doubt, the devil's own child, has a way of
lingering or recurring after confession. . . .</p>

<p> One of the real mistakes of outsiders about the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. --
they are almost always mistakes in favor of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or failures
to realize the full absurdity or monstrosity of its doctrines -- is
to suppose that the priest, like any other religious minister, just
paternally warns his "flock" that it is dangerous to read books
against his faith. Not a bit of it. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> is again
unique, as it always is when it is protecting the interests of the
<ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent>. No other religion has gone so far as to put
"Commandments of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>" on the same level as the <ent type='ORG'>Decalogue</ent> and
say that transgression of them is punishment with eternal torment.
And it is a very stern law of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> that forbids the reading
of "bad books."</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
14
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> The domestic or private part of the Canon Law in its latest
version -- now an official code not a professor's lectures -- may
be read in English, if you can safely separate the text from the
bemusing commentary in Woywood's Practical Commentary on the Code
of Canon Law: One of the longest clauses in it (1399) deals with
the reading of books against faith or morals. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> must not
read any non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> translation of the Bible -- the English
Bible, for instance, or books which defend "fortune-telling,
divination, or magic," or books that defend the law of divorce,
etc. You wonder how he gets through the <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent> paper. However, the
main point is that he must not read "books by any non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
treating professedly of religion unless it is certain that they
contain nothing contrary to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> faith" or any books
"tending in any way to undermine the very foundations of religion."
Certain <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s may get permission from the bishop (who in
practice delegates the authority to confessors) to read a book of
this kind if they have a serious reason, not merely curiosity, but
even the bishop's permission "exempts nobody from the provisions of
the natural law which forbids the reading of books that are for the
particular reader a proximate occasion of sin" or, in other words,
may inspire a doubt. So the permission given with the right hand is
taken away with the left. And lest you should think that this is
just an academic prohibition -- a sort of paternal "don't let me
catch you with your pants down" -- clause 2318 grimly says that
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s who possess or read, without permission, books by
apostates criticizing the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are ipso facto excommunicated.
That is hell with the lid off. By the very act of reading a single
paragraph they incur the awful penalty and cannot approach the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> to confess it or hold communication with any other
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> will give a gorgeous funeral to a notorious
boss-gangster and murderer but will insist that the monster who has
read one of these booklets and not been reconciled shall be buried
like a dog. Any priest can absolve the murderer but the wretch who
has read one of McCabe's foul books without the bishop's permission
has to be re-admitted to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> by the bishop or the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>.</p>

<p> You begin to understand the defense-mechanism of the Black
International but you have not yet got the half of it. It obviously
follows that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> must not attend a lecture in which the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> may be criticized. Once, lecturing in a district which had
a large <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> population I saw two burly <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent> priests brazenly
walk through the room and look at every face to see if any of their
parishioners had dared to attend! On the next <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent>, doubtless,
they would urge <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s to drag their non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, friends to a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> lecture. But it is not generally known that the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
is forbidden under the same penalty to enter into private
discussion of religion with any man who has the ability or the
knowledge to disturb him. Clause 1325 runs:</p>

<p> "<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s shall not enter into any disputes or conferences
with non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s -- especially public ones -- without the
permission of the Holy See or, in urgent case, of the local
Ordinary (bishop)."</p>

<p> The public debate is here forbidden only a little more
stringently than the discussion of religion with a non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
neighbor. You may at times have noticed how shy of discussing his
faith your neighbor is, but this particular clause is not widely </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
15
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>known to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s, and the priest is careful not to mention it.
The unbeliever might scoff, and even the believer might become
suspicious when he is told that his faith is solidly based that it
is "absolutely impossible to shake it" yet he must not argue about
it with a non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> friend.</p>

<p> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s never read Canon Law. It is the priest's business to
convoy these commands of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> to the faithful. During his
visits to his parishioners he has a keen scent for heretical books,
and I have known him to put books of mine (loaned by request) on
the fire in the house to emphasize the law and his authority.
Chiefly he acts through sermons. He talks more about bad books than
he does about chastity, and to a point we will admire his honesty,
for he would, far rather see them reading spicy novels than
criticisms of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>ry <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, therefore, is quite
familiar with the law. But do not imagine that you will disturb him
by pointing out that he challenges you to read both sides but must
absolutely refuse himself to read your side. Error, remember, has
not the same rights as truth. In any case, he will tell you his
writers and lecturers always faithfully tell him what the opponents
of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> say. The poor fish! If there is one field of their
work in which they are more recklessly untruthful than another it
is in quoting or giving an account of the arguments of their
opponents or suppressing all knowledge of them. Quotations are
false and no exact reference given so that you cannot check them.
Priests writing on science are shorn of their clerical titles and
passed off as authorities. Writers on science of the last century
are quoted as living authorities. . . . But my works abound in
examples of the unscrupulous trickery exercised in this field.</p>

<p> As to the Index of Prohibited Books, although it is still in
force and receives an addition every few years, you may dismiss it
from consideration. No priest has a copy of it, and <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s have
no idea of the utter stupidity which the Vatican has betrayed in
compiling it. Originally and until the 18th Century it served as a
guide to Inquisitors in examining the library of a suspect. For the
last century and a half criticisms of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> have poured out in
such floods even in <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> countries, that it is impossible to
compile a catalogue; and there would not be much good literature
left outside it. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> relies on the general prohibition of
the Canon Law and the libeling of critics. Non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writers who
praise the "discipline" and "organization" of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are as
culpable as those who a few years ago praised the discipline and
organization of the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> or the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent> party. One wonders if they
recognize it even now when they see <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> in
alliance with the powers of evil.</p>

