Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/253

Rh erected by the religious congregations have wondered if a wave of madness was not passing over the Church. They are unaware that these building operations enable a crowd of pious rascals to live at the expense of the Church treasury. The imprudence of those congregations which persist in carrying on long and costly law-suits against the public treasury has often been pointed out, for such tactics enable the Radicals to work up a lively agitation against the monks by denouncing the avarice of people who claim to have taken vows of poverty. But these law-suits make plenty of business for the army of pious rascality. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that more than a third of the fortune of the Church has been wasted for the benefit of these vampires.

A widespread dishonesty therefore prevails in the Catholic world, which leads the devout to believe that economic conditions depend chiefly on the caprices of the people who hold the purse. Everybody who has profited by an unexpected gain—and all profit from capital is an unexpected gain to them —ought to share the profit with those people who have a right to his affection or to his esteem: first of all the priests, and then their parishioners. If he does not respect this obligation, he is a rascal, a freemason, or a Jew; no violence is too great to be used against such an imp of Satan. When priests, then, are heard using revolutionary language, we need not take them literally and believe that these vehement orators have socialistic sentiments. It simply indicates that the capitalists have not been sufficiently generous.

Here again, then, there is a case for arbitration; recourse