OCTOBER 1927 THE BUILDER

Reason and Religion

BY THEODOR G. MASARYK
Translated from the German by BRO. JACOB RUEHL, CHICAGO

THIS article was written about twenty years ago and was later
translated from Bohemian into German and published in Freier-
Gedanke, a Liberal periodical. One of the foremost Germanic Masonic
magazines, "Die Drei Ringe," recently reprinted it. So far as we
know it has never before been made available to English readers. It
will not be necessary to recall that Bohemia was, and is, a Roman
Catholic country, yet one in which the martyr John Huss remains a
great memory. These facts, however, must be borne in mind for the
full appreciation of what the President of the Czecho-Slovakian
Republic had to say long before his people dreamed of their present
independence. The article has been somewhat abridged in places.

UPON any man with average intelligence the fact that Rome is losing
power must impress itself. I remember in 1870 when I was a student,
the effect the occupation of Rome by he National Italian forces had
upon many, and especially upon the more thoughtful of the younger
generation. This occurred at the moment when Pope Pius IX declared
himself infallible. I was at that time beginning to have doubts as
to the Catholic faith, and I remember how the fact affected me that
nobody in Europe intervened against the Italians; not a hand and
not a sword was moved, only the Swiss mercenaries of the Pope, for
pay, and pro forma, defended a Rome deserted by the Catholic world.
The ecclesiastics looked for a Crusade against victor Emmanuel, but
Europe, Catholic Europe, remained indifferent. The capital of the
Papal states, Rome, spoke with 153,000 votes for annexation to
Italy; for an independent Pontifical state only 1507 votes were
cast.

On July 13 of the same year the new dogma was accepted. The Pope
became the absolute ruler of the Catholic world. Simultaneously the
protector of the Pope, Napoleon III, head of "Most Christian"
France, made preparations for combat against the Protestant
"barbarians," the Germans. Blow after blow fell. The world was
astonished by the German victories, that beginning in August, ended
within a month with the capture of Napoleon. I cannot say how I, as
a Catholic, suffered at that time.

At the Peace Conference at the Hague in 1899, the intelligent
Catholic read in the papers that the Pope demanded a seat but that
Italy protested against it-- and the Pope was not invited. The
theologians cannot realize how such a short telegram affected the
Catholic reader. Almost unobserved it began to dawn upon the minds
of such that Rome was without authority. In the same way the reader
followed day by day in the press how the people of a Catholic
country, the French, broke away from Rome. He saw that throughout
the world the sympathies of progressive and decent men were on the
side of the French, he saw that Rome had no argument for its
demands but outworn custom and habit, and so he began to wonder why
this Church should cling to a temporal state, what need had a
church of temporal power, he thought of Jesus--and the result of
his thinking was against Rome, and against the Church.

In this fight between Church and state [the reference is to the
conclusion of the Concordat and the expulsion of the Monastic
orders from France. Tr.] the intelligent man recalls the whole
history of the French Church, of the rise of Gallicanism, of the
demand for a National Church. He remembers how the first Napoleon
cynically used the Papacy and the Church for his schemes of
conquest and political domination. And then how his downfall buried
French Catholicism which had existed in dependence on the Concordat
between the Emperor and the Church. He sees how the French Republic
in its fight for democracy and political liberty found its arch-
enemy in Rome and the Church, and as a result of all this he is
gradually convinced that the Roman Church is incompatible with
political and social liberty. The conviction is confirmed by the
news that comes daily, the meaning of which gradually makes itself
clear. No argument, no treatise, only brief items of news by
telegraph or telephone, undermine his belief and destroy his habit
of submission to the Church.

Theology is not based on experience and free critical examination.
It is based on an authority which claims its qualifications and
privileges from direct revelation --the conserver of which it is.
Science is based on experiment and reason. These facts cause the
differences between science and theology, and naturally, as I am
convinced, a conflict that is irreconcilable.

