"No," he said, in a scarcely audible voice.
A cynical look came into Lafelle"s eyes. But he replied affably: "When preachers fall out, the devil falls in. Your reply, Mr. Waite, comes quite consistently from one who has impudently tossed aside authority."
"My authority, Monsignor," returned the ex-priest in a low tone, "is Jesus Christ, who said: "Love thy neighbor as thyself.""
"Ah!" murmured Lafelle; "then it was love that prompted you to abandon your little flock?"
"I left my pulpit, Monsignor, because I had nothing to give my people.
I no longer believe the dogmas of the Church. And I refused longer to take the poor people"s money to support an inst.i.tution so politically religious as I believe your Church to be. I could no longer take their money to purchase the release of their loved ones from an imagined purgatory--a place for which there is not the slightest Scriptural warrant--"
"You mistake, sir!" interrupted Lafelle in an angry tone.
"Very well, Monsignor," replied Father Waite; "grant, then, that there is such Scriptural warrant; I would nevertheless know that the existence of purgatory was wholly incompatible with the reign of an infinite G.o.d of love. And, knowing that, I have ceased to extort gifts of money from the ignorance of the living and the ghastly terrors of the dying--"
"And so deceive yourself that you are doing a righteous act in removing their greatest consolation," the churchman again interrupted, a sneer curving his lip.
"Consolation! The consolation which the stupifying drug affords, yes!
Ah, Monsignor, as I looked down into the faces of my poor people, week after week, I knew that no sacerdotal intervention was needed to remit their sins, for their sins were but their unsolved problems of life.
Oh, the poor, grief-stricken mothers who bent their tear-stained eyes upon me as I preached the "authority" of the Fathers! Well I knew that, when I told them from my pulpit that their deceased infants, if baptized, went straight to heaven, they blindly, madly accepted my words! And when I went further and told them that their dead babes had joined the ranks of the blessed, and could thenceforth be prayed to, could I wonder that they rejoiced and eagerly grasped the false message of cheer? They believed because they wanted it to be so. And yet those utterances of mine, based upon the accepted doctrine of Holy Church, were but narcotics, lulling those poor, afflicted minds into a false sense of rest and security, and checking all further human progress."
Lafelle shrugged his shoulders. "It is to be regretted," he said coldly, "that such narrowness of view should be permitted to impede the salvation of souls."
"Salvation--of--souls!" exclaimed Father Waite. "Ah, how many souls have I not saved!--and yet I know not whether they or I be really saved! Saved? From what? From death? Certainly not! From misery, disease, suffering in this life? No, alas, no! Saved, then, from what?
Ah, my friend, saved only from the torments of a h.e.l.l and a purgatory constructed in the fertile minds of busy theologians!"
Lafelle turned to Carmen. "Some other day, perhaps--when it may be more convenient for us both--and you are alone--"
Carmen laughed. "Don"t quit the field, Monsignor--unless you surrender abjectly. You started this controversy, remember. And you were quite indiscreet, if you will recall."
Monsignor bowed, smiling. "You write my faults in bra.s.s," he gently lamented. "When you publish my virtues, if you find that I am possessed of any, I fear you will write them in water."
Carmen laughed again. "Your virtues should advertise themselves, Monsignor."
"Ah, then do you not see in me the virtue of desiring your welfare above all else, my child?"
"And the welfare of this great country, which you have come here to a.s.sist in making dominantly Catholic, is it not so, Monsignor?"
Lafelle started slightly. Then he smiled genially back at the girl.
"It is an ambition which I am not ashamed to own," he returned gently.
"But, Monsignor," Carmen continued earnestly, "are you not aware of the inevitable failure of your mission? Do you not know that mediaeval theology comports not with modern progress?"
"True, my child," replied the churchman. "And more, that our so-called modern progress--modernism, free-thinking, liberty of conscience, and the consequent terrible extravagance of beliefs and false creeds--const.i.tutes the greatest menace now confronting this fair land. Its end is inevitable anarchy and chaos. Perhaps you can see that."
"Monsignor," said Carmen, "in the Middle Ages the Church was supreme.
Emperors and kings bowed in submission before her. The world was dominantly Catholic. Would you be willing, for the sake of Church supremacy to-day, to return to the state of society and civilization then obtaining?"
"That would not follow."
"No? I point you to Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines, South America, all Catholic now or formerly, and I ask if you attribute not their oppression, their ignorance, their low morals and stunted manhood, to the dominance of churchly doctrines, which oppose freedom of conscience and press and speech, and make learning the privilege of the clergy and the rich?"
"It is an old argument, child," deprecated Lafelle. "May I not point to France, on the contrary?"
"She has all but driven the Church from her borders."
"But is still Catholic!" he retorted. "And England, though Anglican, calls herself Catholic. She will return to the true fold. Germany is forsaking Luther, as she sees the old light shining still undimmed."
