AND THE CHURCH.
Question. Which do you regard as the better, Catholicism or Protestantism?
Answer. Protestantism is better than Catholicism because there is less of it. Protestantism does not teach that a monk is better than a husband and father, that a nun is holier than a mother. Protestants do not believe in the confessional. Neither do they pretend that priests can forgive sins. Protestantism has fewer ceremonies and less opera bouffe, clothes, caps, tiaras, mitres, crooks and holy toys. Catholics have an infallible man—an old Italian. Protestants have an infallible book, written by Hebrews before they were civilized. The infallible man is generally wrong, and the infallible book is filled with mistakes and contradictions. Catholics and Protestants are both enemies of intellectual freedom —of real education, but both are opposed to education enough to make free men and women.
Between the Catholics and Protestants there has been about as much difference as there is between crocodiles and alligators. Both have done the worst they could, both are as bad as they can be, and the world is getting tired of both. The world is not going to choose either—both are to be rejected.
Question. Are you willing to give your opinion of the Pope?
Answer. It may be that the Pope thinks he is infallible, but I doubt it. He may think that he is the agent of God, but I guess not. He may know more than other people, but if he does he has kept it to himself. He does not seem satisfied with standing in the place and stead of God in spiritual matters, but desires temporal power. He wishes to be Pope and King. He imagines that he has the right to control the belief of all the world; that he is the shepherd of all "sheep" and that the fleeces belong to him. He thinks that in his keeping is the conscience of mankind. So he imagines that his blessing is a great benefit to the faithful and that his prayers can change the course of natural events. He is a strange mixture of the serious and comical. He claims to represent God, and admits that he is almost a prisoner. There is something pathetic in the condition of this pontiff. When I think of him, I think of Lear on the heath, old, broken, touched with insanity, and yet, in his own opinion, "every inch a king."
The Pope is a fragment, a remnant, a shred, a patch of ancient power and glory. He is a survival of the unfittest, a souvenir of theocracy, a relic of the supernatural. Of course he will have a few successors, and they will become more and more comical, more and more helpless and impotent as the world grows wise and free. I am not blaming the Pope. He was poisoned at the breast of his mother. Superstition was mingled with her milk. He was poisoned at school—taught to distrust his reason and to live by faith. And so it may be that his mind was so twisted and tortured out of shape that he now really believes that he is the infallible agent of an infinite God.
Question. Are you in favor of the A. P. A.?
Answer. In this country I see no need of secret political societies. I think it better to fight in the open field. I am a believer in religious liberty, in allowing all sects to preach their doctrines and to make as many converts as they can. As long as we have free speech and a free press I think there is no danger of the country being ruled by any church. The Catholics are much better than their creed, and the same can be said of nearly all members of orthodox churches. A majority of American Catholics think a great deal more of this country than they do of their church. When they are in good health they are on our side. It is only when they are very sick that they turn their eyes toward Rome. If they were in the majority, of course, they would destroy all other churches and imprison, torture and kill all Infidels. But they will never be in the majority. They increase now only because Catholics come in from other countries. In a few years that supply will cease, and then the Catholic Church will grow weaker every day. The free secular school is the enemy of priestcraft and superstition, and the people of this country will never consent to the destruction of that institution. I want no man persecuted on account of his religion.
Question. If there is no beatitude, or heaven, how do you account for the continual struggle in every natural heart for its own betterment?