All that was necessary was that overwhelmingly they declared, yea, lead by the Prime Minister himself, they declared, this is a free country and a democracy.  We go by the facts, we establish the facts openly, people say what they bloody well choose to say, power is accountable, its exercise is transparent.  People are not assaulted in response to words.
 
But of course UCH is not England, it is a foreign country that has seceded from the UK and is run by hostile fascist foreign powers in conjunction with the dregs of the criminal classes from the North London gutters.
 
Don’t suppose it even occurred to any of them.     Obvious the absence of democracy, obvious what was happening to my body - and obvious I was having no effect.  That’s great, we’re going to succeed in crippling her, which is all any of them ever wanted, the destruction of the free world and the destruction of me. 
 
Do not all good Catholics know evil is frozen cold:
 
Cocytus is referred to as a frozen lake rather than a river, although it originates from the same source as the other infernal rivers, the tears of a statue called The Old Man of Crete which represents the sins of humanity. Dante describes Cocytus as being the home of traitors and those who committed acts of complex fraud. Depending on the form of their treachery, inhabitants are buried in ice to a varying degree, anywhere from neck-high to completely submerged in ice. Cocytus is divided into four descending "rounds", or sections:
Caina, after the Biblical Cain; traitors to blood relatives. Antenora, after Antenor from the Iliad; traitors to country. Ptolomea, after Ptolemy, governor of Jericho, who murdered his guests (1 Maccabees); traitors to guests. Here it is said that sometimes the soul of a traitor falls to Hell before Atropos cuts the thread, and their body is taken over by a fiend. Judecca, after Judas Iscariot; traitors to masters and benefactors. Dante's Satan is at the centre of the circle buried waist-high in ice. He is depicted with three faces and mouths. The central mouth gnaws Judas. Judas is chewed head foremost with his feet protruding and Satan's claws tearing his back while those gnawed in the side mouths, Brutus and Cassius, leading assassins of Julius Caesar, are both chewed feet foremost with their heads protruding. Under each chin Satan flaps a pair of wings, which only serve to increase the cold winds in Cocytus and further imprison him and other traitors. Dante and his guide Virgil proceed then to climb down Satan's back and then upwards towards Purgatory, though Dante is at first confused at their turning round, but Virgil explains it is due to the change in forces as they pass through the centre of the Earth.
 
How’s that for a really vivid revenge fantasy?
 
And they won’t do it, the polly-tickians, the parasites on the body politic, they will not say this is a free country and a democracy, people say what they like, power is accountable and its exercise is to be transparent.  They will not say few people believe in revelations, books written by God or the sacred nature of the often foul and loony contents of those books.   They wil not point out how many people do not believe in any God.  Right across the political spectrum they kow-tow to religion, and expect us to.  They will not say this is a free country and if you don’t like it, go away. 
 
They will not say that here Catholicism and Islam are both small fish in a big pond which encompasses the whole world of ideas, that people have very different views and all have an equal right to our views.  If they want a pond with almost entirely one kind of fish, they are perfectly free to go elsewhere.
 
They deliberately attempt to overthrow the Enlightenment and drag us back to submission to the ravings of religions.  They deliberately attempt the destruction of the rational basis of the free world claiming the hysterics of the religious about that which exists solely in their heads, that for which there is no evidence whatever, are to be regarded with gravity and to trump all fact, reason, morality, law because some Broadmoor case believes them the Word of God.
 
The West has been through all this once.  In 40 years starting with some guys throwing tea into a harbour and ending on the battlefield of Waterloo, the free world was born.  No-one knows this better than the evil old men in Rome.  So they think we can be brainwashed into submission by their slimy vomit, dirty evil old fools who will not leave other people alone, trying to dictate what we say about that for which there is no evidence whatever and that which is obvious drivel.
 
So we go through it all again.  I’m not going to be deciding anything  I certainly can’t guarantee everyone will have my moral compass or my attachment to the rule of law.  My guess is massacre.  Totally avoidable, the product of evil and insolence, the blinding insolence of the political and religious classes who think they dictate to us the people.  Psychopathic hysterics come here and we’re supposed to respect psychopathic hysteria.  That sick brute Sacranie should have referred for counselling. 
 
