On June 12th, 1913, there came to the little town of Oelwein, Iowa, a former priest of the Catholic Church, named Jeremiah J. Crowley, to deliver a lecture exposing the Papal propaganda. The Catholics of the town made efforts to intimidate5 the owner of the place in which the lecture was to be given; the priest of the town, Father O'Connor, preached a sermon furiously denouncing the lecturer; and after the lecture the unfortunate Crowley was surrounded by a mob of men, women and boys, and although he was six feet three in size, he was beaten almost to death. At the trial which followed it developed that Father O'Connor and also his brother, a judge on the Superior Bench, were accessories before the fact.
Nor is this a solitary6 instance. The Catholic military societies, with their uniforms and their armories7, are not maintained for nothing. As Archbishop Quigley declared before the German Catholic Central Verein:
We have well ordered and efficient organizations, all at the beck and nod of the hierarchy8 and ready to do what the church authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of loyal Catholics ready to step into the breach9 at any time and present an unbroken front to the enemy we may feel secure.
And so, on the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group of Catholics entered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colorado, overpowered a police guard and seized the Rev10. Otis L. Spurgeon, an anti-Catholic lecturer. They bound and gagged him, took him to a lonely woods, and beat him to insensibility. The same thing happened to the Rev. Augustus Barnett, at Buffalo11; the Rev. William Black was killed at Marshall, Texas. In each case the assailants avowed12 themselves Knights13 of Columbus, and efforts to punish them failed, because no jury can be got to convict a Catholic, fighting for his Pope against a godless state. The most pious14 Leo XIII has laid down:
It is an impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for the purpose of obeying the magistrates15, or to transgress16 the law of the Church under the pretext17 of observing the civil law.
There are papers published to warn Americans against the plotting of this political Church. One of them, "The Menace," has a circulation of more than a million; and naturally the Knights of Slavery do not enjoy reading it. Year after year they have marshalled their power to have this paper barred from the mails—so far, in vain. They caused an obscenity prosecution18, which failed; so finally the press rooms of the paper were blown up with dynamite19. At the present time there is a "Catholic Truth Society" with a publication called "Truth", to oppose the anti-Catholic campaign; and that is all right, of course—except when the agents who collect the two-dollar subscriptions20 to this publication make use of Untruth in their labors—promising absolution and salvation21 to the families, dead and living, of those who "come across" with subscriptions. In the "Bulletin of the American Federation22 of Catholic Societies" for September, 1915, I find a record of the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism of the Catholic Church from the mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany Catholic congressman23, proposes a bill in Washington; and Judge St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the Federation's "law committee", points out the difficulties in the way of such legislation. You cannot pass a law against ridiculing24 religion, because the Catholics want to ridicule25 Christian26 Science, Mormonism, and the "Holy Ghost and Us" Society! The Judge thinks the purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished27 if they can slip into the present law the words "scurrilous28 and slanderous"; he hopes that this much can be done without the American people catching29 on!
You read these things for the first time, perhaps, and you want to start an American "Kultur-kampf." I make haste, therefore, to restate the main thesis of this book. It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary30 Privilege. It is not Superstition31, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.
You remember how, when Americans first awakened32 to the universal corruption34 of our politics, we used to attribute it to the "ignorant foreign vote." Turn to Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty" and you will see how reformers twenty years ago explained our political depravity. But we probed deeper, and discovered that the purely35 American communities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt33 of all. It dawned upon us that wherever there was a political boss paying bribes36 on election day, there was a captain of industry furnishing the money for the bribes, and taking some public privilege in return. So we came to realize that political corruption is merely a by-product37 of Big Business.
And when we come to probe this problem of the spread of Superstition in America, this amazing renascence of Romanism in a democracy, we find precisely38 the same phenomenon. It is not the poor foreigner who troubles us. Our human magic would win him—our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy. We should break down the Catholic machine, and not all the priests in the hierarchy could stop us—were it not for the Steel Trust and the Coal Trust and the Beef Trust, the Liquor Trust and the Traction39 Trust and the Money Trust—those masters of America who do not want citizens, free and intelligent and self-governing, but who want the slave-hordes as they come, ignorant, inert40, physically41, mentally and morally helpless!