<p> Chapter III</p>

<p> DRAWING THE DRAGON'S TEETH</p>

<p> From figures which I have earlier given we are compelled to
conclude that if the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> has only about
15000000 genuine members there must be at east a further
10000000 who were baptized in the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and have abandoned it.
How did they come to surmount the spiked rails the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> puts </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
16
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>round them and venture beyond the poison-zone which lays between
them and its critics. From observation and inquiry I should say
that the great majority of these <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s never read anything
against the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Living psychology is a matter of great lucidity
and infinite variations, but you can fairly divide this mass of
<ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s into two classes: a minority of thinking and reading folk
and a majority of folk who think little and read less.</p>

<p> The apologetic plea that these millions of the majority-folk
are therefore men and women who just "resented the restraints which
the good <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> put upon their passions" and are pretending to have
lost faith in it is so childish that you may find it difficult to
believe that it is urged. Very large numbers of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s have
friends, neighbors, or relatives who have left the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and know
how false this theory of their secession is: besides that the idea
that church-goers do not drink or misbehave as much as <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s
will tickle many <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s. "In my parish," said a <ent type='GPE'>Glasgow</ent> priest
to me when I was in the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, "young folk do not marry until they
have proof that they will have children"; and your 10000000
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s must be heroic if they drink more than the <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>
or are more amorous than the <ent type='NORP'>Latin</ent> <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns. "Since a <ent type='NORP'>Polish</ent> force
was encamped in this district," a <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> correspondent wrote me a
few weeks ago, "all the girls are pregnant." I will give figures
and authorities in a later book.</p>

<p> The simplest and most plausible explanation of secession from
the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is the utter absurdity, arbitrariness, or
inhumanity of its characteristic doctrines as I have described
them. You need no malevolent critic or devil-inspired book to help
you to see this. As a matter of fact the heaviest secessions, I
have shown, are of boys of fourteen to sixteen or seventeen, and
the moralist who suggests that they want to "give rein to their
passions" is as absurd as the man who supposes that to any extent
they read books criticizing the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. They came as spontaneously,
or with a little assistance from comrades in the workshop, to see
that what they have been taught is "crazy" as the artist who knows
only the rich church near his home thinks its services beautiful.
This is, in fact, often the development in the case of well-educated as well as uneducated <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>s. Reading critics of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or theology had nothing whatever to do with my own
secession, and I have met many other men of intellectual life who
rejected <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent>ism because, without outside impulse, they sat down
to a critical Study of their beliefs.</p>

<p> "It Pays to Advertise" businessmen say, in the language of a
certain comedy. Not always. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> spends
hundreds of millions of dollars annually in advertising its goods
to the general public, and its crop of 20000 converts a year is
hardly worth $10000 a year to it. It is advertising obviously
unsound goods, and folk stream out of it because they see this.
Doubt usually precedes inquiry. When a man begins to suspect that
the iron hand of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> is a device in its own interest, when
he looks fantastic or repulsive doctrines squarely in the face, he
crosses the spiked fence and the poison-zone and his eyes are
opened to the great deception that has been practiced on him. The
first step is largely a matter of temperament.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
17
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> That is, I think, in most cases the psychology of the <ent type='NORP'>seceder</ent>,
and the clerical defense-mechanism I have described is useless
against it. But even the first faint doubt is very apt to be
inspired by some news in the press or some remark in conversation,
by the sight of the growing general indifference to religion, by
reflection on the obvious fact that so few men of any intellectual
distinction ever join the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, and so on. The doubt that arises
justifies a man in looking outside the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> for help in checking
its doctrines, and he soon learns how unscrupulous <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> writers
are in pretending to state the arguments of their critics,</p>

<p> For instance, I noticed in an earlier book a volume in which
the very popular and allegedly learned apologist <ent type='PERSON'>Fulton Sheen</ent>
complains that <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism is actually "intellectually
impoverished" by the lack of "a good sound intellectual opposition"
today. In the same work he has a chapter on the evolution of man,
and he tells his <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> readers that only "two fossils" have been
found that have a bearing on it. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> reader is free to go
to <ent type='ORG'>the Natural History Museum</ent> to see the "two fossils" or to take
out a book on prehistoric man, and he finds that at the time when
<ent type='PERSON'>Sheen</ent> made this idiotic statement (betraying an incredible
ignorance of the subject) the prehistoric remains already
discovered would, if decently interred, fill a nice little
cemetery. The <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>, however orthodox, no longer wonders that no
scientific man cares to notice his apologists, and he goes from
science to history and finds that the deception is even greater. He
realizes that the idea that "the world" -- which means everything
and everybody outside <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism -- is so vicious and depraved
that it has to be coupled with the flesh and the devil, is a
clerical trick, and that the malice and untruth are in the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
itself.</p>