Doesn’t the Blair ape just know it’s good for me to have been crippled and thrown on the scrapheap, doesn’t it just fucking know best.
 
La Ballade des pendus – Francois Villon, c.1450
 
Text:
1.
Freres humains qui après nous vivez,
N'ayez les cuers contre nous endurcis,
Car, se pitié de nous povres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tost de vous mercis.
Vous nous voiez cy attachez cinq, six:
Quant de la char, que trop avons nourrie,
Elle est pieça devoree et pourrie,
Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et pouldre.
De nostre mal personne ne s'enrie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!

Translation:
Brothers, men who live after us,
Let not your hearts be hardened against us,
Because, if you have pity for us poor men,
God will have more mercy toward you.
You see us here attached five or six:    5
When our flesh that was nourished so well
Is over time devoured and putrified,
And we, the bones, have become cinders and powder.
Let no one laugh at our misfortune:
But pray that God absolve us all!     10

2.
Sevous clamons freres, pas n'en devez
Avoir desdaing, quoy que fusmes occis
Parjustice. Toutefois, vous sçavez
Que tous hommes n'ont pas bon sens rassis;
Excusez nous, puis que sommes transis,
Envers le fils de la Vierge Marie,
Que sa grace ne soit pour nous tarie,
Nous preservant de l'infernale fouldre.
Nous sommes mors, ame ne nous harie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!





If we call you, brothers, you ought not
To have disdain even though we were killed
By law. Often, you know
That not all men have a righteous mind;
Excuse us, now that we have passed,  15
Toward the son of the Virgin Mary,
That her grace will not be slow for us,
Preserving us from the infernal fire.
We are dead, no soul harries us;
But pray that God absolve us all!     20

3.
La pluye nous a buez et lavez,
Et le soliel dessechiez et noircis;
Pies, corbeaulx nous ont les yeux cavez,
Et arrachié la barbe etles sourcis.
Jamais nul temps nous ne sommes assis;
Puis ça, puis la, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,
Plus becquetez d'oyseaulx que dez a couldre.
Ne soiez donc de nostre confrarie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!
 
The rain has washed and purified us,
And the sun has dried and blackened us:
Magpies, crows have dug out our eyes
And pulled out our beards and eyebrows.
Never do we have rest;             25
The changeable wind blows us first this way, then that,
To its pleasure without ceasing,
Our skin has more bird peckings than if it were sewed.
Do not leave our company then;
But pray that God absolve us all!     30

Envoi
Prince Jhesus, qui sur tous seigneurie,
Garde qu'Enfer n'ait de nous la maistrie:
A luy n'ayons que faire ne que souldre.
Hommes, icy n'a point de mocquerie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre!
 
Prince Jesus, who is lord of all,
Keep us from the tyranny of Hell:
Let the Devil have no claim over us
Men, make no mockery here;
But pray that God absolve us all!     35

 
Lemme do the Catholic Mohammed weeping cartoon.  During the French Revolution of 1789:
The symbols of Christianity were covered up and they were replaced by the symbols of the Cult of Reason. In the Churches of Reason, there were specially created services that were meant to replace the Christian liturgy.[4]
Feast of Reason, at the Notre-Dame For instance, at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, on November 10, 1793, a special ritual was held for the "Feast of Reason": the nave had an improvised mountain on which stood a Greek temple dedicated to Philosophy and decorated with busts of philosophers. At the base of the mountain was located an altar dedicated to Reason, in front of which was located a torch of Truth. The ceremony included the crowd paying homage to an opera singer dressed in blue, white, red (the colours of the Republic), personifying the Goddess of Liberty.[4]

FMary to Jesus: Some of them are quite intelligent, you know.
Jesus to Mary: There’s nothing intelligent about murder and vandalism.
Mary to Jesus: Someone should have told the Vatican.
Jesus to Mary: I think I did that.
 
We all missed the bit where Europe before 1789 was both ruled by and populated with nothing but little flower-children spreading peace and love. 
 