SOME ERRORS OF THE CHURCH

This opposition between theology and the modern standpoint, Rome by
means of the Index, and in our own time by the Syllabus, has
practically stereotyped into a formal code. In regard to the Index
I have proved in my Lecture on Science and Religion [in the
Almanach for Students, 1906] that it rejects all thinkers of modern
times, philosophical and historical authors, poets, novelists, and
of course all theological writers who have made even the most
modest attempt to progress beyond the mediaeval standpoint. In
short, the Index represents the old and impossible world.

It is natural that the Church should have this agency of the Index,
but it is characteristic how it is worked. Such an institution
should have academic direction, it should make critical selection
and well elaborated judgments. In actual fact it is unsystematic,
incomplete and uncritical. The Index proves that individual authors
were condemned for personal reasons. The machinery is that of a
crude, unintelligent Inquisition with the spirit of a tyrannical
police department. It is characteristic of the Catholicism of our
time that Leo XIII, the philosopher, issued the Index himself, and
by his constitution in 1897 acknowledged the ecclesiastical
censorship in harmony with the old rules arranged for the new
Church. The Church teaches that it is the duty of bishops to
censor, each in his diocese, all books and school affairs; and thus
in the Austrian Concordat between the Government and Rome might be
read

The bishops have all liberty to censor books dangerous to religion
and the Church. The government, too, must use every means to limit
the circulation of such books.

Hand in hand with the Index goes the Syllabus of 1864, that
horrible formula of eighty paragraphs by which all modern
civilization is condemned; anathema sit, let it be accursed, is the
continuous burden of this manifestation of obscurantism and
exclusiveness, of intellectual egoism and lust of power. Some
theologians have tried to weaken the impression made by the
Syllabus, by asserting that it does not represent an absolute rule,
that though of course an official manifesto it has not the whole
authority of the Church. This is only evasion and excuse which
confirms our standpoint. We men of intelligence see how Rome
suppresses its best minds. As soon as any reform tendency shows
itself, as not long ago the so-called Reform-Catholicism, its
leading representatives are put on the Index and a large number of
men of distinction find themselves unintentionally in conflict with
Rome.

That Rome is incapable of working scientifically we have continuous
evidence. The educated man can read how often she has erred. The
intelligent Czecho-Slovakian finds in the history of his own
country how the Council of Constance condemned opinions of John
Huss that he never held. The intelligent reader finds this
unscrupulousness continually repeated. For instance, Hermes, a
liberal theologian of the 19th century, was condemned for having
advanced theses he never uttered. His disciples asserted positively
that they condemned these opinions but that Hermes never taught
them.

Czecho-Slovakia has a classical example of these unscrupulous
methods and the credulity of the Roman Church in the beatification
of John of Nepomuk. Evasions here are of no service; Rome made a
mistake. The general opinion was that there were two Johns, and
that one of them was beatified; but he never really existed. The
Grand-Vicar of Pomuk could not have been sanctified for he was
everything else but a decent respectable man, and very far from
being a saint. In W. W. Tomuk's History of the city of Prague he
says:

I do not agree either with the older or the modern writers who
acknowledge the Grand Vicar John von Pomuk as a Saint and take him
for Saint John of Nepomuk, for the simple reason that the
beatification of John Nepomuk by the Holy See was not intended for
him but for someone else.

Tomuk did not have sufficient courage or historical
conscientiousness to state the real truth that there was no such
person as this second John in the history of Bohemia. But we are
satisfied, he exposed the error made by the Church.

THE ORIGIN OF INFALLIBILITY AND THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

The intelligent man reads how the new dogma of the Infallibility of
the Pope originated. I remember very well (I was at that time in
the sixth class of the Gymnasium) how I used to read in the papers
the news about the Council at the Vatican, and how these reports
excited me. I came to the conclusion that the Council was nothing
but a Parliament with a minority and majority and other divisions.
I became aware of the fact that the best and most outstanding
ecclesiastics and theologians were against the new dogma. I read of
Cardinal Schwarzenberg, of Bishop Strossmeyer, of Doellinger and
others, and I was informed how, by the intrigues of the Jesuits,
the resistance of the minority was subdued, how the theologically
untrained Pope depended upon the majority of theological
analphabets [illiterates], Asiatic dignitaries and others of the
same caliber to decide for the new dogma--the dogma which was
published to the Catholic world as a revelation. At that time,
still only a young man, I was not able to judge the matter
objectively, and did not see how the whole affair was connected
with the evolution of Catholicism. But I could see this much from
the daily papers that the determination of this dogma was reached
in a most improper way. Today of course I know that it had
previously had its supporters, especially among the Jesuits; but
that its proclamation was the acme of Papal absolutism I did not
realize, an absolutism utterly contrary to the true conception of
the Catholic Church.