<p> To combat this danger the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> countries
like <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> relies on the third part of its defense-mechanism, the
first being, as I said, the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> school, the second the stern
prohibition of any access to criticism of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Isolation of
the active-minded <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> is no longer possible, though the
majority of the 7000.000 or so adult members of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> may be trusted to isolate themselves. Of 200 people living
in the street in which I write I should say that one-fifth never
read anything and one-fifth never look at anything above the level
of the picture-paper or a weak sentimental novel. <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s with their very large proportion of immigrants and the
poorer workers come under an even less flattering analysis. But
there are millions of ordinary citizens amongst them who read the
daily paper through, use the free or subscription library and mix
freely with neighbors of all religions or none. It is from this
body that the secessions occur, and it has been found futile to
hope to counteract all the news and impressions they pick up by
sophistry and untruth in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> weekly. The Black
International must neutralize the poison in the sources of their
information and their impressions. This work began with the
plausible plea, on the lives of good-neighborly feeling, that
nothing must be said or done that is "offensive to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s," and
this was so easily accomplished that <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> went </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
18
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>on to ensure to a remarkable extent that the sources of a man's
ideas and impressions -- newspapers, radios, books, libraries,
political speeches, etc. -- should be used to flatter the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
and lie about its defects and its achievements.</p>

<p> These two series of booklets contain so many hundred
illustrations of this that I might be content to leave the matter
there, but unfortunately few people realize to what an appalling
extent this one-tenth of the nation, with its prodigious wealth and
its powerful organization, have been permitted to poison the wells
of public instruction. Until <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> made its crafty attack on
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> it was common to hear rather disdainful expressions about
the way in which <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> had been led by the nose to the
brink of the pit which the <ent type='NORP'>Nazi</ent>s and <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s had dug. In <ent type='GPE'>Australia</ent>
and <ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent> as well as <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> the old formula that the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> are
an old and effete nation, destined to lose the high position they
had won in history, was revived and generally repeated. The
apostasy of <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> did not open the eyes of critics to the truth,
for even now the press will not tell how the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> had worked for
that betrayal. The situation is now much the same in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and
<ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, yet in neither country is there even a broad recognition
-- in spite of the stubborn isolationism of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s to the last
moment and the present disgraceful conduct of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent>
-- of the monstrous part that <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> has played or
the fact that both countries were kept slumbering by a press that
gravely betrayed them under the equal influence of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>ism and
capitalism.</p>

<p> At the moment, for instance, there is some fuss because in the
very middle of its foul onslaught <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> is announced to have
exchanged ambassadors with the Vatican. I take it -- there is not
time for <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n news on this point to reach me -- that your
apologists smooth out the anger as they do here. One <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> paper
(<ent type='GPE'>Glasgow</ent> Herald), a fairly independent and honest daily, ventured
to express its editorial indignation, and this was at once
counteracted by a long letter from a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> (a Benedictine abbot,
I believe) of the most untruthful and misleading character. The
gist of it was that the Vatican had for years sought in vain
permission from the <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese to supervise the spiritual interests
of its subjects in <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>, and no one would expect it to withdraw
from so purely religious a request, especially as the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> "never
interfered in polities," when the Japs offered it in the present
year. This is the usual constructive lie relying on the poor memory
of the public and the reluctance of editors to recall facts which
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s would resent.</p>

<p> My readers know that in 1937 (The A B C Library of Living
Knowledge, No. 6) I fully warned them of the criminal aims of <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>
and the close cooperation of the Vatican with it since 1931. I
said, and I gave the evidence in an earlier book of this series,
that the plan to exchange ambassadors was agreed upon in 1935, as
the Pope's own paper, the <ent type='PERSON'>Osservatore</ent>, joyously announced. In the
<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> press this development of cordial relations with the
Vatican, in order to get <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> influence on the press all over
the world, was smothered in the usual way, but <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns ought to
have known what to expect. In October (14) 1937 the Associated
Press had a cable from its <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent> correspondent generally reproduced </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
19
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>in the papers. The information was from "a reliable Vatican source"
and was to the effect that "the Holy See has instructed its
hierarchy and missions in <ent type='LOC'>the Far East</ent> to cooperate with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese
action in <ent type='GPE'>China</ent>," and the memorandum it had sent was calculated to
"give the <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>ese military authorities the clear impression that
on the part of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> there is no obstacle to complete
collaboration." The message was, <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> says, denied by the Vatican
and by the Pope's representative at <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>. The A.P. replied
that its agent had got the message confirmed at the Vatican Press
Bureau before he issued it. The well-known journalist, <ent type='PERSON'>Pegler</ent>,
stated in a syndicated article (which is before me now) that from
his own knowledge of <ent type='ORG'>the Vatican Press Bureau</ent>, which he described
as corrupt, he had no doubt of the truth of the report and that
"the editors of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Press in this country are not ignorant
of the situation." Yet the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press denied it with the usual
show of anger and injured innocence, and the whole weight of the
Church's influence was used to dupe the public. And meantime, as I
showed, the Vatican continued -- to cultivate the most cordial
relations with <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> and gave <ent type='ORG'>Matsuoka</ent>, its special agent for
hoodwinking <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, a gold medal when he visited the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> in 1941.
The plea that <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent> has for the first time acceded to the Pope's
long pressure for diplomatic relations and that the purpose is
purely ecclesiastical is brazen but <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s get away with it.
They control the press.</p>

<p> This was not the first or <ent type='ORG'>weightiest</ent> proof of the way in which
<ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> had began to poison the wells.
In 1936 <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent> had raised the flag of revolt in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>. The
spontaneous reaction of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> wag to support the <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent>
government, in spite of the flood of libels of it already released
in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> press, as the revolt was notoriously a <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>
attempt to destroy a democracy. <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> estimated that 98 percent of
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> was against <ent type='PERSON'>Franco</ent>. 50 percent of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s were
against him (as shown by a Gallup Survey), but 98 percent of the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> prelates were strong against the <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> government. So
the duped laity of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action Were driven into the field by
their clerical slave-drivers. By 1938 hardly a paper in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> did
justice to the <ent type='NORP'>Loyalists</ent> or dare speak of "Rebels." <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>ry <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>-<ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> lie was endorsed, and the most contemptible methods were
adopted to suppress the truth and secure the triumph of injustice.
When a small group of <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> priests came over to tell <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> the
truth they were pitilessly persecuted. Proprietors of halls were
threatened if they wanted to open them to the priests, and managers
of hotels were threatened if they gave them rooms. Firms were even
bullied and boycotted for sending medical supplies to the <ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent>
government. <ent type='PERSON'>Roosevelt</ent> was induced by <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s to load the scales
against the hard-pressed <ent type='NORP'>democrats</ent> by an <ent type='GPE'>Embargo</ent>, and when the open
and cynical intervention of <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent> showed that it was
unjust, he was dissuaded by <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s from lifting it. A <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>
official is said to have declared that the one man in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> who
could get the cruel <ent type='GPE'>Embargo</ent> lifted was Cardinal Mundelein. In the
end it was difficult to ascertain the truth. Publishers who
accepted books which told it, newspapers which reviewed them, and
libraries which circulated them were threatened or penalized. It
was a massive exhibition of the virtually <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> power which the
<ent type='ORG'>Black International</ent> had won in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
20
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> gave a list of 18 general charges against the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> of
grave misconduct in turning (as it always does) the tolerance which
it had won in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> into a bitter intolerance of others and a use
of violent and unscrupulous methods to prevent the public from
learning the truth. As far as machinery is concerned these charges
are that it exercises in its own interest a most vicious pressure
on the press -- it has made an end of the boasted freedom of the
press in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> -- publishers, libraries, public meetings, and the
letting of public buildings by state authorities. <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> should
have added a scandalous interference with the school-books used in
public schools (<ent type='GPE'>Boston</ent>, etc.). It achieves its aim generally by
intimidation, sometimes by organizing mobs of fanatical or low-class <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s to use violence. Generally it is enough to threaten
a secession of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> readers or advertisers. Certain papers
which have done so much to lower the standard of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n
journalism are ready and eager at any time to reap profit by
catering to the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> authorities and attracting <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s from
papers which make some effort to make a stand for freedom and
independence; just as there has been a lamentable growth in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
of writers, especially of history, who manipulate or color the
facts to get <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> recommendation and circulation. Newspapers
and books used to be the most dangerous part of that "world" which
<ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> dreaded, so they have with almost complete
success drawn the teeth of the dragon.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Heywood Broun</ent> said years ago that "there is not a single New
York editor who does not live in terror of this group." I spent six
months in <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent> in 1917 and wanted to get out a book on the
<ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. I had not then met Haldeman-Julius and did not know
how he kept the banner of freedom flying in a corner of <ent type='GPE'>Kansas</ent>. But
a well-known <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent> publisher told me that I would not find a
publisher for such a work in <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent>. My friend G.H. Putnam had
published one for me, but he complained that he had hoped I would
be less critical and he did not publish another. He had submitted
the manuscript of his own History of the Index to several priests
before he published it. The general excuse of journalists, editors,
writers, publishers, librarians, and bookstore-owners is that they
do not want to stir sectarian strife. There can be few of them who
do not recognize in their own minds today that if there bad not
been this mighty conspiracy during the last ten years to suppress
all news that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> wanted suppressed the world would not have
drifted into its present appalling condition.</p>

<p> The political weapon for breaking the teeth of their opponents
is similar to the economic; indeed both are at the bottom economic.
It is astonishing to find an intelligent <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> repeating the
clerical bleat that "the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> never interferes in polities." Some
writers discuss the matter at length but the answer is simple.
Whenever the interests of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> are involved in any political
issue it not only interferes but on its own principles is bound to
do so, and no one accuses it of interfering in a political struggle
in which its own interests, directly or indirectly, are not
involved. But when you reflect that its "interests" mean not simply
the moral or religious welfare of its subjects but very decidedly
the acquisition of power and wealth -- as a means of doing further
good, of course -- you see how easily it is entangled in political
troubles.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p> Why in <ent type='GPE'>New York</ent> did it take so open a part on the reactionary
side in the struggle for the Child Labor Amendment, in <ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>
on the question of the enlargement of <ent type='ORG'>the Supreme Court</ent>, in various
places in local labor disputes? Why did it flirt so openly with
Wall Street and the annexationists during the church-trouble in
<ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>? These are <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n matters which I leave to writers like
<ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent>, but why the sacred fury year after year against <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent> and
Communism? The persecution of religion was a false and hollow
excuse. The outstanding reasons were to protect the enormous wealth
which the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has in many countries and to win the interest and
favors of capitalists like <ent type='ORG'>Ford</ent>.</p>