The precise crime of the philosophes was not atheism but thought, pitting one’s puny human reason against revelation, as deliciously expounded in this passage entitled The Master Plan of the Devil
 
For approximately seventeen centuries men acknowledged that authority comes only from God, and temporal rulers sought the approval and the blessing of their bishops who, by divine right, ruled in their dioceses as successors of the Apostles. Then came the Philosophists. As always, the Power of Darkness used pride to achieve his aims, the pride of human reason. As always he called the Light, Darkness and the Darkness, Light (Isaiah 5:20). That is why the Medieval times are now referred to as the "Dark Ages"; (in fact, the Dark Ages were pre-Medieval), and why Philosophism is referred to as "Enlightenment". ...When the first battle had been won, the Devil moved from the religious field into the philosophical field, and conceived Rationalism, which put human reason before Revelation.

In other words, in place of ‘I know that’ and ‘it is good that’ came, ‘you know nothing of the kind’ and ‘it’s a lot of twisted nonsense that’. Thus Voltaire in his article on atheism in the Dictionnaire philosophique:

Men fattened by our wealth shout, "Believe that an ass spoke, believe that a fish swallowed a man and spat him out good as new onto the shore three days later. Do not doubt that the God of the universe commanded a Jewish prophet to eat shit (Ezekiel) and another prophet to buy two sluts and make whores of them (these are the very words they make the God of truth and purity speak), believe a hundred things either evidently repulsive or mathematically impossible. If you don't, the God of mercy will burn you not just for hundreds of thousands of years but for the whole of eternity, whether you have a body or not.

These preposterous imbecilities repel equally the weak-minded and foolhardy and the strong and wise. They say: "Our masters depict God as the most deranged and barbaric of beings, therefore there is no God", but they ought to say, 'Our masters attribute to God their own absurdities and their own rage, therefore God is the opposite of what they say, as wise and good and they say he is mad and bad." Thus speak the wise. But if a fanatic overhears them, he denounces them to the magistrate who puts them to torture, believing he avenges and impersonates the divine majesty he outrages.

(My translation)   Full English text here et en français
 
Plus ça change...

All you can do, isn't it, break my body and wreck my life, because you're animals, mad hysterical animals.  And you think you're so clever, and so important, and so powerful, because you're animals and you only understand power, force, violence.  Dismiss all fact, reason, morality, law out of hand, smash fact, smash reason, smash decency, smash everything and impose a sewer of total intellectual and moral corruption as normality, where the sustained physical abuse and crippling of a medically vulnerable woman is normal, doesn't occur to any of you foul degraded depraved degenerate despicable disgusting vermin that it's anything anyone need do or say anything about, where psychopaths, nut-jobs who think themselves set on high to command, decree and no-one dreams of demanding they be accountable, where democracy is regarded as the silly womanish joke of the mad old cripple in the corner.  Insolent, insolent vermin, where no-one would lift a finger to help or support me in any  way, would or will, where I am thrown on the scrapheap to rot and die for the crimes of intelligence, ethics, education, rationality, integrity, principle, freedom, democracy and being a woman in your pervert sick-boy world where no-one need pay any attention to anything a woman says, where women keep our fucking marfs shut if we know what's good for us or get beaten up and left for dead, filth who protect, nurture, uphold, keep in power other filth, lovers of everything sick and dirty and vile and rotten, lovers of evil, lovers of the cowardly, sly, vicious, irrational, ignorant, dishonest and psychopathic, all unswerving, unyielding, unanimous in your commitment to the destruction of democracy, the destruction of reason, the destruction of me.  Wreck my body, wreck my health, wreck my life.  Not enough for you vermin that you crawl over my body for the rest of my life, impeding every move I make, capering in triumph at how clever you are to have lied and manipulated and pulled strings and paid off to ensure no-one would help me, such clever vermin,  your bottomless malice, your desire I suffer is so eagerly sated by the State, the foul evil traitors of government and security services..  Butchers remain untouched.  Butchers remain in positions of authority.  Traitors remain untouched.  Traitors remain in positions of authority, those who will break any law to further the destruction of democracy.  So probably one day someone will sling ropes around your filthy necks.  Oh, what a shame. 

Except you're just a joke.