The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary stands
upon the same grounds. According to the New Testament, Mary was the
wife of Joseph and gave birth to other children besides her first
born, Jesus. Of these there are four mentioned in the Bible as his
brothers. St. Paul, the real founder of the Church, states in
several places that all men since Adam are sinful, that Christ only
is without sin.

Following the apotheosis of Jesus came that of his mother, and, by
some, even of his father. Especially was the virginity of Mary
exalted by the monks, and from this came, by logical development,
the belief in her immaculate conception [that she, too, was born
without sin]. In the East the common people developed an intense
veneration of Mary as the Mother of God. At the beginning of the
eleventh century the paying of religious worship to the virgin came
into vogue. This cult played a fatal role against the Reformation
in Bohemia. The Jesuits used it as an effective means to
Catholicize the country. Through the history of this dogma we can
see how the Catholic doctrine has developed by quite human
conceptions only.

As early as the fourth century the layman Helvidius published a
letter in which he denied the perpetual virginity of Mary. He
referred to the passages in Scripture which mention the brothers of
the Lord. Against him Hieronymus (circa 384) wrote a defense of the
doctrine, based on the sophistries and evasions which are yet
offered by theologians. St. Augustin, in his defense of the
perpetual virginity of Mary, admitted that it could not be said
absolutely that she was without sin. After him no definite decision
was made by the Church. Indeed one great teacher, St. Anselm
(1109), taught definitely that Mary was like all mankind.

In the twelfth century the vogue of the worship of the virgin Mary
came to England from the Orient, as to France and other countries.
At that time some theologians began to advance the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. Other prominent teachers rejected these new
opinions, in especial St. Bernard, "the last Father of the Church."
Alexander of Hales was another, also Albertus Magnus, St.
Bonaventura, and among them must not be forgotten St. Thomas
Aquinas, whose system of philosophy has been officially adopted by
the Church. Duns Scotus, the great opponent of St. Thomas, took the
contrary view in this matter [in favor of the new doctrine].

In the meantime, "Celebrations of the Conception," as they were
then called, had become fashionable. Miracles of all kinds took
place. St. Brigit had a vision in which the virgin appeared and
informed her that her Conception had been without sin.
Unfortunately the great mystic, St. Catherine of Sienna, also had
a vision in which the same virgin revealed to her that this was not
the case. The differences of opinion rose to a very high pitch and
brought confusion into the Church. The Council of Bale decided in
favor of the Immaculate Conception, but at the same time contrary
opinions were published. The Council of Trent was very careful in
its decision, under the guidance of the wise Pope Sixtus, who
prohibited the teaching of new dogmas, though he was favorable to
the observance of the Festival of the Conception. Theologians
continued the dispute in their Latin treatises, but the Church
favored among the common people the cult of the Virginity. After
the Council of Trent the Jesuits joined with the Franciscans to
propagate and support both the new cult and the dogma. Alphonse
Liguori stated that the prayers of Mary were direct commands and so
powerful that they could be heard in hell. He relates how a
Franciscan monk saw in a vision the heavens opened and two ladders
leading up to it, one red, the other white. At the top of the red
one stood Christ, on the white one stood the virgin Mary. People
who tried to climb up the red ladder fell down continually till a
voice admonished them to climb the white ladder. To them Mary
reached out her hand and without difficulty they crawled into
Paradise.

Pope Pius IX endorsed the opinion of Liguori; in the encyclopedia
of 1849 he said:

Our salvation rests in the virgin Mary if there is for us any hope,
any spiritual salvation, we obtain them from her.

