blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,
rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery,
avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness, and
similar vices, and he illustrates his statement with the
fact that in the territory of Ghent, within the space of ten
months, there occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders
committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses,
taverns, and other similar places. When, in 1396, Jean sans
Peur led his Crusaders to destruction at Micopolis, their
crimes and cynical debauchery scandalized even the Turks,
and led to the stern rebuke of Bajazet himself, who as the
monk of St. Denis admits was much better than his Christian
foes. The same writer, moralizing over the disaster at
Agincourt, attributes it to the general corruption of the
nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an alternation of
disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought but fraud
and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her tithes,
and ordinary conversation was a succession of blasphemies.
The Church, set up by God as a model and protector of the
people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops,
through the basest and most criminal of motives, were
habitual accepters of persons; they annointed themselves
with the last essence extracted from their flocks, and there
was in them nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of
decent.

#God in the Schools#

But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a
modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until