CN.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism Chapter 11: Communism and Religion
§ 89. Why religion and communism are incompatible 'Religion is` the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx. It is the task of the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the labouring masses. It is the task of the party to impress firmly upon the minds of the workers, even upon the most backward, that religion has been in the past and still is today one of the most powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of inequality, exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the toilers.
Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: 'Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.'
This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically.
Every communist must regard social phenomena (the relationships between human beings, revolutions, wars, etc.) as processes which occur in accordance with definite laws. The laws of social development have been fully established by scientific communism on the basis of the theory of historical materialism which we owe to our great teachers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This theory explains that social development is not brought about by any kind of supernatural forces. Nay more. The same theory has demonstrated that the very idea of God and of supernatural powers arises at a definite stage in human history, and at another definite stage begins to disappear as a childish notion which finds no confirmation in practical life and in the struggle between man and nature. But it is profitable to the predatory class to maintain the ignorance of the people and to maintain the people's childish belief in miracles (the key to the riddle really lies in the exploiters' pockets), and this is why religious prejudices are so tenacious, and why they confuse the minds even of persons who are in other respects able.
The general happenings throughout nature are, moreover, in no wise dependent upon supernatural causes. Man has been extremely successful in the struggle with nature. He influences nature in his own interests, and controls natural forces, achieving these conquests, not thanks to his faith in God and in divine assistance, but in spite of this faith. He achieves his conquests thanks to the fact that in practical life and in all serious matters he invariably conducts himself as an atheist. Scientific communism, in its judgements concerning natural phenomena, is guided by the data of the natural sciences, which are in irreconcilable conflict with all religious imaginings.
In practice, no less than in theory, communism is incompatible with religious faith. The tactic of the Communist Party prescribes for the members of the party definite lines of conduct. The moral code of every religion in like manner prescribes for the faithful some definite line of conduct. For example, the Christian code runs: 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.' In most cases there is an irreconcilable conflict between the principles of communist tactics and the commandments of religion. A communist who rejects the commandments of religion and acts in accordance with the directions of the party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party, ceases thereby to be a communist.
The struggle with religion has two sides, and every communist must distinguish clearly between them. On the one hand we have the struggle with the church, as a special organization existing for religious propaganda, materially interested in the maintenance of popular ignorance and religious enslavement. On the other hand we have the struggle with the widely diffused and deeply ingrained prejudices of the majority of the working population.
§ 90. Separation of the church from the state The Christian catechism teaches that the church is a society of the faithful who are united by a common creed, by the sacraments, etc. For the communist, the church is a society of persons who are united by definite sources of income at the cost of the faithful, at the cost of their ignorance and lack of true culture. It is a society united with the society of other exploiters such as the landlords and the capitalists, united with their State, assisting that State in the oppression of the workers, and reciprocally receiving from the State help in the business of oppression. The union between church and State is of great antiquity. The association between the church and the feudalist State of the landowners was exceedingly intimate. This becomes clear when we remember that the autocratic-aristocratic State was sustained by the landed interest. The church was itself a landlord on the grand scale, owning millions upon millions of acres. These two powers were inevitably compelled to join forces against the labouring masses, and their alliance served to strengthen their dominion over the workers. During the period in which the urban bourgeoisie was in conflict with the feudal nobility, the bourgeoisie fiercely attacked the church, because the church owned territories which the bourgeoisie wanted for itself. The church, as landowner, was in receipt of revenues extracted from the workers - revenues which the bourgeoisie coveted. In some countries (France for instance), the struggle was extremely embittered; in other countries (England, Germany, and Russia), it was less fierce. But this conflict explains why the demand for the separation of church and State was made by the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois democracy. The real basis of the demand was a desire for the transfer to the bourgeoisie of the revenues allotted by the State to the church. But the demand for the separation of the church from the State was nowhere fully realized by the bourgeoisie. The reason is that everywhere the struggle carried on by the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense, and it seemed inexpedient to the bourgeoisie to break up the alliance between State and church. The capitalists thought it would be more advantageous to come to terms with the church, to buy its prayers on behalf of the struggle with socialism, to utilize its influence over the uncultured masses in order to keep alive in their minds the sentiment of slavish submissiveness to the exploiting State. ('All power comes from God.')
