The Profits of Religion Part 7

Charity

As everyone knows, the "society lady" is not an independent and self-sustaining phenomenon. For every one of these exquisite, sweet-smelling creatures that you meet on Fifth Avenue, there must be at home a large number of other women who live sterile and empty lives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after their luckier sisters. But these "domestics" also are human beings; they have emotions--or, in religious parlance, "souls;" it is necessary to provide a discipline to keep them from appropriating the property of their mistresses, also to keep them from becoming enceinte. So it comes about that there are two cathedrals in New York: one, St. John the Divine, for the society ladies, and the other, St. Patrick's, for the servant-girls. The latter is located on Fifth Avenue, where its towering white spires divide with the homes of the Vanderbilts the interest of the crowds of sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday morning, before "Good Society" has opened its eyes, you may see the devotees of the Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each with a little black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do inside? What are they taught about life? This is the question to which we have next to give attention.

Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate of New York, favored me with his justification of his own career and activities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one man of the world to another, he said: "The reason I put them into the hands of Catholics is not religious, but because I find they are efficient in such matters. They don't ask questions, they do what you want them to do, and do it economically."

I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the remark--like Aga.s.siz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and his mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.

When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long hours and improper working-conditions which drove him to desperation; they do not ask if police and politicians are getting a rake-off from the saloon, or if traction magnates are using it as an agency for the controlling of votes; they do not plunge into prohibition movements or good government campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard price, and the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is "charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism. They have been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome and unsightly messes--"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and murder and sudden death." Yet--puzzling as it would seem to anyone not religious--there were never so many messes, never so many different kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand years of charitable activity!

But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building and rebuilding his web across a door-way; like soldiers under the command of a ruling cla.s.s with a "muddling through" tradition--

Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

And so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have messes to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away quickly and without fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this service, no matter what their personal religious beliefs or lack of beliefs may be.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of every steel-mill, every coal-mine or other place of industrial danger, you will find a Catholic hospital, with its slave-sisters and attendants. Once when I was "muck-raking"

near Pittsburgh, I went to one of these places to ask information as to the frequency of industrial accidents and the fate of the victims.

The "Mother Superior" received me with a look of polite dismay. "These concerns pay us!" she said. "You must see that as a matter of business it would not do for us to talk about them."

Obey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as it is with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the work of vote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and saloon-keepers and ward-heelers which the Catholic machine controls. This industry of vote-getting is a comparatively new one; but the Church has been handling the ma.s.ses for so many centuries that she quickly learned this new way of "democracy," and has established her supremacy over all rivals. She has the schools for training the children, the confessional for controlling the women; she has the intellectual machinery, the purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings in order to bolster their hope of the survival of personality after death!

So it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have been driven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy. The Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war several hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every year. It is no longer possible to do without Catholics in America; not merely do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal mined, and dishes washed, but franchises have to be granted, tariff-schedules adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police trained and strikes crushed. Under our native political system, for these purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes belong to people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German and Italian and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and Portuguese and Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church can handle these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and editors and politicians familiar with all these languages?

Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of red fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts. The rest may come out of the public till, in the form of exemption from taxation of church buildings and lands, a share of the public funds for charities and schools, the control of the police for saloon-keepers and district leaders, the control of police-courts and magistrates, of munic.i.p.al administrations and boards of education, of legislatures and governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to flatter our sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme Court Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary prestige, some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend High Ma.s.s, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and dignitaries.

You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going, ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your cla.s.sic shades, absorbed in "the pa.s.sionless pursuit of pa.s.sionless intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the pit! You ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little charities,"

pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your families of one or two lovely children--while Irish and French-Canadians and Italians and Portuguese and Hungarians are breeding their dozens and scores, and preparing to turn you out of your country!

G.o.d's Armor

You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware of modern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants to have beauty about him, to be a "cabin pa.s.senger":

There's power in me and will to dominate Which I must exercise, they hurt me else; In many ways I need mankind's respect, Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.

He wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands that faith is all-important--

Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.

But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--

But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!

