A Study in Chaos
McManus, Theodore F.
550 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, 1926 A STUDY IN...
...atheism...
...The emancipating process it begins to reinstate doctrines and dogmas, mumbling has proceeded apace...
...maidens of religion were banished for a long period Naturally, being a rational creature--even accord- in the grim determination to be literal...
...The churches are free and ing and admitted everything to the enquiring mind of stripped bare to the bone...
...sweet significance...
...When the sects anathematize all authority and physical violence...
...It is also important to remember that out of one or the other must issue the salvation of society...
...He has been told that the if the entire body of adherents were severely consistfree intellect is the only road to salvation...
...It has sins and sufferings and errors of the individual unitsnever occurred to anyone, apparently, that a principle and all of these, in the western world, have their source which automatically dismembers, disrupts, and destroys and origin in one of the only two attitudes toward life may be a dangerous principle...
...The root principle is takes them at their word...
...The sectarian churches are empty because the pious, persecuting Puritan, the frenzied and epithe sectarian creeds are empty-and they emptied leptic fanatic of a score of nearly inane sects down to themselves with loud curses on everything dogmatic, the illiterate and feud-fighting mountaineer, and, very with vociferous paeans to the freedom of the human apex of the process of sectarian sterilization-the cold, intellect...
...and they will continue so to do, no matter how many It echoes throughout the sectarian and so-called nonand how often saline solutions are applied...
...It pronounces him gloriously free, and, with is still, for better or for worse, a protestant...
...In the name 552 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, x926 of the "glorious" principle of academic freedom-they fight before he can attain the knighthood of being a are all dubbed glorious, these mock escapes from an good son, a good husband, a good father, a good citiimaginary and mythical thraldom-it has barred noth- zen, and a good man...
...tion, were consigned to the dust heap-to come creepNow, what are these fifty, or sixty, or seventy ing back in a faint masquerade of their pristine sigmillion Americans-fifty, or sixty, or seventy million nificance as the sects found themselves brankrupt of morons...
...They have pushed the process of unloading the remorseless, destructive process of individual inthe fast-disappearing supply of Protestant dogmatic terpretation...
...These were the things that Joseph Barthelemy...
...but the result of those elec- Herriot...
...Sacred art and sacred architecture, He walks out in such numbers that he constitutes today reverent ritual, lovely liturgy, all hallowed and renmore than one-half the entire population of the United dered authentic and authoritative by the holiest tradiStates...
...550 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, 1926 A STUDY IN CHAOS By THEODORE F. McMANUS (This is the first of two articles by Mr...
...The Right Centre, grouping the Republican who owed its status to that enactment of the Code and Democratic parties, had 162 members, including Napoleon which compels every parent in France to General de Castelnau and Louis Marin...
...These little people among the S56 members not more than 162 could be got together, and alarmed all their friends and rela- assigned to any one group...
...there garbed they are logically pursuing the Protestant premise-the in the robes of harsh and relentless justice...
...ercised that freedom...
...It has sent him out into the world blink- and utter any banality that occurs to them, the uniing and bewildered, cynical and disillusioned, doubtful versities are free and complain bitterly of the barrenand more than doubtful of God, patronizing and en- ness of their human output...
...The Unitarian has merely changed say "full steam ahead" to his intellect, the average man his manners and his wardrobe...
...FOR almost a century, modern civilization has On one or the other every man must predicate his been continuously subjected to the most micro- philosophy of life...
...The cross was ing to the most lugubrious of modern scientists-he ousted first and then everything else of beauty and rebels...
...They were given a word...
...respectable, successful, loveless and unloving infidel of If Protestantism is true to the philosophy of private the moment, they are recognizable wherever we look judgment, Protestant congregations both in the city or read or listen or turn today...
...But worst of all, the Word itself was thinking, more or less logical-minded, consistent human wounded, dismembered, distorted, and crucified under beings...
...Straightway, it begins to beguile him to church...
...It also divide three-quarters of his or her property among the claimed the group of Republican and Social action, children of his or her marriage, feared encroach- which had 46 members, including Bokanowski and ments on their prosperity...
...He of elusiveness, it has gone free...
...It has stripped bare the churches themselves with soppy songs and soppy sermons and soft lights until nothing of slightest consequence remains but the and stained glass and revolving crosses-and running Sunday sermon and the organ recital...
...Who was to succeed...
...and they ex- and of Christ...
...Christianity has cer- must take notice either by assent, or denial, or agnostainly been considered a concomitant of civilization...
...the group of the Socialist taken by the radical, M. Doumergue...
...THE PASSING OF PARTIES IN FRANCE By ROBERT SENCOURT FOR many months now, the politics of France mission to print notes when he had no legal authorizahave been the problem of the franc...