The work which the bourgeoisie in its struggle with the church had left unfinished was carried to an end by the proletarian State. One of the first decrees of the Soviet Power in Russia was the decree concerning the separation of the church from the State. All its landed estates were taken away from the church and handed over to the working population. All the capital of the church became the property of the workers. The endowments which had been assigned to the church under the tsarist régime were confiscated, although these endowments had been cheerfully continued under the administration of the 'socialist' Kerensky. Religion has become the private affair of every citizen. The Soviet Power rejects all thoughts of using the church in any way whatever as a means for strengthening the proletarian State.
§ 91. Separation of the school from the church The association of religious propaganda with scholastic instruction is the second powerful weapon employed by the clergy for the strengthening of the ecclesiastical régime and for increasing the influence of the church over the masses. The future of the human race, its youth, is entrusted to the priests. Under the tsars, the maintenance of religious fanaticism, the maintenance of stupidity and ignorance, was regarded as a matter of great importance to the State. Religion was the leading subject of instruction in the schools. In the schools, moreover, the autocracy supported the church, and the church supported the autocracy. In addition to compulsory religious teaching in the schools and compulsory attendance at religious services, the church had other weapons. It began to take charge of the whole of popular education, and for this purpose Russia was covered with a network of church schools.
Thanks to the union of school and church, our young people were from their earliest years thralls to religious superstition, this making it practically impossible to convey to their minds any integral outlook upon the universe. To one and the same question (for instance concerning the origin of the world) religion and science give conflicting answers, so that the impressionable mind of the pupil becomes a battle ground between exact knowledge and the gross errors of obscurantists.
In many countries, young people are trained, not only in a spirit of submissiveness towards the dominant régime, but also in a spirit of submissiveness towards the overthrown autocratic, ecclesiastico-feudal order. This happens in France. Even from the outlook of the bourgeois State, propaganda of such a kind is reactionary.
The programme of bourgeois liberalism used to contain a demand for the separation of the school from the church. The liberals fought for the replacement of religious instruction in the schools by instruction in bourgeois morality; and they demanded the closing of schools organized by religious associations and by monasteries. Nowhere, however, was this struggle carried through to an end. In France, for instance, where for two decades all the bourgeois ministries had solemnly pledged themselves to dissolve the religious orders, to confiscate their property, and to forbid their educational activities, there has been one compromise after another with the Catholic clergy. An excellent example of such a compromise between State and church was the recent action of Clemenceau. This minister in his day had been fiercely opposed to the church. In the end, however, he forgot his hostility, and personally distributed orders of distinction among the Catholic clergy as a reward for their patriotic services. In the struggle for the exploitation of other lands (the war with Germany), and in the domestic struggle with the working class, the bourgeois State and the church have entered into an alliance, and give one another mutual support.
This reconciliation of the bourgeoisie with the church finds expression, not merely in the abandonment by the bourgeoisie of its old anti-religious watchwords and of its campaign against religion, but in something more significant. To an increasing extent, the bourgeoisie is now becoming a 'believing class'. The forerunners of the contemporary European bourgeoisie were atheists, were freethinkers, were fiercely antagonistic to priests and priestdom. Their successors have taken a step back- wards. A generation ago, the bourgeois, though they were them- selves still atheistically inclined, though they did not believe in religious fairy tales, and though they laughed covertly at religion, nevertheless considered that the fables must be treated with respect in public, since religion was a useful restraint for the common people. Today, the scions of the bourgeoisie are not content with looking upon religion as providing useful fetters for the people, but they have themselves begun to wear the chains. Under our very eyes, after the November revolution, the liberal bourgeois and the members of the professional classes crowded into the churches and prayed fervently to that which in happier days they had regarded with contempt. Such is the fate of all dying classes, whose last resource it is to seek 'consolation' in religion.