It may be seen that the Catholic Trinity thus became a quadruple
Deity, and in this union of four persons the Queen of Heaven has
superior rank. Pius IX asked the bishops for their opinion in this
new dogma. Many warned him against it, among them Cardinal
Schwarzenberg, but the committee to which the controversy was
referred sided with the Jesuits.

The decision of this committee is of importance not only to laymen
but to theologians also. The Jesuits proclaimed the maxim, never
before heard of, that the Church needs no proof from Scripture to
support its dogmas, the traditions were sufficient. Concerning
these traditions it was also established that it was not necessary
that they should reach back to the time of the Apostles. In
conformity with these new rules the new dogma was promulgated.

We see from the history of this doctrine that it is in conflict
with the Bible. Not only is it contrary to the words of the
Apostles and the evangelists, but also to the recorded utterances
of Jesus himself, who repeatedly mentions his family. The dogma is
inconsistent also with the teachings of the Apostolic and later
Fathers of the Church, and of its greatest doctors and teachers
also. It represents merely the crystallization of popular custom
and belief, without any warrant in Scripture. Thus it was through
necessity that the Jesuits devised their new rule that dogma could
be founded upon tradition alone. Thus it must be noted well that
the authority of tradition becomes greater than that of the Bible,
the divine revelation.

It is clear to all thinking men that incorrect principles will lead
to incorrect conclusions. The divinity of a human being born of a
woman leads logically to the divinity of that woman herself. And
that again to the divinity of her parents, and so on indefinitely.
The critical history of these doctrines kills every revealed dogma.
This pertains to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and also
to that of the Infallibility of the Pope.

Let us bear in mind that these dogmas are supposed to be a
revelation from God, though history gives us plain evidence they
were derived from the impulses and the folly of masses of men
during centuries, and their development can be traced during the
course of time. It is not my intention to analyze such theoretical
problems, but an example will be instructive.

To show to what absurdities this new dogma must lead, in the year
1903 the Redemptorist monk, George Freund of Munster, published a
sermon on the Veneration of Mary. In it we read:

Mary, while yet unborn in the womb of her mother, St. Anna, had the
full use of her understanding and reason. We are bound to believe
that she knew more, before she was born, of God and the hereafter,
the meaning of the world and the end of mankind than all the
greatest men of science can ever know by thinking, by study or by
prayer.

Such things are dumbfounding, but they are interesting, too. In
Catholicism the old saying of Tertullian is constantly reiterated
and acted upon, credo quia absurdum est, I believe because it is
impossible.

ROMAN CATIIOLICISM AND SUPERSTITION

All that has been said leads us to consider the relationship of
Catholicism to superstition. Catholicism does not hesitate to use
the crudest forms of superstition for its own benefit. Some
theologians from time to time oppose this exploitation of
ignorance, but in Rome, from the Pope down to the simple priest,
superstition is the characteristic of the Vatican. Of this I shall
quote some examples. One characteristic superstition concerns
Freemasonry. Personal experience has brought it home. The Roman
Catholic press has again and again published statements that I am
a Freemason in spite of my assertion that I am not (1). It is not
my purpose to accuse this press of deliberate falsehood, the
interesting point is that the rulers of the Church cannot account
for my activity, and that of other leading Catholics who are in
conflict with Rome, than by imagining that this opposition on our
part is inspired, supported and paid for by a powerful secret Order
of Freemasons. Rome is constantly warring against Freemasonry.
Roman Catholic literature depicts the Order as a hideous
organization which ultimately is derived directly from the Devil,
and that therefore its sole object is to fight against God. The
Papacy and the Jesuits see in Freemasonry the founders of united
Italy, and for that reason they will never cease to make war upon
it. The Jesuits are continually "discovering" ostensible and
abhorrent intrigues on the part of Freemasons in order to gain
reactionary rulers and statesmen to their side. The history of
Freemasonry is today accessible to everyone who wishes to be
informed upon the subject. I, myself, have written an article about
it in Nase Doba [a Czech periodical] because I saw that the
continuous clerical anti-Masonic propaganda was liable to mislead
even the liberal Bohemians.