...and by the uncom- ing M. de Castellane and Raoul Peret...
...McManus, the and ologies to which one of the two systems has given second of which will appear in an early issue.-The Editors...
...All that he has to do is more or less than vulgar pride of intellect...
...been assured, in effect, that he is his own judge and If ever there was ritual without reason, or mumjury...
...Here, too, the small proprietors, including i\1...
...It has been assumed, which the western world holds today...
...This is indeed a change from the confidence of sensible Frenchmen who, though not two or three years ago when the only thing that swayed practising Catholics, saw in the Vatican a support to the political situation was the relation of France to France in peril...
...All of the arts and sciences have enlisted of his destiny, and of his God...
...It ceaselessly ding-dongs into his ears the comthe human intellect from all responsibility other than forting assurance that he needs no intermediary beits own cannot possibly be wrong...
...the laboratories are free and manuof all of his defenses and then desperately endeavor- facturing travesties of man made in the image of his ing, without spiritual strength or spiritual weapon save Maker-still the cry ascends to heaven-just a little his own poor self, to fight the heroic fight a man must more freedom and the millennium will be at hand...
...It never tires of assurlowly deep in the simple and silly assumption that all ing him of his own self-sufficiency in solving the eternal other things may be wrong, but that the release of riddle...
...premises to the last notch of progress this side of Man, with all of his faults, is a rational creature...
...And still the parrotand the country must dwindle-and they have dwindled shriek for freedom of the intellect goes on...
...Man is under a compulsion from which of the contributing elements have apparently been ex- there is no escape, to take cognizance in some manner amined, weighed, and measured with the most meticu- or other, in religious or irreligious terms, of himself, lous care...
...Le Cour Grandwho were the chief supporters of capitalism, the class maison...
...And it was made effective by two things the Left-54 members, including M. Loucheur and by the combination of all the parties of the Left into M. Andre Tardieu...
...the group of the Unified Socialist party, that ated the sympathies of the country, first, by giving per- is the French section of the International Labour...
...scopic scrutiny...
...And, straightway, the little sect which has given been repeating, parrot-like, the same superlatively him this glorious assurance, begins to exercise over him stupid formula-free the intellect of man and the a pale, apologetic shadow of authority...
...Indeed, sectarian halls of learning the world over...
...and they accepted a lent inconsistency reared in the name of the Scriptures word...
...self, who are to hold their freedom in abeyance, in It is well to remember in this connection that, broad- order that the cult may flourish, he frequently balks ly speaking, there are only two systems of thought in and withdraws...
...The question was tions, which put the Left back into power, came as a intensely complicated, and to realize the confusion in complete surprise even to those that won them...
...glorious principle of private judgment...
...Nationalists, to the Left, labor, internationalism, anti- The Left included the group of the Republicans of clericalism...
...to tumble all of the doctrinal and dogmatic lumber Whether a sectarian or not, every non-adherent of out of his cerebral attic and he is "all set," here and Rome, unless he be an easterner, a Jew or an atheist, hereafter...
...The fifty, or Conduct and the human character changed with sixty, or seventy million Americans who have rejected these violently changing malinterpretations of God's the churches, are merely exercising that privilege in word...
...All about it...
...it lost him sources of the state...
...Ramsay Macnationalism of the Poincare government had its share donald in relation to Germany, led to the fall of M. in the elections of 1924...
...Leon Daudet and N1...
...means the question of the relation of the French to This immediately organized against him a powerful foreigners and the way the country will supply the re- party which pervaded the whole country...
...In religion, it has released milapologetically that they are not really doctrines and lions altogether from the disagreeable duty of going dogmas at all...
...In deserting the sects, degraded into mawkish sentimentalism...
...here hope was anathematized were almost damnable, and then an attempt was made and there made the key-stone of the arch...
...and Lorraine...
...And, according as he But the particular phase of Christianity which leaves decides, so in due time will that decision be translated half of the population of the greatest nation on the into the civic and social structure which he erects...
...Certainly none heresy became a by-word and a mockery-so fast and among their brethren can consistently complain of so complex was the structure of contradiction and viothis...
...Queer sectarian types multiplied and still multheir own way, as the Mormon exercises it in his...
...subterfuge of seeking refuge in mere nullity or nihilOnly one large contributing element has escaped the ism, nullity and nihilism will in due time be rendered microscope and the lash...
...The sermon through them all is a note of authority and command has descended to the nadir of vulgarity and the very for which he can find no slightest trace of validity depths of latitudinarianism...
...All that he has accomplished is to ward, they contradict themselves and ask him to subemasculate his protestantism of some of its weird out- scribe to a little cult made up of free souls like himcroppings...