He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he asks what there would be in it for him--

State the facts, Read the text right, emanc.i.p.ate the world-- The emanc.i.p.ated world enjoys itself With scarce a thank-you. Blougram told it first It could not owe a farthing,--not to him More than St. Paul!

So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of the contempt of intellectual people.

I pine among my million imbeciles (You think) aware some dozen men of sense Eye me and know me, whether I believe In the last winking virgin as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in her, And am a knave.

But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of faith, that is what

Gives all the advantage, makes the difference, With the rough, purblind ma.s.s we seek to rule.

We are their lords, or they are free of us, Just as we tighten or relax that hold.

So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and "ragam.u.f.fin saints."

I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragam.u.f.fin saints here in this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire the information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit my purse.

America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being drafted to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a firmly bound little pamphlet called "G.o.d's Armor, a Prayer Book for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by the G.R.C. Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first fail to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis sound mysterious!

In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes of war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have played throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not even find anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the resolve of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule. Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the trenches--how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the hearts of men!

I quote from this little book:

Start this day well by lifting up your heart to G.o.d. Offer yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin.

Make the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore Thee and give Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be for Thy Glory, and for the salvation of my immortal soul.

During the day lift your heart frequently to G.o.d. Your prayers need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few of these short e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns by heart and frequently repeat them. They will serve to recall G.o.d to your heart and will strengthen you and comfort you.

You remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the Thibetans.

The Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan, and is less progressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices for saving labor.

You have to use your own vocal apparatus to keep yourself from h.e.l.l; but the process has been made as economical as possible by kindly dispensations of the Pope. Thus, each time that you say "My G.o.d and my all," you get fifty days indulgence; the same for "My Jesus, mercy,"

and the same for "Jesus, my G.o.d, I love Thee above all things." For "Jesus, Mary, Joseph," you get three hundred days--which would seem by all odds the best investment of your spare breath.

And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle"; "Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer before and after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a long March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those in their Agony"--I cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them. I remember standing in a cathedral "somewhere in France" during the celebration of some special Big Magic. There was brilliant white light, and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a huge organ, and a clamor of voices, high, clear voices of young boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of men in a pit reaching up, trying to climb over the top of one another.

It sent a shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in the modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the ancient nightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental life of mankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their frantic and ceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the s.e.x-spell; and the poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps spent the night with a prost.i.tute, now prostrates himself before a holy Woman-being who is lifted high above the shames of the flesh, and who stirs the thrills of awe and affection which his mother brought to him in early childhood. Read over the phrases of this "Litany of the Blessed Virgin":

Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of G.o.d. Holy Virgin of Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother most pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother undefiled. Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable.

Mother of good counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our Savior. Virgin most prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most renowned. Virgin most powerful. Virgin most merciful.

Virgin most faithful. Mirror of justice. Seat of wisdom.

Cause of our joy. Spiritual vessel. Vessel of honor.

Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose. Tower of David.

Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the covenant. Gate of heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick. Refuge of sinners.

Comforter of the afflicted. Help of Christians. Queen of Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of Prophets. Queen of Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of Confessors. Queen of Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen conceived without original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary. Queen of Peace, Pray for us.

Thanksgivings

For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the "Messenger of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New York, the issue for October, 1917. There are pages of advertis.e.m.e.nts of schools and colleges with strange t.i.tles: "Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross Academy", "Holy Ghost Inst.i.tute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child Jesus". The leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the Apostleship of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa"

writes a poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a story called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us about the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July, 1917, it distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form of letter which they are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secretary of War, imploring him to intimate to the French government that France should withdraw from one of her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval America in exempting priests from being drafted to fight for their country. And then there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst newspapers, only instead of asking whether she should allow him to kiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion.

(No, I am not inventing this.)

I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any squeamishness in dealing with its "million imbeciles", its "rough, purblind ma.s.s".

There is a department of the little magazine ent.i.tled "Thanksgiving", and a statement at the top that "the total number of Thanksgivings for the month is 2,143,911." I am suspicious of that, as of German reports of prisoners taken; but I give the statement as it stands, not going through the list and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they come, cla.s.sified by states: