Anti-clericalism

“ It is a number of mental states, affections, policies, ignorances under which Catholicism is indirectly menaced, or stifled, or deflected or weakened in its action on human society.
Even Anti-Clericalism is not a doctrinal attack. It is a political thing and does not of itself challenge any dogma. It professes—and in such of its adherents as are sincere, sincerely professes—to do no more than delimit the line beyond which the Catholic hierarchy exceeds its functions and invades a civil field where it has no right to act. ”

“ We all know how the world has turned this mighty weapon against the Catholic Church. To create an anti-Catholic opinion, to surround the Church—its authority, its practices—with an atmosphere of prejudice and antagonism has always been the aim of the non-Catholic press. ”

“ You are working so as to secure the final triumph of those you hate, and to bring about your own ruin. These anti-Catholic mobs are not Protestant, except as they protest against all religious restraint. They hate Catholicism most, simply because it is the strongest religion. ”

“ Putting one book against the other, it would appear then tolerably certain that the rise of the anti-clerical spirit in England must be dated only just before the dawn of the Reformation, when the popular mind was being stirred up by the new teachers against the clergy. ”

“ What a triumph it would be for them if they could strike this blow at “clericalism”—a blow far more effective than fining, imprisoning, or exiling bishops and priests and religious! They would glory in doing it if it were possible. What holds them back? There are no limits to their hatred or to their powers of calumny. They are ever denouncing the ignorance and the blind superstition of priests and people. But the very gist and copiousness of their invectives prove that they themselves know and feel that the priests and people are alike sincere. ”

“ He does not yet feel that in bowing to the will of the Church he increases his own stature. The shopkeeper’s mind has been poisoned by bad books and bad newspapers. He is against the abuses of the clergy and the intrusion of priests into politics. Many of my electors call themselves anti-clerical. ”

“ The spirit of falsification, the intention to stir up popular passion, the intolerance disguised under the name of liberalism, the determination to treat the Catholic clergy as the heads of a faction with ulterior treasonable and revolutionary designs, and the Catholic religion as a nuisance which ought to be extirpated by violence, are the same in the modern agitators that they were in their predecessors, and are in their English compeers, the Newdegates and Whalleys of the British Parliament. ”

“ You have shuddered at the frightful consequences which have resulted from the unreasonable squabbles of the clergy. You have trembled with all good citizens at the sight of the tragical effects which have been brought about by the furious wickedness of a fanaticism for which nothing is sacred. In fine, you have seen the sovereign authority compelled to struggle incessantly against rebellious subjects, who pretend that their conscience or the interests of religion have obliged them to resist opinions the most agreeable to common sense, and the most equitable. ”

“ Those, then, who try to depreciate the influence of the clergy, and to bring their teaching into contempt, or to set themselves up as independent judges of the morality and right of all questions relating to politics and society, are false prophets, boasting of their liberty, appealing to pride, worshipping themselves in place of God, and flattering the passions of others. They are ravening wolves, destroying the spirit of religion and the souls of men, and leading their victims to anarchy, riot, and bloodshed. ”

“ Sometimes it calls itself liberal, then radical, then chartist, then agitator, then repealer, then political dissenter, then anti-corn leaguer, and so on. Sometimes it stings the clergy, and coils round them, and almost strangles them, for it knows the Church is its greatest enemy, and it is furious against it. ”

“ That is to say, they will persecute, injure, or upbraid such persons only whose religious opinions are hostile to the state. But, now, let me ask any man of common sense, if he could for a moment hesitate to declare on oath what religion they have alluded to as being hostile to the state? There is, in truth, but one answer to be given—the Roman Catholic. What else, then, is this excessive loyalty to the state but a clause of justification for their own excesses, committed in the name, and on the behalf of religion itself? ”

“ The people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? ”

“ You feel that by banishing knowledge and persecuting philosophy, government sacrifices its dearest interests to a seditious clergy, whose ambition and avarice push them to usurp boundless authority, and whose pride always makes them indignant at being in subjection to a power which they contend should be subordinate to themselves.
There is no priest who does not consider himself superior to the highest ruler of any country. We have often seen the priesthood avow pretensions of this character. The clergy are always enraged when an attempt is made to subject them to the secular power. ”

“ All the idolatry, all the ceremonials, all the pomp, all the dogmas, and all the traditions by which religion is retarded, will give them no disquietude, because they consider the opinions that are checked to be equally false with those that are favoured. Why should they, to whom transcendental truths are unknown, labour to remove the superstitions which darken the truths? Such a generation, so far from attacking ecclesiastical usurpations, would rather look on the clergy as convenient tools to ensnare the ignorant and control the vulgar. ”

“ We pass over all that the general body of the Catholic clergy and people have had to suffer from the general prejudice against them created and excited by the calumnies and invectives of these writers and declaimers against their religion. We fix our attention upon one point only, what those persons have had and still have to suffer from this prejudice who have become Catholics from conviction and choice, or who have wished to do so, and would have done so, had they not been deterred by the violent opposition they have encountered. ”

“ The Priests are the enemies of liberty, the adversaries of free discussion, and the opposite of equality, constantly conspiring against a people enjoying the blessings of freedom, constantly fettering, debasing, and insulting the slave. While the Priest is too weak to be intolerant, he is flattering, deceitful, mean and servile; but when fraud has elevated him to power, he is arbitrary and domineering, inflated with despotism, with insolence, and with vanity. ”

