Question. Is there any possibility of your coming to England, and, I need hardly add, of your coming to speak?
Answer. I have thought of going over to England, and I may do so. There is an England in England for which I have the highest possible admiration, the England of culture, of art, of principle.
—The Sketch, London, Eng., March 21, 1894.
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. THE POPE, THE A. P. A., AGNOSTICISM
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.