No, do not let yourself be lured42 into a Kultur-kampf. It is not the pennies of the servant-girls which build the towering cathedrals; it is not the two-dollar contributions for the salvation of souls which support the Catholic Truth Society and the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society and the Mary Sodality and the National Shrine43 of the Immaculate Conception and all the rest of the machinery44 of the Papal propaganda. These help, of course; but the main sources of growth are, first, the subsidies45 of industrial exploiters, the majority of whom are non-Catholic, and second, the privilege of public plunder46 granted as payment for votes by politicians who are creatures and puppets of Big Business.
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1 exasperating | |
adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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2 devout | |
adj.虔诚的,虔敬的,衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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3 blasphemy | |
n.亵渎,渎神 | |
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4 doctrine | |
n.教义;主义;学说 | |
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5 intimidate | |
vt.恐吓,威胁 | |
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6 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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7 armories | |
n.纹章( armory的名词复数 );纹章学;兵工厂;军械库 | |
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8 hierarchy | |
n.等级制度;统治集团,领导层 | |
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9 breach | |
n.违反,不履行;破裂;vt.冲破,攻破 | |
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10 rev | |
v.发动机旋转,加快速度 | |
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11 buffalo | |
n.(北美)野牛;(亚洲)水牛 | |
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12 avowed | |
adj.公开声明的,承认的v.公开声明,承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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13 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
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14 pious | |
adj.虔诚的;道貌岸然的 | |
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15 magistrates | |
地方法官,治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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16 transgress | |
vt.违反,逾越 | |
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17 pretext | |
n.借口,托词 | |
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18 prosecution | |
n.起诉,告发,检举,执行,经营 | |
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19 dynamite | |
n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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20 subscriptions | |
n.(报刊等的)订阅费( subscription的名词复数 );捐款;(俱乐部的)会员费;捐助 | |
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21 salvation | |
n.(尤指基督)救世,超度,拯救,解困 | |
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22 federation | |
n.同盟,联邦,联合,联盟,联合会 | |
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23 Congressman | |
n.(美)国会议员 | |
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24 ridiculing | |
v.嘲笑,嘲弄,奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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25 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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26 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
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27 accomplished | |
adj.有才艺的;有造诣的;达到了的 | |
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28 scurrilous | |
adj.下流的,恶意诽谤的 | |
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29 catching | |
adj.易传染的,有魅力的,迷人的,接住 | |
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30 hereditary | |
adj.遗传的,遗传性的,可继承的,世袭的 | |
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31 superstition | |
n.迷信,迷信行为 | |
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32 awakened | |
v.(使)醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 );(使)觉醒;弄醒;(使)意识到 | |
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33 corrupt | |
v.贿赂,收买;adj.腐败的,贪污的 | |
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34 corruption | |
n.腐败,堕落,贪污 | |
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35 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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36 bribes | |
n.贿赂( bribe的名词复数 );向(某人)行贿,贿赂v.贿赂( bribe的第三人称单数 );向(某人)行贿,贿赂 | |
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37 by-product | |
n.副产品,附带产生的结果 | |
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38 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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39 traction | |
n.牵引;附着摩擦力 | |
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40 inert | |
adj.无活动能力的,惰性的;迟钝的 | |
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41 physically | |
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律 | |
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42 lured | |
吸引,引诱(lure的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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43 shrine | |
n.圣地,神龛,庙;v.将...置于神龛内,把...奉为神圣 | |
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44 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
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45 subsidies | |
n.补贴,津贴,补助金( subsidy的名词复数 ) | |
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46 plunder | |
vt.劫掠财物,掠夺;n.劫掠物,赃物;劫掠 | |
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