“ Thus the two best friends of every Established Church in its normal state were converted into enemies; and the natural indignation of the common people at the licentious lives and gross venality of the clergy was stimulated into an explosion by the desire of the secular dignities to curb the pride of the clergy, and, it might lightly happen also, to rob them of part of their overgrown wealth, nominally for the public good, really for the aggrandisement of the Crown and the nobility. ”

“ The inferior clergy, for the most part trained by ultramontane bigots, and held in the iron grasp of strict hierarchical discipline, passed all bounds in their extravagant glorification of the new dogma. And while among the liberal circles of the Catholic laity it was laughed at and ridiculed, the bigoted nobles and the masses who had long been used to the incensed atmosphere of an enthusiastic adoration of the pope, bowed the knee in stupid devotion to the papal god. ”

“ But when the working of a system is shown in practices which introduce the priest into the place of the Saviour—aye, and which threaten the very foundations of morality—public opinion raises its indignant protest, and demands that the evil shall be cast forth from our Church. Let all forbearance be shown to the honest perplexities of thought; but let not a church, which is Protestant to the core, ally herself with the enemies of the Reformation, or cherish within her bosom practices which are Scripturally indefensible, and morally wrong. ”

“ They have learned that most of the hatred, dissensions, and race antagonisms which have so grieved and afflicted them may be traced to their lack of a central ecclesiastical authority and to the fact that their clergy have been forced to become mere tools of the government. ”

“ Thus the people on whom these burdens ultimately fell were taught to hate the clergy as the clergy hated the Holy See. Of all its oppressions, however, that which excited the fiercest clerical antagonism was the power which it exercised of demanding a tithe of all ecclesiastical revenues whenever money was needed, under the pretext, generally, of carrying on the war with the infidel. ”

“ Catholics and their friends practically declare war against all free discussion on this point. The decree has gone forth, that "no man shall appear for the purpose of proving that Catholicism is contrary to Scripture, or immoral and anti-republican in tendency, under penalty of being denounced as a dupe, or a hypocrite, or a persecutor, or a narrow-minded and prejudiced bigot." ”

“ The Catholic Church as an institution was her enemy, and the enemy of all Protestants. "If they could kill you, and not be found out by the law, they'd do it just as quick as wink, because the priest would bail them out of hell for a dollar and a quarter." ”

“ The clergy looked on Nonconformists through conservative glasses, and saw a rabble of fanatics and rebels. The Nonconformists looked on the clergy through revolutionary glasses, and saw a host of superstitious formalists, and blind, persecuting Pharisees. The man who looks through the unstained glasses of impartiality, sees much that is good, and something that is not good, in all.
Who, that knows much of human nature, expects Catholics to judge righteously of Protestants, or Protestants to judge righteously of Catholics? ”

“ But against all such heresy the Church could hold its ground in virtue of its vast vested interests, as well as of the subjection of the mass, superstitious even when irreverent. The practical danger to the Church’s power lay first in the growth of anti-clerical feeling among people with religious instincts, and secondarily in the anti-clerical economic interest of the nobility and upper classes in all the northern countries. ”

“ They were encountered on all hands and of all kinds, religious and political—from the administration, from popular prejudices, from the distrust of the Government, from the hostility of the Roman Catholic clergy, from differences of opinion on theological points among Protestants themselves, from the amour propre of individuals, and the perplexed or timorous ideas of subalterns in authority. The activity of the Protestant societies created uneasiness in bishops and priests, who strove not merely to counteract their influence, but to interfere with their liberty of action. ”

“ Shall not the lower clergy (like their fellow-citizens,) have the right to express an opinion opposed to that of their superiors, without perilling their existence? Are the truths of our religion so powerless, as to render necessary compulsion and coercion? ”

“ That is the minimum definition; that is the definition of the thing in its origin and before it entered into alliance with the enemies of the Faith. St. Louis can be quoted as anti-clerical when he refused the French Bishops the right to seize the goods of excommunicated people. The Irish leaders can be quoted as anti-clerical when they refused to be restrained in their land policy and political programme by certain of the hierarchy and even by the advice of the Pope. Their picturesque phrase: "We will take our religion from Rome but our politics from Hell" is anti-clerical. ”

“ We have here an instance of the tactics by which he turns on his adversaries and abuses them. In his anxiety to turn the reproach of his foes against themselves he selects by preference the celibacy of the clergy and the religious vows; nor does he attack merely the blemishes which the Church herself bewailed and countered, but the very institution itself. ”

“ So habituated are the Roman Catholic clergy to act in this manner, that the complaints and remonstrances of the whole world have no influence whatever upon them, either in changing their conduct, or in rendering them ashamed of it. So many years have they practised their iniquity, that they have lost the power of blushing; and such is the evil consequence of their habits, that they no longer feel the least pang of conscience, either at the continual neglect of their own duties, or their perpetual invasion of the rights of others. ”

“ This party—being only a section of the religious body—would pose as the representative of religion, and its clergy would identify their interests with the interest of God. Again, there would be some Becket to oppose the will of Parliament, and to call some law affecting his order ‘irreligious,’ and a clericalism would be let loose to assume, and perhaps make hateful, the name of religion. ‘Clericalism is the enemy of men,’ is150 a saying which has much truth in it. The pity is if clericalism and religion are enabled to seem to be the same thing. ”

“ The leaders of the American Revolution, for example, had praised the clergy for throwing the weight of their influence into the political scale, recognizing that there exists a moral and religious as well as a civil obligation on the part of ministers to warn the people of the dangers which threaten their liberty and happiness. But now, however, at a time when the dearest interests of religion and patriotism, of church and state, are fiercely assailed and imperiled, the clergy are met with calumny and insult when they venture to speak out. ”