<p> I have dealt in an earlier book with the remaining aspect of
the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> Church's justification of its censorship, intolerance,
bullying, bribery, and corruption of the organs of public
instruction: its plea that in getting a large control of the movies
and the circulation of books and plays it serves a most important
national purpose by scotching immoral tendencies. It is far more
anxious to suppress a pro-<ent type='NORP'>Spanish</ent> (democratic) film like "<ent type='ORG'>Blockade</ent>"
or a pro-<ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>n film than to cut out an occasional sex-joke or to
turn the clerical microscope upon the celluloid strip of a bathroom
or bedroom scene. <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n law has in this respect fixed the limits
of freedom as narrowly as any other and more narrowly than the law
of most <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> countries, and the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n public are generally
content with the police-interpretation of the law. They want no
dog-collared amateurs to assist them. <ent type='ORG'>The Black International</ent> seeks
this power partly because it raises its prestige in the country and
partly to complete its control of the means of enlightening the
public. To an outsider it seems amazing how <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns, who in spite
of police and parsons show in their novels, plays and films that
they take as sensible a view of sex as any in the world, tolerate
this hypocritical meddling of a minority which merely seeks to
advertise and augment its own power. It reminds me of a certain
<ent type='NORP'>British</ent> author who was well-known for his writings on and zeal
against <ent type='ORG'>the White Slave Traffic</ent>. A friend who lived in the same
block of apartments -- very expensive apartments -- as he in
<ent type='GPE'>London</ent>, assured me that it was not uncommon to see the man going,
half or more than half drunk, to his rooms at night with a "white
slave" on each arm.</p>

<p> For some readers, in fine, who may have happened to meet a few
priests and who are reluctant to accept what they feel to be a very
serious indictment of the clerical body, let me add a few words.
This attitude is usually very illogical. I have met men who adopted
it on the strength of a social meeting with a single priest or
bishop. Not only has this no relation to the question of the
methods of the clerical body, not only are priests in such
circumstances only too anxious to impress a non-<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> as very
tolerant and broad-minded, but scientific research has exploded the
fallacy that you can read a man's "character" in that fashion. I am
from a very long and wide experience as good a judge of character
as any, yet I was cheated out of $10000, my life-savings, by a
lady I had known well for 20 years and considered of exceptionally
high character.</p>

<p> My indictment of the clergy, however, is not so much an
ethical charge as a claim that their professional zeal forces them
into practices which are gravely prejudicial to the interests ()f </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>the community. I will not be misunderstood. Priests are, as a body,
far from Being men of high character. They are not chosen for
character and do not take up the career as a rule from the motives
which the laity imagine. The skepticism which the majority of them
develop in one degree or other and the clandestine sex-relations
they enjoy in spite of vows engender a hypocrisy which poisons
character. But the question of character is not so much involved in
the charges I make here. Chiefly I accuse them of a comprehensive
conspiracy to get the truth suppressed in the organs of public
instruction, and when this is the suppression of truth which would
injure the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> they regard it as a virtue. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>n on the positive
side, when they pour out, to use their own words against them, "a
<ent type='GPE'>Mississippi</ent> of lies," you have to remember their ethical theory of
mental reservation." The strict meaning of this is that you may, if
the person you are addressing has "no right to the truth" -- and no
one has a right to the kind of truth that hurts the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> -- use
words that he takes to mean something which you say in your own
mind that you do not mean. It is commonly interpreted as a license
to lie in the interest of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or the clergy. My own
professor of theology, a priest of great distinction in the
clerical body at <ent type='GPE'>London</ent>, lied so easily and unblushingly in the
interest of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> that he clearly came to regard the line
between truth and untruth as of little importance. Another <ent type='NORP'>British</ent>
apologist, a man of generally stricter character, explains in a
little volume of advice to lay apostles that there are two uses of
facts. One is the logical way to use them -- simply to state them
correctly and let your hearer appraise them -- and the other is the
rhetorical use; by which he plainly means that when the facts
correctly stated tell against the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> or contradict its writers
you must make your statement of them innocuous or favorable to the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>.</p>

<p> Chapter IV</p>

<p> SUGAR PLUMS FOR THE LOYAL</p>

<p> But we waste time in any attempt to analyze the mind or the
conscience of churchmen. The ugly and important fact is that they
have secured such power over the organs of public instruction, even
in countries where they are a small minority, that it is
increasingly difficult to convey to the general public facts that
they ought to know. I have no abstract or <ent type='NORP'>Platonist</ent> veneration for
<ent type='ORG'>Truth</ent>, with a capital letter -- you will probably find this quoted
as a confession that I have no respect for truth -- nor, on the
other hand, am I a <ent type='NORP'>Pragmatist</ent> in the philosophical sense. In all my
work I aim to convey truth in the form of facts critically -- that
is to say, intellectually-ascertained and verified, but especially
facts of social significance or practical importance. That is the
general attitude of thoughtful <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns, and they now find that,
whereas fifty years of steady education and mental emancipation had
opened up a promise of a triumphant spread of it, the Black
International, in a vile cooperation with other corrupt interests,
threatens to destroy all the liberty that had been won. This side
of its work is of vital important in relation to the theme of the
present series of books: the question how it could keep the
allegiance of 15000000 <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>ns and the superficial respect of </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>the majority of the nation while during years it conspired with
greedy plotters against <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and civilization. And when these
folk at the same time shout them-selves red in the face with
warnings against the diabolical machinations of <ent type='NORP'>Communists</ent>,
<ent type='NORP'>Bolsheviks</ent> (now, Mr. <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>ill says, "our noble <ent type='GPE'>Russia</ent>n friends"),
<ent type='NORP'>Atheists</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Freemasons</ent>, and even <ent type='NORP'>Jews</ent>, the situation is nauseating.</p>

