Even the religious and ceremonial features of the church are not free
from commercialism. The Romain Catholic church represents the extreme
example of the money-making aspect of religion. Its audacity in
pretending to deserve consideration as an organization devoted purely
to worship, and in no sense to profit, is beyond the power of words to
characterize as it deserves. The dupe of papistry pays, in good, hard,
current coin, for all that he gets, and for a great deal more than the
actual value that he receives. For the pious and credulous Catholic,
life is one long litany of "pay, pay, pay," wherever the priest and the
church are concerned. The shouting Methodist may be satisfied to yell
that "salvation is free," and to take a chance on the collection as a
means of defraying the high cost of delivery on the "free" article; but
the Roman Catholic priest knows a better trick. It is strictly a cash
business with him. The Catholic believer must pay his little ten
cents every Sunday for the "privilege" of sitting on a hard bench, and
listening to a ceremony very little of which is intelligible to him. In
order to catch him in all the relations of life, and to entangle him in
a network from which there is not even a momentary escape, the astute
hierarchy has devised a series of no less than seven sacraments. So
cleverly is the scheme arranged for the trapping of credulous flies
that a consistent Catholic can take scarcely an important step in life
without incidentally paying tribute in some form to the church, the most
monumental beggar history has known. Every real or pretended service of
the church has its price, and no evasion is tolerated. The confessional
and the system of penance are finely constructed to wheedle or frighten
more money out of the ignorant and susceptible. The greedy priest
hovers about the sickbed, ready to take any possible advantage of human
weakness. The patient or his relatives may be reduced to a sufficient
state of imbecility to seek the aid of the church's pretended miracle
system or of some of its holy relics. If recovery seems hopeless, there
is always the pleasing possibility of coaxing or bulldozing the half
dead and mentally decayed victim to make a will in favor of the church,
no matter what cruel and unjust deprivations are thereby imposed on
helpless dependents. What would be baseness in any other human being,
becomes transmuted into the most exalted virtue on the part of the
priest; and any graft is permissible and commendable, from the Romish
viewpoint, if the church is the beneficiary. An immense traffic is
carried on in all sorts of "consecrated" objects for the greatest
variety of purposes. Even at death, the church does not relax its hold,
but has concocted the preposterous fable of purgatory, in order to
keep its foolish dupes continually paying out money for which nothing
whatever is given in return. Then there are all sorts of indulgences and
dispensations for those able and willing to pay for them, besides the
practical coercion by which, under the guise of voluntary beneficence,
the slave of superstition is continually mulcted for various alleged
needs of the church.