Among the bourgeoisies of Central and Western Europe, which still hold the reins of power, a similar movement in favour of religion is observable. But if the bourgeois class begins to believe in God and the heavenly life, this merely means it has realized that its life here below is drawing to a close!
The separation of the school from the church aroused and continues to arouse protest from the backward elements among the workers and peasants. Many of the older generation persist in demanding that religion should still be taught in the schools as an optional subject. The Communist Party fights resolutely against all such attempts to turn back. The teaching of ecclesias- tical obscurantism in the schools, even though the instruction should be merely optional, would imply the giving of State aid to the maintenance of religious prejudices. In that case the church would be provided with a ready-made audience of children - of children who are assembled in school for purposes which are the very opposite of those contemplated by religion. The church would have at its disposal schoolrooms belonging to the State, and would thereby be enabled to diffuse religious poison among our young people almost as freely as it could before the separation of the school from the church.
The decree whereby the school is separated from the church must be rigidly enforced, and the proletarian State must not make the slightest concession to medievalism. What has already been done to throw off the yoke of religion is all too little, for it still remains within the power of ignorant parents to cripple the minds of their children by teaching them religious fables. Under the Soviet Power there is freedom of conscience for adults. But this freedom of conscience for parents is tantamount to a freedom for them to poison the minds of their children with the opium which when they were young was poured into their own minds by the church. The parents force upon the children their own dullness, their own ignorance; they proclaim as truth all sorts of nonsense; and they thus greatly increase the difficulties which the unified labour school has to encounter. One of the most important tasks of the proletarian State is to liberate children from the reactionary influence exercised by their parents. The really radical way of doing this is the social education of the children, carried to its logical conclusion. As far as the immediate future is concerned, we must not rest content with the expulsion of religious propaganda from the school. We must see to it that the school assumes the offensive against religious propaganda in the home, so that from the very outset the children's minds shall be rendered immune to all those religious fairy tales which many grown-ups continue to regard as truth.
§ 92. Struggle with the religious prejudice of the masses It has been comparatively easy for the proletarian authority to effect the separation of the church from the State and of the school from the church, and these changes have been almost painlessly achieved. It is enormously more difficult to fight the religious prejudices which are already deeply rooted in the consciousness of the masses, and which cling so stubbornly to life. The struggle will be a long one, demanding much steadfastness and great patience. Upon this matter we read in our programme: 'The Russian Communist Party is guided by the conviction that nothing but the realization of purposiveness and full awareness in all the social and economic activities of the masses can lead to the complete disappearance of religious prejudices.' What do these words signify?
Religious propaganda, belief in God and in all kinds of supernatural powers, find their most grateful soil where the institutions of social life are such as to incline the consciousness of the masses towards supernatural explanations of the phenomena of nature and society. The environment created by capitalist methods of production has a strong tendency in this direction. In capitalist society, production, and the exchange of products, are not effected with full consciousness and in accordance with a preconceived plan; they proceed as if they were the outcome of elemental forces. The market controls the producer. No one knows whether commodities are being produced in excess or in deficiency. The producer does not fully understand how the great and complicated mechanism of capitalist production works; why crises occur and unemployment suddenly becomes rife; why prices rise at one time and fall at another; and so on. The ordinary worker, knowing nothing of the real causes of the social happenings amid which his life takes place, readily inclines to accept the 'will of God' as a universal explanation.
In organized communist society, on the other hand, the realms of production and distribution will no longer contain any mysteries for the worker. Every worker will not merely perform his allotted portion of social work. He will in addition participate in the elaboration of the general plan of production, and will at least have clear ideas upon the matter. Throughout the entire mechanism of social production there will no longer be anything mysterious, incomprehensible, or unexpected, and there will therefore be no further place for mystical explanations or for superstition. Just as the joiner who has made a table knows perfectly well how the table came to exist and that he need not lift his eyes towards heaven in order to find its creator, so in communist society all the workers will clearly understand what they have produced with their collective energies and how they have produced it.
