Page:From Rome to Rationalism (1896).djvu/25

 has led, in the midst of a corrupt court, a life that was the very antithesis to that of Christ. It has ever been grasping for power, using it cruelly when obtained until men were driven to repel it, and then, with open obsequiousness, but secret diplomacy, planning to regain it. The mantle of the Caesars has descended upon its chiefs, and Italian blood flows in its veins throughout the world—cruel, vindictive, crafty, and dissembling. It aims at the disestablishment of other Churches: it is bound to hold that itself, the true Church, must be established. It seeks to be thought tolerant; it quietly teaches doctrines that condemn without examination the moral lives of large bodies of earnest men, some of them the most eminent in every land. It justifies the Inquisition and its former persecutions on principles to which it still adheres, and which it would be bound to put in practice again if ever it became powerful enough. Its clergy are notoriously out of the current of modern thought; yet it terrifies its members into submission, and silences their criticism by the Index and the powerful machinery of pulpit and confessional that bears it out. It fosters religious orders in which there is only a glow of religious life about once in two centuries; their ordinary characteristics are ignorance, idleness, and unceasing strife. Its gorgeous ceremonies have little more spirit in them than a spectacle at Olympia; it neglects the poor in thousands; its offices are an endless source of mischief (for the “Life of Manning” reveals no unusual proceedings); its clergy and bishops are ignorant, its apologists repeatedly guilty of misrepresentations, its laymen restricted in their literature, and even their civil and political life.

In my progress from Rome to Rationalism many other considerations have influenced me; but I can do no more than mention two or three of them. Most of the priests who have preceded me in detaching themselves from the Church of Rome within the last few years have been powerfully affected by the history of Biblical Criticism, and the same line of inquiry has had much weight with me. It is impossible to be unmoved at the conduct of Catholic apologists yielding inch by inch to the advance of Higher Criticism, and then, with admirable coolness, adopting the positions they so vigorously denounced. Genesis, upon which pious speculations were so abundant fifty years ago, we must now look upon as an expurgated edition of a book of Babylonian legends of unknown origin, and so on with the rest of the Old Testament; yet even now, after all concessions, the Catholic doctrine, if it means anything at all, certainly as it is interpreted by Leo XIII., is absolutely untenable. It is not necessary at the present day to enumerate errors found in the Bible.

Mysteries likewise in the course of time became intolerable to me. If there were an infinite, any science concerning him would naturally contain mysteries; but many of the dogmas of Christianity are more