true after all, as we used to think, that the Catholic priest actually
gives leave to his penitents to commit sin; but the extraordinary ease
with which absolution is given comes very nearly to the same thing. So
far from this Church having elevated the human race, she has actually
lowered its standards by her attitude towards those of her children who
disobey God's Laws.

"And consider what some of these children of hers have been! Are there
any criminals in history so monumental as Catholic criminals? Have any
men ever fallen so low as, let us say, the Borgia family of the Middle
Ages, as Gilles de Rais and a score of others, as men and women who were
perhaps in their faith 'good Catholics' enough, yet in their lives a
mere disgrace to humanity? Look at the Latin countries with their
passionate records of crime, at the sexual immorality of France or
Spain; the turbulence and thriftlessness of Ireland, the ignorant
brutality of Catholic England. Are there any other denominations of
Christendom that exhibit such deplorable specimens as the runaway nuns,
the apostate priests, the vicious Popes of Catholicism? How is it that
tales are told of the iniquities of Catholicism such as are told of no
other of the sects of Christendom? Allow for all the exaggeration you
like, all the prejudice of historians, all the spitefulness of enemies,
yet there surely remains sufficient Catholic criminality to show that at
the best the Church is no better than any other religious body, and at
the worst, infinitely worse. The Catholic Church, then, is not holy
enough to be the Church of Jesus Christ."

II. When we turn to the Gospels we find that these two charges are, as a
matter of fact, precisely among those which were brought against our
Divine Lord.