SECULARISM

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22496, 2 September 1938, Page 7

SECULARISM

TO THE EDITOR OP THE PRESS. Sir, —In reply to my letter Mr Seward deals at great length with statements I never made and the scrupulousness which commands respect is not a conspicuous item in his correspondence. I did not state that the Church introduced torture, but supported it; nor did I state .that the decree of 181ff abolished 'torture, but that it was issued by the Church. I did not state or imply that murder and torture were the common practice of everyone in the Middle Ages. I only accused the Church. A bull of Innocent IV directed the civil power to torture heretics. A decree to abolish was issued in 1816. The seat of the Inquisition in each district was the monastery of the order (Enc Brit Art Inquisition). The same authority states that Frederick 11. supported by Pope Honorius 111, and above all by Pope Gregory IX, established against the heretics the death penalty, confiscation of property, etc., so clearly as to be henceforth incontestable. Hallam, another authority of repute, states “that the noonday of papal dominion extends through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired all the terror of her ancient name; she was the mistress of the world and kings were her vassals.’’ In face of these facts Mr Seward blames the civil authority and questions the unlimited power of the Church. The issue of these decrees alone proves that the Church did not have divine instruction and had no basis of morality. That capital punishment was rarer than to-day is contradicted by all historians without question. Massacres en masse were carried out in Spain instigated by the clergy (Enc Brit). For the St. Bartholomew’s eve (1572) massacre low estimates are that 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered and Gregory XIII had a medal struck to the “Glory of God.” The implicit belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament perverted the moral sense to such an

extent that murders, adulteries, witchcraft, religious wars and persecutions all found their origin and excuse in the texts. As people ceased to believe in the Bible as an infallible record of God’s word they ceased to commit the crimes of these texts. The duties of this life, which we know, should take precedence over those of another which we do not knew and escape from the penalties of sin by

« the death of another is not good iX principle nor in example. Mr Egan gives us a long panegyric on morals. If superstition is superior to Man’s reasoning power then Max must deteriorate because the typo of men who are wholly superstitious have no use for reason at all.—Yours, etc., F. H. CAINSeptember 1, 1938.