Some amusing uses have been made of this volume. In 1909 the opponents of a bill before the legislature of California cited, to its prejudice, the fact that members of the clerical profession were against its passage. The gentleman who appeared before the legislative committee in behalf of the bill offered this list of reverend delinquents and inquired whether these were included among the ministers whose opposition was allowed to weigh with the committee. Ministers who undertake legislative work and pose as “Reformers” are often unfortunate in their moral character. There has been a singular series of mishaps among the conspicuous maintainers of the sanctity of the Sabbath who have allied themselves with organizations to promote Sunday observance by the saloon-keepers. The following list of them gathered in a single state is taken from a Detroit newspaper called “Truth” in 1905:
The Rev. R. G. Malone, superintendent of the Grand Traverse district, arrested for licentious conduct; fled the state; now in employ of Minnesota League.
The Rev. George Kulp, League orator, Grand Rapids, arrested for adultery.
The Rev. Ralph Baldwin, League in Saginaw, fled after being exposed in a liaison with a Detroit woman.
The Rev. John M. Wright, an organizer and orator for the League from Muskegon, proven guilty of perjury in a divorce case.
The Rev. Orson D. Taylor, a Saginaw League organizer and orator, sent to House of Correction for thefts.
The Rev. E. I. Waldorf, another Saginaw League worker, sent to House of Correction for thefts.
The Rev. C. E. Lee, a prominent League worker and orator in Grand Rapids, expelled from his church for licentiousness.
The Rev. J. Printer, a Branch county League organizer, fled the state to escape arrest for bigamy.
The Rev. Charles Kirchner, St. Clair county League organizer and orator, betrayed his foster daughter.
The Rev. Jos. St. Johns, Pontiac member of the League’s force of workers, serving a term for assaulting a colored girl.
The Rev. J. R. Andrews, a Lansing League orator, expelled from church and arrested for blackmail.
The Rev. S. A. Northrop, one of the League’s most gifted orators at Owosso, expelled from his church for undue intimacy with women of the congregation.
The Rev. John Smith, a Grand Rapids League orator and ardent supporter, eloped with one of the women of his church.
The Rev. Dr. J. G. Holiday, Manistee county organizer, expelled from his church for swindling.
The Rev. William P. Squires, Bay City organizer and orator for the League, expelled from his church for falsehood and swindling.
The Rev. A. C. Marshall, from Amboy, Hillsdale county, League worker and orator at Corunna, expelled from church for licentiousness.
There have been a number of clerical reformers in the East whose records cannot be cited to their advantage. One went against the Sabbath breakers in Brooklyn, was arrested for blackmail and forfeited his bond. One in West Virginia fought the theaters and Sunday trains, but he turned out a gallows bird, a bigamist, and the thief of his children’s inheritance. One went to combat license in Brattleboro, Vermont, but turned up too drunk to go on with the lecture. One in New Jersey railed against Sunday liberty, but beat his wife and eloped with a choir singer. One of Boston stood in the pulpit with the blood of a girl seduced and murdered on his hands and demanded legal suppression of Sunday baseball. The “phrasing of morality,” thus becoming a habit with the clergy, does not conflict with their other vices.
Wherever a reform is attacked by the clergy on moral grounds the usefulness of this work is appreciable. In Pittsburgh, Pa., the secretary of a Socialist group was debating with a prominent Presbyterian minister, when the preacher incautiously asserted that Socialism would break up the home, and paraded the horrible example of a Socialist professor who had been divorced by his wife. The proponent of Socialism, expressing his regrets that so irrelevant a matter had been brought into the argument, produced a copy of “Crimes of Preachers” to show how the home had fared at the hands of men of his opponent’s profession.
Incidentals to the downfall of the preachers are sometimes dramatic. One exhorted his congregation to confession and repentance, whereupon his contrite landlady, much moved, made public the fact that she had been living with him in adultery, and asked for prayers. Another, having worked his hearers to the proper condition, said: “Let us all lay our sins upon the altar.” A young woman with an infant in her arms came forward and, handing him the baby, said: “Here’s yours.” It appeared that he was the father of the child, though not married to the mother.
