house rented, successful journey, business sold, quarrel
averted, return of friends, two successful operations.

And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient fervor
which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As Christopher
Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a wonderful thing. By
means of gold we can even get souls into Paradise."

#The Holy Roman Empire#

The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its squalor;
but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous than the
Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But the very essence
of the Catholic Church is that it does not change; #semper eadem# is
its motto: the same yesterday, today and forever--the same in
Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in a modern democracy as in
the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is not primarily a religious
organization; it is a political organization, and proclaims the fact,
and defies those who would shut it up in the religious field. The Rev.
S.B. Smith, a Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements
of Ecclesiastical Law":

Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church
consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the
right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that
she is not a perfect society or sovereign state. This theory
is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested #Jure
divino# with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and
apply them #(potestas judicialis)#; (3) to punish those who