Christ as Anti-Christ
Nature of Prejudice
Definition
Culpability
Reinforcement
Independent of Fact or Reason
An Act of Malevolent Will
The Prejudiced Man Observed
His First Principle
Refuses to be Enlightened
Unchanged by Refutations
His Reaction to Conversions
General
Personal Experience
Makes the Most of Supporting Facts
His Travels Abroad
Protestant Scripture Reader Observes Benediction
Description of Actual Rite
Reader’s Account
Seriousness of Prejudice
Oates and Bedloe1
In attributing the extreme aversion and contempt in which we Catholics are held by this great Protestant country, to the influence of falsehood and misrepresentation, energetic in its operation and unbounded in its extent, I believe in my heart I have referred it to a cause, which will be acknowledged to be both real and necessary by the majority of thoughtful and honest minds, Catholics or not, who set themselves to examine the state of the case. Take an educated man, who has seen the world, and interested himself in the religious bodies, disputes, and events of the day, let him be ever so ill-disposed towards the Catholic Church, yet I think, if he will but throw his mind upon the subject, and then candidly speak out, he will confess that the arguments which lead him to his present state of feeling about her, whatever they are, would not be sufficient for the multitude of men. The multitude, if it is to be arrested and moved, requires altogether a different polemic from that which is at the command of the man of letters, of thought, of feeling, and of honour. His proofs against Catholicism, though he considers them sufficient himself, and considers that they ought to be sufficient for the multitude, have a sobriety, a delicacy, an exactness, a nice adjustment of parts, a width and breadth, a philosophical cumulativeness, an indirectness and circuitousness, which will be lost on the generality of men. The problem is, how to make an impression on those who have never learned to exercise their minds, to compare thought with thought, to analyse an argument, or to balance probabilities. Catholicism appeals to the imagination, as a great fact, wherever she comes; she strikes it; Protestants must find some idea equally vivid as the Church, something fascinating, something capable of possessing, engrossing, and overwhelming, if they are to battle with her hopefully; their cause is lost, unless they can do this. It was then a thought of genius, and, as I think, preternatural genius, to pitch upon the expedient which has been used against the Church from Christ’s age to our own; to call her, as in the first century, Beelzebub, so in the sixteenth, Anti-Christ; it was a bold, politic, and successful move. It startled men who heard; and whereas Anti-Christ, by the very notion of his character, will counterfeit Christ, he will therefore be, so far, necessarily like Him; and if Anti-Christ is like Christ, then Christ, I suppose, must be like Anti-Christ; thus there was, even at first starting, a felicitous plausibility about the very charge, which went far towards securing belief, while it commanded attention.
This, however, though much, was not enough; the charge that Christ is Anti-Christ must not only be made, but must be sustained; and sustained it could not possibly be, in the vastness and enormity of its idea, as I have described it, by means of truth. Falsehood then has ever been the indispensable condition of the impeachment which Protestants have made; and the impeachment they make is the indispensable weapon wherewith to encounter the antagonist whom they combat. Thus you see that calumny and obloquy of every kind is, from the nature of the case, the portion of the Church, while she has enemies, that is, in other words, while she is militant,—her portion, that is, if she is to be argued with at all; and argued with she must be, because man, from his very moral constitution, cannot content himself, in his warfare of whatever kind, with the mere use of brute force. The lion rends his prey, and gives no reason for doing so; but man cannot persecute without assigning to himself a reason for his act: he must settle it with his conscience; he must have sufficient reasons, and if good reasons are not forthcoming, there is no help for it; he must put up with bad. How to conflict with the moral influence of the Church, being taken as the problem to be solved, nothing is left for him but to misstate and defame; there is no alternative. Tame facts, elaborate inductions, subtle presumptions, will not avail with the many; something which will cut a dash, something gaudy and staring, something inflammatory, is the rhetoric in request; he must make up his mind then to resign the populace to the action of the Catholic Church, or he must slander her to her greater confusion. This, I maintain, is the case; this I consider, must be the case;—bad logic, false facts; and I really do think that candid men, of whatever persuasion, though they will not express themselves exactly in the words I have used, will agree with me in substance; will allow, that, putting aside the question whether Protestantism can be supported by any other method than controversy, for instance, by simple establishment, or by depriving Catholics of education, or by any other violent expedient, still, if popular controversy is to be used, then fable, not truth, calumny, not justice, will be its staple. Strip it of its fallacies and its fiction, and where are you? It is no accident then that we are the victims of slander.