In close connection with these superstitions about Masonry comes
that concerning Ritual murder. I have investigated the case of
Hilsner; readers may find in the work by Hermann L. Stark, Blood;
In the Faith and Superstition of Mankind, the origin of this myth,
and how it is kept alive (even in spite of the protests of some of
the more liberal Popes) by the clerics of today. In Bohemia the
Catholic papers, with the lead of Bishop Brynych, still supports
belief in it, and the number of followers he finds is evidence of
how deeply it is rooted in the minds of the people (2).

Das Freie Wort of Frankfurt published some years ago the news of
the discovery in the Lateran at Rome of two very curious relics,
namely the Praeputium and the Umbilicus of Jesus. Some Catholic
papers protested against it and tried to discount the report. This
gave rise to a controversy in which it came out that these relics
were venerated in other Italian cities, and in places outside of
Italy, even at the present time.

Of course there are other relics that draw attention. In the
Lateran are venerated the Ark of the Covenant, the Seven Branched
Candlesticks of the Temple of Jerusalem, the Rods of Aaron and
Moses, the Tables of stone engraved with the Ten Commandments,
parts of the Manger which served Jesus as a cradle, fragments of
the five loaves and two small fishes with which he fed the
multitude, the towel with which he wiped the feet of his disciples,
his garments without seam, his scarlet robe, two small phials
containing the blood and water that came out of his side when
pierced by the centurion's spear. Some of the blood of John the
Baptist and his leather girdle, and so forth. In other places is
shown the milk from the breasts of the virgin Mary. In the Papal
chapel are shown the sandals of Jesus, two bones of John the
Baptist, the bread of the Last Supper, a piece of the stone upon
which Jesus sat when he was baptized, and more of the same kind.

To sum up we find in these instances sufficient evidence that the
Catholic Church favors and fosters superstition, that it retains
customs and beliefs that will not bear critical examination. In all
these cases it is obvious that we have nothing but pure
superstition. But in spite of it, theologians, and not only
theologians but the highest ecclesiastical authorities, and the
Pope himself, uphold such superstition and propagate it. This
system can never be harmonized with science and scientific
philosophy. Here we have two worlds standing one over against the
other, not only different in respect to intelligence but also in
morals.

OBJECTIONS TO CATHOLICISM

My main objections against Catholicism indeed are not intellectual.
My doubts sprang from ethical considerations. From a consideration
of the inefficiency of the system from a philosophical standpoint,
I began to realize the Catholic distinction between piety and
morality. I saw that those called atheists were better men,
sometimes much better men, than the Catholic theists. I saw, as I
can see now, that the Catholic Church uses as her advocates and
apologists morally inferior and degraded men. Wherever there is a
politician or a lawyer, or a savant, who has been ostracized from
his profession, the clerics made use of him. Such cases stare us in
the face here in Bohemia. Any observant person can convince himself
that the official Church of today not only refuses to lead but
actively resists all progress in social matters. The community is
not being guided by ecclesiastics but by laymen. It is laymen who
are organizing the campaign against alcoholism and prostitution;
laymen are the leaders in political affairs and social service,
while the official Church supports all the old abuses and is on the
side of everything reactionary. The Church bows before the powers
of the world, and Catholicism becomes more and more merely nominal-
Christianity.