<p> How it is to be remedied I do not know. The press can help no
longer, radio is in the hands of the enemy, politicians find the
arrangement can be used to their own profit, and the immense body
of university professor's sit silent or, in a few cases, join the
sycophants. It may be that our victory in the war will be followed
by a strong anti-clerical reaction. Do not build on it. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>
will strain every nerve to keep the grim truth about its connection
with the war concealed, and it is now a first principle of
politicians of every shade that "we must not antagonize the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>." What sort of state-structure they hope to build
on that rotten foundation, and how leaders of advanced parties can
follow this ignoble policy when wherever Fascism has triumphed
(outside <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>) the priests are getting their comrades shot by
the thousands, I do not know. I do my bit in the one field that is
left open to me.</p>

<p> But we have not yet completed our description of the way in
which <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> protects the belief in the amazing
bunch of ancient superstitions and medieval priestcraft which I
described in the last book. Let us understand at once that the need
of protection is not so great as one would be inclined to expect
after reading an account of the childish doctrines and tyrannical
rules. Here we may confine ourselves to such countries as <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, for the long account which I quoted of life in a
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> city dispenses me from any need to explain why people
cling to the faith, in such conditions. The illiterate mass are in
the condition of the <ent type='NORP'>Irish</ent>man who said, "Faith, if the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> said
it was <ent type='PERSON'>Jonah</ent> who swallowed the whale it wouldn't trouble me" -- a
story my professor of theology often repeated, hilariously, in
class -- and the small comfortable minority are protected in their
privileged position by the priests.</p>

<p> One has first to appreciate the social and psychological value
of the parish. All <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>es have the advantage of providing this
satisfaction of one of the fundamental instincts, but the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
clergy contrive to give a special force. The man who, finding other
social contacts to replace it or preferring isolation to listening
weekly to the mummery of the service and bleat of the sermon,
ceases to attend church is more sourly ostracized in a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
than in any other sort of parish. He is a "bad <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>," which is
as odious a label as the priest can fasten on him. His wife is kept
very sensitive of the gravity and disgrace of his condition, and
many links of old friendship may have to be broken. Few who have
taken an active part in what is called "the life of the parish"
would like to face the soured atmosphere of their neighborhood if
they left the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. Thus for most of them the clerical warning to
avoid books and lectures that may start a doubt is hardly
necessary. The comfort, if not profit, of a hundred ties with
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> neighbors, the weekly meeting at the church-door, the </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>social meetings and entertainments in the parish-hall or the
school, the feeling of membership of a large family and the
interest in its life and fortunes, are worth far more than the cold
and penalized Satisfaction of knowing the truth.</p>

<p> For these folk who make up the greater part of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
body, religion is, as I said, not so much a matter of conviction as
of settled practices. They want no rupture or dislocation of the
routine. They are, in clerical language, the "practicing"
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s, and the way in which they are contrasted with the "non-practicing" -- the conscientious and thoughtful folk who have
dropped out -- as virtue is contrasted with vice, is amusing.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>ry reader who belongs or has at any time belonged to a
religious congregation or parish knows how much this has to do with
membership of a church. To those who have not experienced it we
need only recall the furious zeal of the clergy to prevent the
provision of alternatives on <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent>s. In <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> no theater may be
opened on <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent>s, and concerts are provided only on special
conditions. Until a year ago no cinema was open. When, under
pressure of public opinion, a law was passed leaving it to local
option whether the cinemas should be opened on <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent>, the harsh
condition was attached that the proprietors must hand over the best
part of the profit to charity, and in most districts the clergy
organized their congregations in a spirited, and generally
successful, fight to prevent the opening. They did not trust a
large part of their own people to go to church if they had an
alternative, although sermons have been ruthlessly cut, brighter
music provided, and a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> is not compelled to attend more than
a 25-minute service on the <ent type='LOC'>Sunday</ent> morning.</p>

<p> For large numbers there are additional advantages. The
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> store-keeper, medical man, journalist, teacher, employee
of a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> employer, etc., dare not miss attendance. Women and
girls, it is notorious, find it the opportunity of the week to show
off some new apparel or see what others wear. Many consider that
their matrimonial prospects are far brighter if they remain
attached to one of these socio-religious bodies. An author has left
it on record that he found the meeting in church a unique
opportunity to admire the rounder feminine curves. . . . It is, in
short, a very large error to suppose that a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> group or
parish is a body of men and women bound together simply by a common
belief in such doctrines as I described. Mainly it is a body of men
and women whom the accidents of life and education put on a common
path and the unpleasantness of quitting it seems to them not worth
the cold reward of an intellectual satisfaction. It is the obvious
absurdity of doctrines that compels many to face that
unpleasantness. When the religious statistics are closely examined
it will be seen that the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> which alone talks about conquering
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> has in the last forty years lost more than its rivals.</p>

