Religious Wars.

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

An important item in the indictment which a candid sociologist would bring against the Roman branch of Christianity is its terrible record of instigating wars in its own interest. Setting aside the promptness of the clergy of every country to support the national authorities without any regard to justice (the Buddhist priests in Japan, the Italian priests in the rape of Abyssinia, the attack on France, etc.), the Papacy has in the course of eleven centuries initiated wars in its own interest, and to the grave injury of the peoples involved, which have helped to retard the progress of civilization and cost tens of millions of lives. The wars it set afoot for the recovery or protection of its temporal possessions from the eighth century, when such wars had millions of victims, to the nineteenth have drained Italy, France, and Germany of blood century after century. The Crusades, summoned by the Popes in whatever spirit they were conducted, led to appalling losses and ended in futility. Scores of times they flung nation against nation because some monarch refused to submit to them and was declared deposed; and they blessed aggressive wars - of the Normans in England, the English in Ireland, etc. - because kings offered to do them feudal service. The Thirty Years War, which according to all historians put back for a century the civilization of half Europe, lost an unknown number - certainly millions - of lives and led to epidemics of vice, was incited by the Papacy and the Jesuits as - their agents. The most amazing feature is that in our own day the Pope can pose as a serene advocate of peace while he incites to war in the interest of his Church as explicitly as Gregory VII or Innocent III did. From the date of his accession (and for some years earlier as Secretary of State) the present Pope repeatedly demanded "the extinction of Bolshevism in Spain, Mexico, and Russia"; that is to say, revolt (aided by Italy and Germany in a savage war) in Spain, the annexation of Mexico by the United States, and war upon Russia by Germany. The entire Catholic Press of the world supported his demand, and it was frequently reproduced (sympathetically) in the Times and other organs. He remained also in close alliance with Japan during its series of vile aggressions, and he attempted to paralyse America's assistance to Britain, when Germany treacherously attacked Russia, by inciting the great body of American Catholics to cause trouble and facilitate that destruction of Russia for which he hoped. Throughout 1946 the Church has made frantic efforts to drive America into war with Russia.

 

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