When a man becomes a Catholic priest, he has been convinced that he ought not to think for himself upon religious questions. He has become convinced that the church is the only teacher—that he has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome, and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure of turning a crank belonging to somebody below him.
Of course, the Catholic Church is supposed to be the only perfect institution on earth. All others are not only imperfect, but unnecessary. All others have been made either by man, or by the Devil, or by a partnership, and consequently cannot be depended upon for the civilization of man.
The Catholic Church gets its power directly from God, and is the only institution now in the world founded by God. There was never any other, so far as I know, except polygamy and slavery and a crude kind of monarchy, and they have been, for the most part, abolished.
The Catholic Church must be true to itself. It must claim everything, and get what it can. It alone is infallible. It alone has all the wisdom of this world. It alone has the right to exist. All other interests are secondary. To be a Catholic is of the first importance. Human liberty is nothing. Wealth, position, food, clothing, reputation, happiness—all these are less than worthless compared with what the Catholic Church promises to the man who will throw all these away.
A priest must preach what his bishop tells him. A bishop must preach what his archbishop tells him. The pope must preach what he says God tells him.
Dr. McGlynn cannot make a compromise with the Catholic Church. It never compromises when it is in the majority.
I do not mean by this that the Catholic Church is worse than any other. All are alike in this regard. Every sect, no matter how insignificant; every church, no matter how powerful, asks precisely the same thing from every member—that is to say, a surrender of intellectual freedom. The Catholic Church wants the same as the Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Methodist—it wants the whole earth. It is ambitious to be the one supreme power. It hopes to see the world upon its knees, with all its tongues thrust out for wafers. It has the arrogance of humility and the ferocity of universal forgiveness. In this respect it resembles every other sect. Every religion is a system of slavery.
Of course, the religionists say that they do not believe in persecution; that they do not believe in burning and hanging and whipping or loading with chains a man simply because he is an Infidel. They are willing to leave all this with God, knowing that a being of infinite goodness will inflict all these horrors and tortures upon an honest man who differs with the church.
In case Dr. McGlynn is deprived of his priestly functions, it is hard to say what effect it will have upon his church and the labor party in the country.
So long as a man believes that a church has eternal joy in store for him, so long as he believes that a church holds within its hand the keys of heaven and hell, it will be hard to make him trade off the hope of everlasting happiness for a few good clothes and a little good food and higher wages here. He finally thinks that, after all, he had better work for less and go a little hungry, and be an angel forever.