It may thus be seen that Institutions, like Popery, are deeply involved in this Law of Use and Measure of Values. This is simply making use of, and putting in practice, these basic principles.
Of what use to man, measured by these scientific standards of value, are Popery and Priestcraft?
I answer unhesitatingly and unqualifiedly An unmitigated Curse!
This answer is justified by all history, and is as true and as exact to-day, up to the latest act and message from Rome, as it was during the horrors of the Inquisition; and there are evidence and specific statements to show that Rome would re-establish the “Holy Inquisition” to-day, if she dared and had the power.
It is this power, exercised through fear, on the basis of ignorance and superstition so instilled by what Popery calls “Religious Education,” that prevents the majority of fourteen millions in America to-day, as everywhere and in all time, from exercising their prerogative and doing their duty as Individuals.
Is it not plain, therefore, how impossible it is to separate the Individual and the Social status?
Psychology and Sociology are departments of one Science, viz.: the Science of Man, Anthropology. Individuals and Institutions are under one law, one law of use, one measure of values.
He who ignores, evades, or belittles these plain issues and scientific principles, can settle with the law in his own time, though he cannot evade them always.
Note.—During the last week of the year 1910, the daily papers announced that before the beginning of 1911 every Priest in the Diocese was required to take an oath to oppose and resist Modernism and to obey in all things the dictum and dogmas of His Holiness. As everyone knows that under the term Modernism is included all progress, investigation, and civilization condemned by the Vatican, everything that even questions the dogmas and despotism of Rome, the meaning of this required oath is plain.
It is doubtless renewed by reason of (among others) a book,—“Letters to His Holiness by a Modernist,” which, written seemingly by a Priest, makes exceeding plain the meaning of Modernism and the relation of the Vatican thereto. The book marks an epoch in the close of the old year and the beginning of the new, and Rome has acted accordingly. She can delay the stream of progress as she has always done, but she cannot turn it backward. It will eventually overwhelm her.