<p> A special device of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> clergy to restrict this large
leakage as far as possible is the organization of the laity in
special societies, guilds, fraternities, sororities, etc., so as to
keep them closer under clerical vigilance and control. I have
earlier explained how it is by means of these societies that the
priest turns the obligation to confess once a year into an </p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
25
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>obligation to confess, every month. Best known and most powerful of
all in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> is the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of <ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent>, more than half a million
strong, which renders most important services to the clergy and
finds very substantial sums of money for them and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>. The
society was founded in 1882 mainly as a "fraternal benefit society"
or <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> insurance company, and it still does a big and
profitable business in insurance. With the usual grotesque false
idea of the character of the European knights of the Middle Ages
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> men were enrolled in what professed to be a chivalrous and
romantic body of modern knights errant for the service of the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and of each other. They became a vast association of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> men something in character between the <ent type='NORP'>Freemasons</ent> and the
<ent type='NORP'>German</ent> Shock Troops with a few features borrowed from the <ent type='ORG'>Gestapo</ent>.</p>

<p> The article on them in the new Encyclopedia <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>na is part
of the advertising scheme of the <ent type='NORP'>Roman</ent> <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> which is a feature of
the work. It airily dismisses the much-discussed question of the
Secret oath of the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> by saying: "Has no oath, only obligation
of secrecy," which, when you are referring to a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
organization, is much like saying that a man "has no dog, only a
canine quadruped." The form of oath that is often attributed to
them seems to be a forgery based upon a crude idea of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> aims
but one would like to know in what form the obligation of secrecy
is imposed. A friend of mine, a distinguished Canadian, learned a
few years ago through an amusing hotel adventure, that the <ent type='GPE'>Quebec</ent>
Premier <ent type='NORP'>Tascherean</ent> had been initiated as a <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> but it must be
kept a deadly secret. Imagine the leonine roar of the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
press if a president were discovered to have been secretly
initiated to <ent type='NORP'>Freemasonry</ent>! And what would be the position of
<ent type='NORP'>Tascherean</ent> if the question of the annexation or Anschluss of
<ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent>, for which the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> are ready to work as they work for
the annexation of <ent type='GPE'>Mexico</ent>, ever became a live issue?</p>

<p> However, the public action of the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> is well known. What
is of interest here is that the organization is probably the most
valuable means that <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> has in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> for
holding grown-up and educated men to a profession of those medieval
speculation's which I described in the last book. It enlists
profit, patriotism, and piety in a harmonious regiment. To one-third it says: Be a <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> and expand your bank-roll. To another
third: Be a <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> and break a lance for <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n (financial)
institutions on these <ent type='ORG'>Reds</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Mexican</ent> bandits, <ent type='NORP'>Anarchists</ent>, <ent type='NORP'>Atheists</ent>,
Birth-controllers, etc. And to the genuine religious third it says:
Be a <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> in the service of <ent type='PERSON'>Mary</ent> and the Lord. Why leave the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> when it offers such golden, as well as <ent type='ORG'>gastroilomic</ent>,
opportunities? Since 1928 they have trained the young, as
"<ent type='GPE'>Columbian</ent> Squires" for the high function of <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent>. One trusts
they have not to render all the services of the medieval squires
and pages.</p>

<p> <ent type='PERSON'>Seldes</ent> (The Vatican) tells us that during the few years before
1929, the period of the stormy courtship of <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent>,
there were amusing variations of the public policy of the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent>s.
At times when <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> was pressing and there was hope of an
agreement the <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> police stopped young women on the streets and
painted marks on their stockings to which the skirts must be
lowered. When the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> pressed and the hope of a bargain grew faint</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
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HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>-- well, one gathers that the legs were not daubed in public and
the low-water mark was much higher. The <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> similarly adopts
itself, and for the more puritanical laymen of the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>,
the men who cannot afford or do not like the social amenities and
robust services of the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent>, it has organized the gentler
society of the Holy Family. In this the wife may collaborate. An
important duty of theirs is to denounce wicked books, plays, and
pictures which have escaped the censor and are calculated to
corrode the foundations of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n civilization. The sororities of
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> virgins are expected to cooperate in this, and the members
face the duty of seeing whether a film is really proper as firmly
as they face the intimate talk on sex in the confessional. Once I
saw a remarkably long queue of women outside the chief picture-house in <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent> and learned that they were waiting to see a
picture which had so unpleasant a reputation that the police were
hourly expected to suppress it. <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent> was just then preparing for
a <ent type='NORP'>Eucharist</ent>ic <ent type='ORG'>Congress</ent> and in mitigation of the subservience of the
civic authorities: to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> the papers explained that one-third of the citizens are devout <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s. I concluded that the
bright-eyed women in the queue were mostly <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s who wanted to
see if the film ought to be denounced to the police to save the
women and children of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>.</p>

