As a specimen of condensed and concentrated episcopal malice, the following ANATHEMA recently sent by the Pope to various Bishops with orders to be read to their parishioners, and hurled by the Archbishop of Santander (Spain) against spiritualists in general, and certain editors in his diocese especially—is truly edifying and Christian. The “accursed ones” are men whose only crime is to have dared to proclaim their preference for civil and religious liberty, over priestly domain. Matching well those famous excerpts from the bulls against liberals issued by the late Pope Pius IX, and collated by Mr. Gladstone a few years ago, this latest inspiration claimed to be received through the Holy Ghost, merits a prominent place among them. We translate it verbatim from the original, as found in the St. Petersburg Rebus, and dedicate our translation to our good friends of the Society of Jesus—that meek and all-forgiving ideal of every divine and human virtue.
BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION
“May Almighty God and his holy saints curse the spiritualists and their journals with the perpetual malediction launched against the Devil and his angels! May they be accursed like Judas the traitor, and Julian the apostate; and may they perish like Nero. May the Lord judge them as he judged Dathan and Abiram and commanded the earth to swallow them alive. May they be crushed and swept away from the face of the earth and all memory of them disappear for ever and ever; and may they be seized with terrible death and hurled alive, they and their progeny, into hell for damnation everlasting, so as not to leave a seed of themselves upon the surface of the globe. May the few days that are yet in store for them be full of gall and bring on incessant disasters and unhappiness to THE ACCURSED ONES. Let them suffer hunger, thirst and nakedness, and be visited by every unclean disease and pain, through wretched poverty and misery. Accursed be every bit of their property and every blessing and prayer instead of benefiting be changed for them into a curse. Let them be cursed everywhere and at every hour; cursed day and night, sleeping and waking, in eating, in drinking and during fast; cursed when they speak and when they keep silent; cursed at home and abroad; cursed on land and on water; cursed from the top of their heads down to the soles of their feet! May their eyes be blinded, their ears deaf, their tongues dumb and rooted to their palates! Cursed be every member of their family and every limb of their body! Let them be cursed from today and forever! Let light be changed for them into darkness before the face of the Creator, on the great day of the last Judgment! May their sepulchre be that of dogs and asses! May famished wolves prey upon their corpses and may their eternal company be that of Satan and his angels!”
Who, after reading the above, would dare to deny that the coming of Christ was a gigantic failure, and the claims of his Church and followers as gigantic a sham? A wretched chance the poor Theosophists would have if they should be cast upon some island where this theocratic Boanerges enjoyed absolute power!