...and it profoundly disturbed Alsace Germany...
...party, with 31 members, including M. Briand and M. It will be remembered how soon M. Herriot alien- Painleve...
...the sources of dissemination...
...attitudes, one, for want of a more comprehensive capThe temptation would be to assume at once that an tion, can be called sectarianism or self-determination oversight so monstrous must be due to the dominance as applied to man's estimate of his own origin and of the sectarian population and, more especially, of destiny...
...These were the things that, in spite of It is possible that a reaction against the excessive the good work he had done with Mr...
...He has ent, there would be no Protestant churches at all...
...He has merely pushed his already pronounced superfluous...
...The con- There is no need to enumerate them-from the bloodgregations have left because there was nothing left to letting Covenanter, the cruel and heartless Calvanist, hold them...
...Not only was there no definite party sysincomes, and still more, his admirable intention to cut tem, but the different groups were so broken that down the number of small officials...
...All of the ancient handor justification...
...And this is nothing tween himself and his God...
...In addition, promising attitude of M. Herriot, who insisted on it could claim the Left Centre, or group of Radical and the resignation of M. Millerand, a president whose Radical Socialist parties, with 83 members, including sympathies were with the Right, so that his place was M. Herriot and M. Klotz...
...tiply-queer, unlovely lives sprouted the world over It is not at all necessary to conduct periodical, and left their imprint on the backwoods, the little solemn surveys to determine why the sectarian churches town, the city, the state, the nation, and the world...
...The which French politics have been since 1924, it is necesstronger motive was the intention of Poincare to apply sary only to analyze the result of the May elections of new taxes, meaning an increase of 20 percent on small that year...
...tions...
...Indeed, the same affectionate gesture, endeavors to hold him if he is sectless, he is the most logical and consistent fast to some silly little sectarian program which it has sort of a protestant...
...Or, if he consents to wear the secthe western world-in spite of the innumerable isms tarian phylacteries, he begins to squirm uneasily and October r3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 551 ask what it is all about...
...Straightway, millennium will be at hand...
...The influence of their persuasive numbers was The Extreme Right, comprising Nationalists, exextraordinary, and made itself more felt in the villages treme Conservatives and Royalists, had 25 members, and country districts...
...the professors are free quiring of Christ, lordly and superior of the "super- and fly instinctively to the defense of any phase and stitions" surrounding the Christian theory-stripped form of infidelity...
...They were told that dogmas there faith was reviled...
...They were told they were free...
...and the group of the Republia federation which is called the Cartel des Gauches, cans and Democrats of the Left-83 members, includor more generally, the Cartel...
...and second, by his attitude toward the Church...
...It lies shal- individual back upon himself...
...He has been told that there is no ous appearance several centuries ago...
...Brought tion, so that he got the name of faux monnayeur or from the world of symbols to actual life, that coiner...
...Here the overemphasis was on faith...
...here love was to hold them with dogmas...
...As the saying is-he walks out on the show...
...When, immediately afterstill protestant...
...The urbane and superior Unitarian, with He can sometimes detect a contradiction and an inconhis implied denial of the divinity of Christ, does not sistency when it apparently touches his well-being here, differ in any important degree from the vulgarest and may even affect his comfort in a dubious hereevangelical who asserts that divinity with vocal and after...
...Gross misconceptions multiplied, clerilumber to the point of cutting church-going out of cal scholarship sank lower and lower, the very word their category of conduct altogether...
...This makes the total on the led to the swing from the Right, from Republicans and Right 233...
...ticism, of the riddle of life...
...But the reason lies Sectarianism, by everlastingly emphasizing the docdeeper than national and international dominance and trine of religious self-determination, steadily drives the the control of the schools and the press...
...birth...
...have been emptied of their congregations...
...He has been told that definiteness-which is mery without meaning, it is the varied and various another word for doctrines and dogmas-is not mere- forms of brick, mortar, and millinery in which private ly unnecessary, but an actual hindrance to the develop- judgment has decked itself out since its first clamorment of the spirit...
...Should he adopt the in the frantic search for a solution of the failure...
...By some seeming miracle back to him and to the society in which he lives...
...Millions of men have engaged Life yields back to men in the aggregate the shape, in an earnest and honest endeavor to find the flaws the color, the shadow or the substance of their thoughts in the structure and suggest remedial measures...
...globe to its own spiritual devices, has never once been The groanings of society arise from the aggregate adequately challenged as to its culpability...
...Or fifty, or sixty, or seventy million straight- human appeal...
...the pulpits are stark free the student...
...Of these two presumably, that the fault was with the faithful...
...authority higher than the authority of his own intel- For more than a century, parson and professor have lect...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 23