For this reason, the mere fact of the organization and strengthening of the socialist system, will deal religion an irrecoverable blow. THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO COMMUNISM, THE TRANSITION FROM THE SOCIETY WHICH MAKES AN END OF CAPITALISM TO THE SOCIETY WHICH IS COMPLETELY FREED FROM ALL TRACES OF CLASS DIVISION AND CLASS STRUGGLE, WILL BRING ABOUT THE NATURAL DEATH OF ALL RELIGION AND ALL SUPERSTITION.
But this must by no means be taken to imply that we can sit down at our ease, satisfied with having prophesied the decay of religion at some future date.
It is essential at the present time to wage with the utmost vigour the war against religious prejudices, for the church has now definitely become a counter-revolutionary organization, and endeavours to use its religious influence over the masses in order to marshal them for the political struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Orthodox faith which is defended by the priests aims at an alliance with the monarchy. This is why the Soviet Power finds it necessary to engage at this juncture in widespread anti-religious propaganda. Our aims can be secured by the delivery of special lectures, by the holding of debates, and by the publication of suitable literature; also by the general diffusion of scientific knowledge, which slowly but surely undermines the authority of religion. An excellent weapon in the fight with the church was used recently in many parts of the republic when the shrines were opened to show the 'incorruptible' relics. This served to prove to the wide masses of the people, and precisely to those in whom religious faith was strongest, the base trickery upon which religion in general, and the creed of the Russian Orthodox church in particular, are grounded.
But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.
We propose to append a few figures, showing how the tsarist régime paid over the people's money to the church; how the church was directly supported by the common people, who drained their slender purses to this end; and how wealth accumulated in the hands of the servants of Christ.
Through the synods and in other ways the tsarist government annually supplied the church with the average amount of 50,000,000 roubles (at a time when the rouble was worth one hundred times as much as today). The synods had 70,000,000 roubles to their credit in the banks. The churches and the monasteries owned vast areas of land. In the year 7905 the churches owned 1,872,000 desyatinas, and the monasteries owned 740,000 desyatinas. Six of the largest monasteries owned 782,000 desyatinas. The Solovyetsky monastery owned 66,000 desyatinas; the Sarovskaya, 26,000; the Alexandro-Nevskaya, 25,000; and so on. In 7903, the churches and monasteries of Petrograd owned 266 rent-producing properties in the form of houses, shops, building sites, etc. In Moscow, they owned 1,054 rent-paying houses, not to mention 32 hotels. In Kiev, the churches owned 114 houses. Here are the stipends of the metropolitans and the archbishops. The metropolitan of Petrograd received 300,000 roubles per annum; the metropolitans of Moscow and of Kiev were paid 100,000 roubles per annum each; the stipend of the archbishop of Novgorod was 370,000 roubles.
There were about 30,000 church schools, and these were attended by 1,000,000 pupils. More than 20,000 teachers of religion were 'at work' in the elementary schools of the Ministry for Education.
Everyone knows that the autocracy supported the Orthodox church as the dominant and only true church. Many millions of roubles were raised by taxing Musulmans (Tartars and Bashkirs), Catholics (Poles), and Jews. This money was used by the Orthodox clergy to demonstrate that all other faiths were false. Under the tsarist régime, religious persecution attained unprecedented proportions. In the population of Russia, for every hundred inhabitants there were (besides the 70 Orthodox), 9 Catholics, 11 Mohammedans, 9 Protestants, 4 Jews, and 7 of various creeds. As for the number of the Orthodox clergy, the following were the figures for the year 1909:
The 52,869 churches of Russia were served by Archpriests 2,912 Priests 46,730 Deacons 14,670 Readers
43,518 In the 455 monasteries were Monks 9,987 Lay-brethren 9,582 In the 418 nunneries were Nuns 14,008 Lay-sisters 46,811
Total 188,218
The figures relate exclusively to the Orthodox church. A similar parasitic caste is found in every nation, though of course, professing some other religion. These masses of people, instead of extracting vast sums of money from the population in order to promote popular ignorance, would have been able, had they been engaged in manual work, to produce immense quantities of values. The socialist State, when its economic apparatus has been perfected, will introduce labour service for the clergy as for all unproductive classes, so that they will have to become workers or peasants. Of the State revenues paid to the church under the tsarist régime, more than 12,000,000 roubles went every year to the urban and rural clergy. It is plain enough why the reverend fathers were opposed to the separation of the church from the State, since this implied the separation of a dozen million roubles from their pockets. This sum, however, was but a fraction of the clerical incomes, which for the most part were derived from professional fees, land rents, and interest upon the capital of the church. No one has been able to ascertain the precise amount of the revenues of the Russian church. Approximately the sum may be considered to have been 150,000,000 roubles - at a time (we repeat) when the rouble was worth one hundred of our present roubles. A considerable proportion of this income is still paid by the people to the clergy.