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Clericalism blocks the ministry of the church, because it tends to make lay members second-class citizens who feel incompetent on matters of religion. When the ordained member makes religious interpretation and action his professional monopoly, the lay member responds by exhibiting increasing ignorance and incompetence.
Nor did he need Paul Bert to tell him, after the terrible struggle of 1877, that Clericalism was the enemy. Still less, if that were possible, did he require Paul Bert or any other man to tell him that France imperatively needed education free from priestcraft. Madame Adam is so anxious to deal Paul Bert a stab in the dark that she confuses the most obvious facts.
To all my arguments my uncle's reply used to be: "We are raising up a religion against a religion; Free Thought will kill clericalism. Freemasonry is the stronghold, of those who are demolishing all deities." "Very well, my dear uncle," I would reply in my heart I felt inclined to say, "You old idiot! it is just that which I am blaming you for.
Let no one imagine that he can try to be someone else, or even that, without trying to be anyone in particular, he can surrender himself to a conventional ideal of clericalism without discovery and loss of the esteem and reverence of men and women of sense. The pew is very quick to see through disguises, be they worn never so skilfully. No voice rings true in a man's throat excepting his own.
These things are of clericalism, and it was clericalism to which Huxley ever found himself in opposition, for it "raises obstacles to scientific ways of thinking, which are even more important than scientific discoveries." But all associations for promoting that sympathy which is at the foundation of human society need not be infected with clericalism.
He needed to exalt the clergy. He wanted to be told what to believe and to do; and his "doctrine" of the ministry, namely, clericalism, justified him in his need. People who want to be told what to believe and to do inevitably will develop or drift toward a doctrine that is authenticated by their need. Ministers also contribute to the prevalence of clericalism.
The scientific theologian admits the Agnostic principle, however widely his results may differ from those reached by the majority of Agnostics. But, as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across the Channel call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace nor truce.
Not in vain had Voltaire for years cried, 'Écrasez l'infâme, and Rousseau preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he had had in the religious schools were made impossible. There was for many minds no alternative between clericalism and atheism.
Clericalism, Tammanyism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism and all in the guise of interest in the people get their holds and their profits in this way. It is essential that we be locally wise and history wise. Any class or section or organization that is less than the nation itself must be watched and be made to keep its own place, or it becomes a menace to the free and larger life of the nation.
Browning, as we have said, had prejudices, and had a capacity for anger, and two of his angriest prejudices were against a certain kind of worldly clericalism, and against almost every kind of spiritualism.
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