“My authority, Monsignor,” returned the ex-priest in a low tone, “is Jesus Christ, who said: ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’”
“Ah!” murmured Lafelle; “then it was love that prompted you to abandon your little flock?”
“I left my pulpit, Monsignor, because I had nothing to give my people. I no longer believe the dogmas of the Church. And I refused longer to take the poor people’s money to support an institution so politically religious as I believe your Church to be. I could no longer take their money to purchase the release of their loved ones from an imagined purgatory––a place for which there is not the slightest Scriptural warrant––”
“You mistake, sir!” interrupted Lafelle in an angry tone.
“Very well, Monsignor,” replied Father Waite; “grant, then, that there is such Scriptural warrant; I would nevertheless know that the existence of purgatory was wholly incompatible with the reign of an infinite God of love. And, knowing that, I have ceased to extort gifts of money from the ignorance of the living and the ghastly terrors of the dying––”
“And so deceive yourself that you are doing a righteous act in removing their greatest consolation,” the churchman again interrupted, a sneer curving his lip.
“Consolation! The consolation which the stupifying drug affords, yes! Ah, Monsignor, as I looked down into the faces of my poor people, week after week, I knew that no sacerdotal intervention was needed to remit their sins, for their sins were but their unsolved problems of life. Oh, the poor, grief-stricken mothers who bent their tear-stained eyes upon me as I preached the ‘authority’ of the Fathers! Well I knew that, when I told them from my pulpit that their deceased infants, if baptized, went straight to heaven, they blindly, madly accepted my words! And when I went further and told them that their dead babes had joined the ranks of the blessed, and could thenceforth be prayed to, could I wonder that they rejoiced and eagerly grasped the false message of cheer? They believed because they wanted it to be so. And yet those utterances of mine, 172 based upon the accepted doctrine of Holy Church, were but narcotics, lulling those poor, afflicted minds into a false sense of rest and security, and checking all further human progress.”
Lafelle shrugged his shoulders. “It is to be regretted,” he said coldly, “that such narrowness of view should be permitted to impede the salvation of souls.”
“Salvation––of––souls!” exclaimed Father Waite. “Ah, how many souls have I not saved!––and yet I know not whether they or I be really saved! Saved? From what? From death? Certainly not! From misery, disease, suffering in this life? No, alas, no! Saved, then, from what? Ah, my friend, saved only from the torments of a hell and a purgatory constructed in the fertile minds of busy theologians!”
Lafelle turned to Carmen. “Some other day, perhaps––when it may be more convenient for us both––and you are alone––”