<p> It is impossible here to name all the titles, decorations, and
festivities of the groups into which the faithful are Sorted; and,
indeed, you will soon begin to wonder why so many millions leave
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, if not why anybody leaves it. See, if you can, some
account of the vast net of activities covering the life of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>
and centered in the offices of the National <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Welfare at
<ent type='GPE'>Washington</ent>. <ent type='PERSON'>Eve</ent>rybody, from <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> artists or scientists (number
not stated) to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> shoe-shiners, is organized and directed by
the clergy to discharge some function or other for Our Holy Mother
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. It is the <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n version of what in other countries
is called <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action: the activity that invited <ent type='PERSON'>Mussolini</ent> and
<ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> to overthrow the legitimate government in <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, delivered
<ent type='GPE'>Vienna</ent> into the hands of the cardinal who <ent type='PERSON'>grewed</ent> flowers in the
path of <ent type='PERSON'>Hitler</ent> when he seized it, got the freethinking politicians
and bankers of <ent type='GPE'>Buenos Aires</ent> to give literally, a royal reception to
Cardinal Pacelli when he arrived to plot against democracy in South
<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>, filled the jails of <ent type='GPE'>Rio</ent> with the groans of tortured men,
put Petain in power in <ent type='GPE'>France</ent> and for the first time in many
centuries brought dishonor upon the country, betrayed <ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, paralyzes <ent type='GPE'>Canada</ent> today, etc., etc. In an earlier book I
quoted the <ent type='PERSON'>Pope</ent> asking: "How could any fair-minded man say that the
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> ever interferes in polities?" In the same year a <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
writer in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> fortnightly, the Revue des <ent type='PERSON'>Deux Mendes</ent>,
opened his article with the sentence: "Rarely in history has the
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> factor had such influence as it has today on the political
movement throughout the world"; and he traced it in detail, and
with much joy, in <ent type='GPE'>Germany</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Austria</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Czecho</ent>-<ent type='GPE'>Slovakia</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Spain</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Italy</ent>,
<ent type='GPE'>Yugoslavia</ent>, Hungary, <ent type='GPE'>Rumania</ent>, and <ent type='GPE'>Japan</ent>.</p>

<p> In <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent> the chief aim of <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Action, which
specifically means action by the laity under clerical control, is
to carry out that poisoning of the wells of public information
which I have described, especially by intimidating the editors of
newspapers, the publishers of books, and librarians. To the outside</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
27
.
HOW THE FAITH IS PROTECTED</p>

<p>world this is presented as a very natural and innocent precaution
that nothing offensive to <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s is published. One would imagine
at times, from the way <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s talk, that the papers and books
were until a few year's ago filled with lies and libels against the
innocent <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>, stories of escaped monks and nuns and debauches in
convents, unjust suspicions of plots on the part of the good
<ent type='ORG'>Jesuit</ent>s and the intensely spiritual Vatican, and so on. This is, of
course, sheer non-sense. It is a mere face-saving excuse for the
unfortunate editors and publishers who have to submit to the most
brazen maneuvers of modern priestcraft. For the aim is not to
exclude lie's, which a paper easily detects and rejects, but to
secure the suppression of the truth about life in the <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>
<ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and the activities of the Vatican, which the public has a
right to know and publicists a duty to tell, and to compel papers
to publish untruthful statements to the advantage of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> and
libraries to accept and circulate books that contain them. Since
the whole of these booklets illustrate that clerical maneuver I
need not here enlarge further on it.</p>

<p> I have space to notice one more sugar plum, the sweetest of
all for the laity: the sale or awarding of Papal horrors, titles,
and decorations. <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> and counts are a dollar a dozen in Europe.
It is in the democratic atmosphere of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> that these things
sparkle most. But I have dealt with them earlier. As a rule they
are, like titles in <ent type='GPE'>Britain</ent>, directly or indirectly bought. They
are a reward for "aims to the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>" or zeal in its service. I
notice in the <ent type='NORP'>British</ent> <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> Who's Who an <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n named C.L.
Hearn who was for 10 years Supreme <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> of the <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> of
<ent type='GPE'>Columbus</ent>. I do not know whether he has sunk into the grave under
the burden of his honors -- I find no mention of him in Who's Who
in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> or the Encyclopedia <ent type='GPE'>America</ent>na -- but it seems that he
was a <ent type='PERSON'>Knight</ent> of St. Gregory, a Commander with the Star and Grand
Cross, a Count of the Papal Court, and a Privy Chamberlain of the
Sword and Cape. I do not know whether he had a nice salary to
sustain their dignities in a democratic world but I gather that on
behalf of the valorous <ent type='ORG'>Knights</ent> he took some fat checks to <ent type='GPE'>Rome</ent>. But
see an earlier book for these supreme rewards to the faithful
laity.</p>

<p> Do not, in fine, lose sight of the fact that the boast that
the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent> has 20000000 or 25000000 followers in <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> is
just part of the big bluff of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent>. No one dare
make an actual inquiry, such as was done 30 years ago in <ent type='GPE'>London</ent>,
how many people do in fact attend <ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent> churches regularly,
which is the only test of membership of the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. I have shown
that 15000000 is a generous figure to assign yet that of the
living population of <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> something like double that number have
been baptized in the <ent type='ORG'>Church</ent>. That the vast organization of priests,
monks, nuns, journalists, teachers, paid and amateur agents, now
the most wealthy religious body in the world, should, with such a
scheme of threats and attractions as I have here described, succeed
in keeping about one-half of the mass, predominantly at the lowest
cultural level of those who by birth and upbringing ought to be
<ent type='NORP'>Catholic</ent>s is scarcely a miracle. But the point of chief interest
here is that the mechanism for securing loyalty or checking
disloyalty is essentially <ent type='NORP'>Fascist</ent> and illustrates once more that
close affinity of <ent type='ORG'>the Black International</ent> with the corrupt powers
that darken the earth.</p>

<p> Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, <ent type='GPE'>Louisville</ent>, KY 40201
28
</p></xml>