“It may be, moreover, that we misjudged a certain portion of the reading public in treating the subject so lightly, and as the Encyclopædia is continually reiterating the assertion that it has no ‘bias’ and that its statement of facts is purely ‘objective,’ a few concrete examples of the opposite kind of treatment—the one commonly employed—may not be out of place.
“We are told, for instance, that ‘the Jesuits had their share, direct or indirect, in the embroiling of States, in concocting conspiracies and in kindling wars. They were responsible by their theoretical teachings in theological schools for not a few assassinations’ (340). ‘They powerfully aided the revolution which placed the Duke of Braganza on the throne of Portugal, and their services were rewarded with the practical control of ecclesiastical and almost civil affairs in that kingdom for nearly one hundred years’ (344). ‘Their war against the Jansenists did not cease till the very walls of Port Royal were demolished in 1710, even to the very abbey church itself, and the bodies of the dead taken with every mark of insult from their graves and literally flung to the dogs to devour’ (345). ‘In Japan the Jesuits died with their converts bravely as martyrs to the Faith, yet it is impossible to acquit them of a large share of the causes of that overthrow’ (345). ‘It was about the same time that the grave scandal of the Chinese and Malabar rites began to attract attention in Europe and to make thinking men ask seriously whether the Jesuit missionaries in those parts taught anything which could fairly be called Christianity at all’ (348). ‘The political schemings of Parsons in England was an object lesson to the rest of Europe of a restless ambition and a lust of domination which were to find many imitators’ (348). ‘The General of the Order drove away six thousand exiled Jesuit priests from the coast of Italy, and made them pass several months of suffering on crowded vessels at sea to increase public sympathy, but the actual result was blame for the cruelty with which he had enhanced their misfortunes’ (346). ‘Clement XIV, who suppressed them, is said to have died of poison, but Tanucci and two others entirely acquit the Jesuits.’ ‘They are accountable in no small degree in France, as in England, for alienating the minds of men from the religion for which they professed to work’ (345).
“Very little of this can be characterized as ‘eulogistic,’ especially as interwoven in the story are malignant insinuations, incomplete and distorted statements, suppressions of truth, gross errors of fact, and a continual injection of personal venom which makes the argument not an ‘unbiased and objective presentment’ of the case, but the plea of a prejudiced prosecuting and persecuting attorney endeavoring by false testimony to convict before the bar of public opinion an alleged culprit, whose destruction he is trying to accomplish with an uncanny sort of delight.”
After having adduced a long list of instances which “reveal the rancor and ignorance of many of the writers hired by the Encyclopædia,” the article then points out “the fundamental untruthfulness” on which the Britannica is built. In a letter written by the Encyclopædia’s editor appears the following specious explanation: “Extreme care was taken by the editors, and especially by the editor responsible for the theological side of the work, that every subject, either directly or indirectly concerned with religion, should as far as possible be objective and not subjective in their presentation. The majority of the articles on the various Churches and their beliefs were written by members within the several communions, and, if not so written, were submitted to those most competent to judge, for criticism and, if need be, correction.”
Father Campbell in his answer to this letter says: “Without animadverting on the peculiar use of the English language by the learned English editor who tells us that ‘every subject’ should be ‘objective’ in their presentation, we do not hesitate to challenge absolutely the assertion that ‘the majority of the articles on the various Churches were written by members within the several communions, and if not so written were submitted to those most competent to judge, for criticism and, if need be, for correction.’ Such a pretence is simply amazing, and thoroughly perplexed, we asked: What are we supposed to understand when we are informed that ‘the majority of the articles on the various Churches and their beliefs were written by members within the several communions’?
“Was the article on The Roman Catholic Church written by a Catholic? Was the individual who accumulated and put into print all those vile aspersions on the Popes, the saints, the sacraments, the doctrines of the Church, a Catholic? Were the other articles on Casuistry, Celibacy, St. Catherine of Siena, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, written by a Catholic? The supposition is simply inconceivable, and it calls for more than the unlimited assurance of the Encyclopædia Britannica to compel us to accept it.
“But ‘they were submitted to the most competent judge for criticism and, if need be, correction.’ Were they submitted to any judge at all, or to any man of sense, before they were sent off to be printed and scattered throughout the English speaking world? Is it permissible to imagine for a moment that any Catholic could have read some of those pages and not have been filled with horror at the multiplied and studied insults to everything he holds most sacred in his religion? Or did ‘the editor responsible for the theological side of the work’ reserve for himself the right to reject or accept whatever recommended itself to his superior judgment?”
The article then points out that “far from being just to Catholics, the Britannica pointedly and persistently discriminated against them.” The article on the Episcopalians was assigned to the Rev. Dr. D. D. Addison, Rector of All Saints, Brookline, Mass.; that on Methodists to the Rev. Dr. J. M. Buckley, Editor of the Christian Advocate, New York; that on the Baptists to the Rev. Newton Herbert Marshall, Baptist Church, Hampstead, England; that on the Jews to Israel Abrahams, formerly President of the Jewish Historical Society and now Reader on Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature in Cambridge, and so on for the Presbyterians, Unitarians, Lutherans, etc. But in the case of the Catholic Church not only its history but its theology was given to a critic who was neither a theologian, nor a cleric, nor even a Catholic, and who, as Father Campbell notes, is not known outside of his little London coterie.
The Britannica’s editor also apologized for his encyclopædia by stating that “Father Braun, S. J., has assisted us in our article on Vestments, and that Father Delehaye, S. J., has contributed, among other articles, those on The Bollandists and Canonization. Abbé Boudinhon and Mgr. Duchesne, and Luchaire and Ludwig von Pastor and Dr. Kraus have also contributed, and Abbot Butler, O. S. B., has written on the Augustinians, Benedictines, Carthusians, Cistercians, Dominicans and Franciscans”; and, finally: “The new Britannica has had the honor of having as a contributor His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, who has written of the Roman Catholic Church in America.”
“But, after all,” answers Father Campbell, “it was not a very generous concession to let Father Joseph Braun, S. J., Staatsexamen als Religionsoberlehren für Gymnasien, University of Bonn, assist the editors in the very safe article on Vestments, nor to let the Bollandists write a column on their publication, which has been going on for three or four hundred years. The list of those who wrote on the Papacy is no doubt respectable in ability if not in number, but we note that the editor is careful to say that the writers of that article were ‘principally’ Roman Catholics.