The doctor swung his arms violently. "What does this reproach amount to? Where are men deified? In the Catholic Church? I am a Protestant, but I know that your church condemns the deification of men."
"Doctor," said Frank, "my religious ignorance deserves this rebuke."
"I meant no rebuke. I would only give conclusions. Catholicism is precisely that power that combats with success against the deifying of men. You have in the course of your studies read the Roman classics. You know that divine worship was offered to the Roman emperors. So far did heathen flattery go, that the emperors were honored as the sons of the highest divinity—Jupiter. Apotheosis is a fruit of heathen growth; of old heathenism and of new heathenism. When Voltaire, that idol of modern heathen worship, was returning to Paris in 1778, he was in all earnestness promoted to the position of a deity. This remarkable play took place in the theatre. Voltaire himself went there. Modern fanaticism so far lost all shame that the people kissed the horse on which the philosopher rode to the theatre. Voltaire was scarcely able to press through the crowd of his worshippers. They touched his clothes—touched handkerchiefs to them—plucked hairs from his fur coat to preserve as relics. In the theatre they fell on their knees before him and kissed his feet. Thus that tendency that calls itself free and enlightened deified a man—Voltaire, the most trifling scoffer, the most unprincipled, basest man of Christendom.
"Let us consider an example of our times. Look at Garibaldi in London. That man permitted himself to be set up and worshipped. The saints would have turned away from this stupidity with loathing indignation. But this boundless veneration flattered the old pirate Garibaldi. He received 267,000 requests for locks of his hair, to be cased in gold and preserved as relics. Happily he had not much hair. He should have graciously given them his moustaches and whiskers."
Frank smiled. Klingenberg's pace increased, and his arms swung more briskly.
"Such is the man-worship of modern heathenism. This humanitarianism is ashamed of no absurdity, when it sinks to the worship of licentiousness and baseness personified."
"The senseless aberrations of modern culture do not excuse saint worship. And you certainly do not wish to excuse it in that way. There is, however, a reasonable veneration of human greatness. Monuments are erected to great men. We behold them and are reminded of their genius, their services; and there it stops. It occurs to no reasonable man to venerate these men on his knees, as is done with the saints."
"The bending of the knee, according to the teaching of your church, does not signify adoration, but only veneration," replied Klingenberg. "Before no Protestant in the world would I bend the knee; before St. Benedict and St. Vincent de Paul I would willingly, out of mere admiration and esteem for their greatness of soul and their purity of morals. If a Catholic kneels before a saint to ask his prayers, what is there offensive in that? It is an act of religious conviction. But I will not enter into the religious question. This you can learn better from your Catholic brethren—say from the Angel of Salingen, for example, who appears to have such veneration for the saints."
"You will not enter into the religious question; yet you defend saint-worship, which is something religious."