The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-11-16
FREE THOUGHT.
Continued from Page ~
THE INDICTMENT.

The Catholic church enslaves your intellect.
Pray how comes that, we ask BY her doctrinal
authority, the free thinker replies Then, we say.
proceed and explain. God endows man with reason
and that reason which he possesses must be always
subservient to the teaching of the Catholic church
Your reason may have pointed out to you a certain
thing as right, but sooner does the Catholic
church lnterpose and tell you authortatively that
you were wrong than you must humbly submit, set
aside your former convictions cast aside the teach
ing of that reason which God gave you, bow the
head and say II believe as thou teachest" Is not
that enslavement of the intellectl
We have stated the case against the Catholic
church as strong as it could be stated, if not as
strong it could be done by others. The reader
cannot blame us for we suppress nothing of what
we know has been urged on this point.
THE ANSWER
Almighty God endows man with reason, and
that reason tells him that the Catholic church,
which claims his obedience and to whose teaching
you charge that his reason is subservient, is not
human institution, but divine organization. In
other words she is the church of God the bride of
Christ which he died to establish. She is the I'M
errlng expounder of Gods revelation to man. When
he submits his reason to her teaching he submits
it to an institution which his reason previously
told him was unerrinD and infalhble. And when
he accepts her teaching rather than his own con
vlctlons, convictions which his reason tells him
often wrong in all mems minds, he accepts it only
on the ground that it is true. de has positive
certainty of it and is no more slave than the man
whose reason tells him that the world is not round.
and whom you would style unreasonable if he did
not bow his head to the teaching of science and
say believe the world to be round as thou teach
est. Does this belief in the worlds rotundity, in
opposition to his former convictions make him less
free, or is his intellect ensaved by giving up what
his reason taught him for what science teaches
him? Decidedly not. On the contrary he is now
truly free, because he has truth and only the truth
makes him free. So, too, with the Catholic. Rea-
son points out to him that according to Gods
lations, the Catholic church must logically be the
church of God, and as representing God in her
teaching. she must be unerring. For God, who is
the source and foundation of truth to appoint and
commission a church to teach and permit that
church to teach error would imply contradiction
against which mans whole reason revolts There
fore when he withdraws his previous convictions
and submits to her teaching, he is only exchangine
his previous fallibe convictions for truth. And as
it is only the truth that make men free, it is
only Catholics who have certainty of an uner
ring guide who are really free.
man in doubt is never free either in thought
action, for he may encroach on another's right
when he has not certainty that he is right him
self One has no right to think and so of
another unless he is sure that what he thinks is
true, for by so thinking he may wrong the other
greatly Without certainty and truth then there is