The average man today sets morality higher than orthodoxy, and the
chief thing is that he does not separate morality from piety. A
thing is not sacred to him if it be immoral. I shall not here
venture a complete analysis of the situation, I will only touch on
one concrete aspect of this, the question of sexual morality.
Catholicism borrowed from Judaism and Paganism those religious
ideas that led to a one-sided, unnatural and maimed asceticism.
Owing to this asceticism the Catholic Church holds an utterly wrong
and crude idea of woman and of marriage. Some exceptions are to be
found both in the Old Testament and among the Fathers of the Church
who defended marriage and a true ideal of womanhood, but in the
history of the Church we find that unnatural and wrong opinions
gained the upper hand, that celibacy was held to be spiritually
higher than married life. This is a dangerous mistake, married
life, too, is pure, and often purer than celibacy, which is
frequently life unmarried but not a pure life. The morality of
celibacy originated in a conception of masculine superiority which
degrades the wife and the mother and the family below the level of
the man--the priest. The celibacy of the priest is claimed as the
very acme of morality--but this conception creates a twofold
ethical standard, an aristocratic or sacredotal morality and a
plebeian one. As early as the letters of St. Paul in the New
Testament we find celibacy advised, but in the beginnings of
Christianity celibacy was not an institution. This developed when
the Papacy needed soldiers for its Ecclesia Militans (Church
Militant) and since then the opinion had predominated in the
Catholic Church that marriage is merely a union of the body and a
safeguard against immorality. This view was definitely laid down by
Alphonse Liguori. Every Catholic, who is able to observe life with
understanding, can see the influence of the ethics of celibacy.

A special field of Catholic morality is the so-called Pastoral-
Medicine. This furnishes evidence of how far apart religious
opinions and motives are from those of humanity and morality. The
Pastoral-Medicine takes especial account of the unborn child in
order to add another soul to the Church in case the mother is in
danger of her life, therefore the baptizing of the unborn child is
approved. Liguori defends this and states that a child can be
validly baptized according to the rites of the Church if the
consecrated water can be brought into contact with the child by
means of any instrument. In doing this the mother's life is
sacrificed to save another soul for the Church; while on the other
hand science endeavors to save the mother. Science seeks to save
the mother for her husband, her other children and for society in
preference to the undeveloped infant, the Pastoral-Medicine prefers
to gain a new soul even if it is an embryo.
In the year 1895 Rome formally approved of craniotomy (i.e., the
breaking of the infant's skull at childbirth). The brutality of
this Pastoral-Medicine is shown in a case that occurred in Belglum
which became a subject of discussion in the Belglan Parliment in
1903. A pregnant mother lay at the point of death. The sister of
Charity handed to the husband a butcher knife with which to cut
open the woman's abdomen in order to baptize the child and save it
for the Church. The Clerical Deputy Delporte, a practicing
physician, declared to the aroused Parliament, "I do it regularly
for I must save a soul wherever it is possible."

The brutality of a defectively founded religion manifests itself in
great numbers of cases, committed, not on unbelieving Mohammedans
or Jews, but on Christian heretics. How heretics were treated we
Czechs know only too well. How the Counter-Reformation under the
leadership of the Jesuits converted Hussites, Bohemian Brothers and
Protestants to Catholicism. We know it through the Inquisition,
through the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and other undeniable
events.

In defense of the Inquisition and the burning of heretics, amongst
them Master John Huss, the Catholics say they were not executed by
the Church, but by the Civil Government. That this is not true is
demonstrated by the Papal states where heretics were burned.
Furthermore, the Church never disapproved of this penalty. The
ecclesiastical fathers knew what would happen to John Huss when he
was condemned by the Council, it is therefore only a quibbling
evasion to make the state responsible for the cruelties of the
Inquisition. Besides Doellinger proved that the Inquisition was
chiefly the work of the Popes, and that the Church, if it again
could make use of the stake, would certainly do so. Some zealots
have openly expressed themselves to this effect. Amongst them the
well-known Bishop Hefele, who in the year 1870 said that the
Hierarchy did not lack the will to again establish the stake. In
1895 one could read in the Latin Roman periodical, Analecta
Ecclesiastia, the sentence, "Blessed are ye scorching stakes."

The well-known journalistic leader of the French Clericals,
Venillot, pronounced the well-known sentence, "We demand of you
liberty in the name of your principles, but we deny you liberty in
the name of our own."

This is the Catholic Clerical morality and politics.


NOTES
(1) Die Drei Ringe states positively that Masaryk never joined the
Masonic Fraternity.
(2) This refers to the continually recurring stories by which Anti-
Semites rouse the mob to violence, of the Ritual-killing sometimes
by crucifixion, of Christian children by the Jews.