Carmen looked at Father Waite. The latter read in her glance an invitation further to voice his own convictions.
"Monsignor doubtless misreads the signs of the times," he said slowly.
"The hour has struck for the ancient and materialistic theories enunciated with such a.s.sumption of authority by ignorant, often blindly bigoted theologians, to be laid aside. The religion of our fathers, which is our present-day evangelical theology, was derived from the traditions of the early churchmen. They put their seal upon it; and we blindly accept it as authority, despite the glaring, irrefutable fact that it is utterly undemonstrable. Why do the people continue to be deceived by it? Alas! only because of its mesmeric promise of immortality beyond the grave."
Monsignor bowed stiffly in the direction of Father Waite. "Fortunately, your willingness to plunge the Christian world into chaos will fail of concrete results," he said coldly.
"I but voice the sentiments of millions, Monsignor. For them, too, the time has come to put by forever the paraphernalia of images, candles, and all the trinkets used in the pagan ceremonial which has so quenched our spirituality, and to seek the undivided garment of the Christ."
"Indeed!" murmured Lafelle.
"The world to-day, Monsignor, stands at the door of a new era, an era which promises a grander concept of G.o.d and religion, the tie which binds all to Him, than has ever before been known. We are thinking. We are pondering. We are delving, studying, reflecting. And we are at last beginning to work with true scientific precision and system. As in chemistry, mathematics, and the physical sciences, so in matters religious, we are beginning to _prove_ our working hypotheses. And so a new spiritual enlightenment is come. People are awaking to a dim perception of the meaning of spiritual life, as exemplified in Jesus Christ. And they are vaguely beginning to see that it is possible to every one. The abandonment of superst.i.tion, religious and other, has resulted in such a sudden expansion of the human mind that the most marvelous material progress the world has ever witnessed has come swiftly upon us, and we live more intensely in a single hour to-day than our fathers lived in weeks before us. Oh, yes, we are already growing tired of materiality. The world is not yet satisfied. We are not happy. But, Monsignor, let not the Church boast itself that the acceptance of her mediaeval dogmas will meet the world"s great need.
That need will be met, I think, only as we more and more clearly perceive the tremendous import of the mission of Jesus, and learn how to grasp and apply the marvelous Christ-principle which he used and told us we should likewise employ to work out our salvation."
During Father Waite"s earnest talk Lafelle sat with his eyes fixed upon Carmen. When the ex-priest concluded, the churchman ignored him and vouchsafed no reply.
"Well, Monsignor?" said the girl, after waiting some moments in expectation.
Lafelle smiled paternally. Then, nodding his shapely head, he said in a pleading tone:
"Have I no champion here? Would you, too, suddenly abolish the Church, Catholic and Protestant alike? Why, my dear child, with your ideals--which no one appreciates more highly than I--do you continue to persecute me so cruelly? Can not you, too, sense the unsoundness of the views just now so eloquently voiced?"
"That is cant, Monsignor! You speak wholly without authority or proof, as is your wont."
The man winced slightly. "Well," he said, "there are several hundred million Catholics and Protestants in the world to-day. Would you presume to say that they are all mistaken, and that you are right?
Something of an a.s.sumption, is it not? Indeed, I think you set the Church an example in that respect."
"Monsignor, there were once several hundred millions who believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun revolved about it. Were they mistaken?"
"Yes. But the--"
"And, Monsignor, there are billions to-day who believe that matter is a solid, substantial reality, and that it possesses life and sensation. There are billions who believe that the physical eyes see, and the ears hear, and the hands feel. Yet these beliefs are all capable of scientific refutation. Did you know that?"
"I am not unacquainted with philosophical speculation," he returned suggestively.
"This is not mere speculation, Monsignor," put in Father Waite. "The beliefs of the human mind are its fetish. Such beliefs become in time national customs, and men defend them with frenzy, utterly wrong and undemonstrable though they be. Then they remain as the incubus of true progress. By them understanding becomes degraded, and the human mind narrows and shrinks. And the mind that clings to them will then mercilessly hunt out the dissenting minds of its heretical neighbors and stone them to death for disagreeing. So now, you would stone me for obeying Christ"s command to take up my bed on the Sabbath day."
Lafelle heaved a great sigh. "Still you blazon my faults," he said in a tone of mock sadness, and addressing Carmen. "But, like the Church which you persecute, I shall endure. We have been martyred throughout the ages. And we are very patient. Our wayward children forsake us,"
nodding toward Father Waite, "and yet we welcome their return when they have tired of the husks. The press teems with slander against us; we are reviled from east to west. But our reply is that such slander and untruth can best be met by our leading individual lives of such an exemplary nature as to cause all men to be attracted by our holy light."
"I agree with you, Monsignor," quickly replied Carmen. "Scurrilous attacks upon the Church but make it a martyr. Vilification returns upon the one who hurls the abuse. One can not fling mud without soiling one"s hands. I oppose not men, but human systems of thought.