Thd [sic] Dishonesty of the Roman Catholic Authorities
One cannot but admire the colossal
assurance of the priests of the Catholic church in their tirades
against Anarchy, inspired by the infamous and cowardly crime of
the Pole recently executed for the murder of the late President.
The latest sermon preached on this
theme that we have seen is by Bishop Scannell of Omaha, and he has
gone over the whole ground and rested the ultimate responsibility
for the murder of Mr. McKinley on Atheism. He says:
“The crime was undoubtedly inspired
by the spirit of Anarchy. Anarchy means the lack of government
or of a ruler, and in its common acceptance it means the social
confusion or disorder that is the result of a lack of government.
In its specific sense, however, it is the theory of a certain
class of persons who hold that man should not be governed by
man, but that each individual should have absolute liberty to
do as he pleases. It means, therefore, the absence of all law.
If put into practice it would produce a condition of life like
to that which exists among the wild beasts, with this very important
difference—that the wild beasts are governed by a law, namely,
instinct, which they must obey; whereas man, with his reason
and freedom of will, would be absolutely free from all restraint.
All advocates of Anarchy, from Proudhon to those of our own
times, have been Atheists—real or pretended; and their Anarchistic
principles are the logical result of their Atheism. If there
be no God there can be no law that any man would be bound to
obey, for then no man and no number of men would have any authority
over their fellow-men except such as superior physical strength
might give them. If there be no God there can be no judgment
and no hereafter. Man is for this world alone, and he has the
right to derive from it all the enjoyment possible, without
any regard to his fellow-men, to whom he is in no way bound.
“This reasoning of the Atheist
is, from his point of view, unanswerable. For him private property
is robbery. Lawmakers and rulers are usurpers who, by their
laws, enslave men. Therefore, as oppressors of men and enemies
of human liberty, they ought to be removed. But they cannot
be removed by law, for law does not exist in the system of the
Anarchist, since there is no law-giver; therefore, every individual
has the right to remove them.
“This is Anarchy pure and simple.
It is the Anarchy which is beginning to confront us here in
the United States. It is the Anarchy which has become a serious
menace to social order in France, Italy, and other countries
of Europe. Now, Anarchy exists in all these places because many
of the people are tainted more or less with Atheism, of which
Anarchy is, as I have said, the logical outcome. Large numbers
of persons in those countries have been led away from Christianity
by false teaching and bad example, and other numbers have grown
up without any Christian training whatever, and all such persons,
especially in Europe, are practically Atheists.”
The bad logic of this argument and
the dishonesty of statement [sic] are apparent at a glance.
In the first place, if the education
of the murderer is responsible for his crime, then Roman Catholicism
must bear the blame, for he was born of Catholic pareuts [sic],
educated in parochial schools, and remained a Catholic to the end.
Bresci, who killed the Italian king, was also a Roman Catholic,
so that even if the men called themselves Anarchists, Roman Catholicism,
by the bishop’s reasoning, must shoulder the responsibility for
their crimes.
But there are more misrepresentations
than this in the bishop’s speech. Anarchy, or absence of direct
government, does not mean that its upholders shall “do as they please”
when they please to invade other people’s liberty, but it means
the union of order with the liberty to govern one’s self. Owing,
however, to the way the human race has brought itself up—fooled
by priests and kings, swayed by passions inherited from savage ancestors
but a grade higher than beasts—the social theory called Anarchy
is impracticable and impossible. It is an iridescent dream. The
big fish eat the little fish, the strong animals prey upon the weak,
and man is no exception. Strong men have enslaved the weak, made
them serfs, vassals, slaves, robbed them of every right, even to
that of life, and in this they have for sixteen hundred years had
the direct aid of Christianity. This robbery is going on to-day
in the modified method which civilization has produced. The race
has progressed. Instead of physical force it now uses intellectual
force, which is a distinct improvement. But the purpose of preying
upon others is still one of man’s seemingly ineradicable tendencies.
The intellectually strong rule the intellectually weak. Our laws
are made by those who know how to take advantage of others, and
naturally for the advantage of the makers. And this will be so until
the voters of the country refuse to blindly follow political leaders,
and decline to be robbed in the name of patriotism.
Men are able to reason, but the majority
will not do it, which accounts for the prosperity of the church
and the politician. But such a thing as “freedom of the will” does
not exist. Man is governed by his environment, his surroundings,
the influences which reach him directly. It may be a spoken word
from some one he regards as more intelligent than himself, or a
written word, or some experieuce [sic] in life. And so long as he
surrounds himself with religious influences so long will he keep
his mind cramped and be the prey of priests.
Law which protects men does not come
from God. If it did the world would have had it always. Our present
social system is the slow growth from the experience of the race.
So late as fifteen hundred to five hundred years ago brute force
was the governing principle, and the brutes were all Roman Catholics,
true sons of the church, and devout believers in God. They held
that God had made them, that they were in the world simply to please
God, and that it made no difference what they did to their fellows
so long as they did not displease God. That philosophy of life made
the world a human slaughter-house and a slave pen. They believed
in a judgment and a hereafter, and kept an eye on the throne, as
directed by the church. They got all the enjoyment possible out
of life, then paid the priest, believed what he told them, and went
to heaven. Their religion allowed them to live as they did, and
it is one of the most serious counts in the indictment of Christianity
that it provides a philosophy by which men can lead the most infamous
of lives and escape all punishment. Atheism, on the contrary, provides
no such escape, aud [sic] men must take the responsibility themselves
for their acts. Whether men are bound to their fellows or not they
must allow all equal rights. Having no other world of bliss they
must seek their happiness here, and happiness here is not obtained
by oppressing one’s fellows, for the oppressed will resent it. The
simple law of self-defense upsets all the bishop’s sophistical reasoning.
The philosophy of Atheism has nothing
to do with economic questions. What a man produces himself is naturally
his. Laws are necessary to protect individuals, and lawmakers chosen
by the people cannot therefore be usurpers. Lawmakers who pretend
to hold their positions by the “will of God” are usurpers, and these
are all Christians. Atheists do not admit any such “divine right.”
They have no divine law-giver. The laws they make are for the protection
and benefit of man, not to please God.
But the bishop cannot be honest. In
the face of all the facts of history he persists in crediting religion
with all the good, and attributing all the evil in the world to
lack of it. This is infamously false, for everyone knows—who knows
anything at all about it—that when the world was most religious
it was most evil. Every kind of crime, from murder to petty larceny,
was more prevalent in Europe, in England, when every person was
a Christian thau [sic] now. Religion did not make men kind nor honest,
and does not now. And just so fast as the world has progressed in
civilization, in benevolence and integrity, just so fast has it
dropped religion. Not even a Catholic bishop can deny this, for
he must admit that the world is better now than it was even two
hundred years ago—that men are more charitable, kinder, freer from
crime, less inclined to enslave their fellows, stauncher advocates
of liberty, less given to killing their fellows—and all Catholics
do admit the decline of religion. Instead, therefore, of adding
more religion as a remedy for what crime does exist we should endeavor
to do away with what [756][757] we
have, and substitute therefor the principles of kindness, benevolence,
justice, honesty, and a determination to improve conditions here.
Men never have been good because of religion, are not now, and,
reasoning from experience, never will be.
The Anarchy which exists here and
elsewhere, the strife of classes, is not the result of Atheism and
Materialism but the fruit of centuries of oppression by ecclesiastics
and kings. These have been the exemplars of the brute force doctrine
and criminals like Czolgosz are their logical and legitimate pupils
and products.
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