Reference has been made to the papal decree, which of late years has shown renewed capacity for mischief, protecting a priest from prosecution by any Catholic without a bishop or other superior’s consent. It is a survival of the “benefit of clergy” law under which the church claimed the right to try the cases of clerical offenders, instead of letting them go before the civil courts. The working of this decree was illustrated in New York recently when a priest attempted an immoral act with an eight or ten-year-old girl. The mother of the girl, unmindful of the prohibition, reported the case to the police, and caused the lecherous clergyman’s arrest, but later, having been advised by one of the higher clergy of the diocese, withdrew the charge and declined to testify against the accused, who appears to have been liberated after a reprimand by the court. It must be obvious that with this rule in force, all but the most serious offenses of the Catholic clergy will escape public notice. When in 1913 the murder of Anna Aumuller had been traced to the Rev. Hans Schmidt, a priest of a New York church, the police arrested and the courts convicted the reverend criminal; yet the Rev. Hans Schmidt had committed other crimes previous to this, and was known by his Catholic acquaintances to be a man of immoral life. He enjoyed, however, the benefit of clergy, and was protected by it from the exposure that would have come earlier but for the Catholic ban on “scandal,” and that would not have come at all but for his sensational crime. With this wall of secrecy thrown about the priestly life, we know not what immoralities and crimes take place among the clergy and never come to light. While this edition of “Crimes of Preachers” is in preparation a Chicago Catholic priest, in line for distinguished honors from his church, takes an automobile “joy ride,” visits a saloon in the suburbs and ends the outing by stabbing a station agent to the heart. The published offenses of the priests are such, usually, as in the nature of things cannot be covered up. For them there is no such offense as conduct unbecoming a priest, carrying the penalty of deposition and exposure.
In this edition an attempt has been made to shorten the list of terms by which the offenses of the preachers have hitherto been described. Now such breaches of good morals as were variously named “Beecherism,” “immoralities,” “lascivious conduct,” “lechery,” “scandalous conduct,” “unministerial conduct,” and the like have been brought under the head of “Immoralities with women and girls miscellaneously and variously described,” which is as definite as the previously used terms, and saves space.
It will be observed that the total number of offenses charged is considerably greater than the total number of ministers involved. This results from the complicated character of some of the delinquencies of the reverends. A married minister betrays a young woman, thereby committing seduction and adultery. There may be a child and a charge of bastardy. He may run away with her, adding elopement and desertion of wife and family, and often divorce. Elopements are numerous, and they are mentioned here only when complicated with adultery or desertion, since the unmarried parson is entitled to his romance, and not to be censured above other men if he makes a runaway match of it—the woman concerned having reached or survived the ages of discretion without any matrimonial alliance at present existing. So the adulteries, seductions, etc., are all enlarged, while only one name is added to the number of ministers.
In only about two-thirds of the cases are the denominations of the clerical law-breakers known, that detail being often omitted by rural reporters or correspondents in whom the news sense is but imperfectly developed. The instances in which the communion is supplied give the Methodists first place, Baptists second, and Catholics third. The number of each is not disproportionate to the total number of clergy of the given denominations. Nothing appears to show that there is any great disparity between sects or between Protestants and Catholics in point of morality. There are, say, 170,000 ministers in the United States, 15,000 of them Catholic. That is ten parsons to one priest. Of the 3,795 ministers in this directory, 325 are Catholics, or about 1 priest to 10 non-Catholic clergymen.
Catholics do not have so many clergymen in proportion to their communicants as the Protestant sects. With them one priest has to serve a thousand adherents (provided they have the sixteen million communicants they claim), while the Baptists, with less than six million communicants, have nearly forty-three thousand ministers, and the Methodists, with seven million members, report upwards of forty-one thousand ministers. With such a multiplication of pulpiteers and a low standard of qualification for the ministry, the bad preeminence of the Methodist parsons is explained. It has been noticed already that priests are not publicly exposed in such peccadilloes as might cost a Protestant minister his pulpit or a layman his standing in the community.