A BIGOTED ARCHBISHOP.
ALL the fools are not confined to any one political party
or religious cult. As a rule the Catholic clergy, while
ultra-dogmatic, are thoroughly decent. While standing
up stiffly for all the claims of their creed, they treat
their Protestant neighbors with courteous toleration.
There are exceptions to most rules, hence it does not
infallibly follow that a man is a gentleman because he is a
priest of the Church of Rome. The unworthy are usually
discovered and weeded out, but their dismissal does not
entirely repair the damage done by criminal or foolish
utterance. It is seldom indeed that the Mother-Church
permits a small-bore bigot or brainless blatherskite to rise to
the dignity of an archbishop, but one such has evidently
escaped her watchful eye. Archbishop Cleary, of Kingston,
Can., recently distinguished himself by an ebullition
of unchristian bile that will long be used as an excuse for
the existence of the A.P.A. His utterances were a
disgrace to his office. They were beneath the dignity of the
humblest neophite of the Church of Rome. They remind
one of the old Puritanical tongue-borers and witch-burners. They suggest the Star Chamber of England
and the Inquisition of Spain. The brutality staggers the
brain and chills the blood. They compel those who have
ever felt kindly towards Catholicism to pause and
consider. Although the voice of the Vatican is strangely at
variance with the astounding mandate of the Archbishop,
the latter has been pounced upon and exploited by the
"Apes" as an official utterance of the Pope. It appears
that a Catholic young lady officiated as bridesmaid for a
friend who was married in a Protestant church and
according to the rites of that religion. Therefore his
reverence proceeded to have a cataleptoid convulsion and cut
fantastic capers before high heaven. It was entirely within
his sacerdotal province to administer a reprimand. He
could, without transcending the proprieties have advised
the Catholics of his diocese to refrain from officiating at
Protestant marriages in future. He did neither the one
nor the other, but proceeded to issue a mandate which,
reduced to the last analysis, means simply that a marriage
not consummated by the Catholic church is no marriage
at all, but simply concubinage born of lust and wickedly
sanctioned by human law. He forbade Catholics, under
pain of his dire displeasure, even witnessing Protestant
marriages or attending as mere spectators at Protestant
funerals. Archbishop Cleary has flagrantly insulted
every non-Catholic wife in the world. He cast the baleful
bar-sinister on the escutcheon of every child born of non-Catholic parents. With all due respect to his holy office,
Archbishop Cleary is one ass. He is a brute who should
be taken out and bastinadoed. Of course due allowance
must be made for the fact that he is a Canuck. Canada
is but half-civilized. It is still "loil" to old England,
the strumpet of nations, the governmental harlot of
history. It continues to take its manners and customs from
the old country. It is to the Queen's apron strings
like an idiot's scalp to the belt of an Apache squaw.
Whenever John Bull whistles it comes a running like a
half-grown spaniel at the call of a stable-boy. It has
never mustered up sufficient sense and sand to set up for
itself. It is the red bandana upon which Britannia blows
her protrusive bugle. It is the cuspidore into which she
voids her royal rheum. We could not expect much even
from a Catholic archbishop in such a country. In fact,
the Canadian Catholics, like the Canadian Protestants, are
so narrow between the eyes that they can look through a
key-hole with both eyes at once. Their heads are small
and ill-furnished. The winters are so long that the sap
cannot rise to the top—it stops at the belly-band and
there coagulates. Canadians of any faith are scarce so
broad in the religious beam as Texas Baptists, who
believe that unless a man be treated to a sanctified plunge-bath by some acephalous shouter he is headed direct for
hell. Still it is something of a shock to hear even a
Canadian archbishop branding four-fifths of the people of
this world as bastards. It makes one ashamed of the
genus homo to hear him forbidding Catholics attending the
funerals of their Protestant friends. One cannot help
asking, What of marriage and motherhood during the
long ages before St. Peter became Pope? Was Eve a
concubine and Sara a slut? Has Archbishop Cleary an
hundred generations of harlotry behind him? I am seeking
no controversy with Catholicism. With its peculiar
ideas of marriage and divorce I have nothing at present
to do. I am simply tying a few bow-knots in the ears
of an ass. I deny, however, that it is within the power
of any church to add to the sanctity of a marriage
ceremony. Marriage is nothing more or less than formal
notification to the world that a man and woman have
already become husband and wife. It matters not how this
announcement is made, so long as due respect is shown the
established customs of the country, so long as it is
generally accepted as sufficient. "What God hath put
together, let no man put asunder," cried the Archbishop as
he contemplates the possible annulment of a non-Catholic
marriage contract. What God hath put together no man
can put asunder. Even the almighty hand of death cannot
break that sacred bond. But how does God join
people together?—how does he make a man and woman
husband and wife? Is it by the mumbled formula of
priests or magistrates? If so, then is a
mariage de conveniance
as sacred as the mating of Cupid and Psyche.
Then is the union of a snub-nosed American parvenu with
an idiotic European "nobleman" whom she has bought
with her daddy's dollars as holy in the sight of heaven as
that of old Isaac's son with Laban's beauteous daughter.
God joins man and woman together only with the golden
links of love. When they are joined thus they are bone
of one bone and flesh of one flesh. Were they alone in
the world no marriage ceremony would be needful; but
being a portion of society they must obtain its sanction.
When they are joined together by church or state and
love is lacking the union is not of heaven, but of hell.
The woman is no true wife, but a kept mistress, and every
child born unto her is a bastard. She has sold herself,
and the priest or preacher who knowingly sets the seal of
his approval upon her sin becomes an accomplice in a
subterbrutish crime. But neither church nor state can read
a woman's heart—all it can do is to announce to the
world, "This woman elects to be that man's wife."
There's naught more sacrosanct in the act of church or
state in so far as the marriage ceremony is concerned than
in the newspaper notice of its consummation. A few years
ago a young and cultured woman, a woman beautiful as
the dawn and with a suggestion of the Madonna in her fair
young face, was persuaded by an ambitious mother to
marry an old Silenus whom the political ocean in its
madness had scooped out of the ooze and thrown among the
stars. Three children have been born to her, and if
current report may be credited, all are semi-idiots. Her
gross husband is so repulsive to her that her babies are
conceived as in some devil's dream and brought forth in
despair. Thank heaven this ill-mated couple are not
Catholics. But had they been: does Archbishop Cleary mean
to tell me that all the power of the Church of Rome could
have rendered their union holy? It is quite likely that
Archbishop Cleary will not have to wait very long for a
letter from Rome. When it comes I opine that it will
contain a friendly tip from the Pope not to talk too much.
His Holiness is a man of great good sense, and it will
naturally occur to him that while reasonable church discipline
is desirable it may be enforced without flagrantly
insulting the millions of very worthy people who decline
to accept his dogma.
