How the Churches Have Retarded Progress
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children." Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."
教會阻礙進步
我說今日的教會依然阻礙著人類的進步，你也許覺得這話有些過分，可是我並不這麼認為。說一件事就好，請原諒我提出來，這將令人很不愉快。教會強迫我們談論令人不愉快的事：假設在我們今天居住的世界上，有一個天真無知的少女嫁給了一個梅毒病患者，天主教會就說：「這是不可變更的神聖誓約。女方要不就單身，要不就只能和此人完婚。」女方還不能採取任何措施以預防生養患梅毒的嬰兒，這就是天主教的主張。只要人類的同情心還沒有被教條完全泯滅，只要人類的道德天性對苦難的感覺還沒有達到麻木不仁的地步，誰也不能說這種事情是合乎情理且應該繼續下去的。
這還只是一個例子。目前，教會仍然利用各種手段堅持它所主張的道德，使人民蒙受不應有和不必要的痛苦。當然，正如我們所知，它仍然阻撓著這世界對各樣苦痛的減輕，因為它把某些和人類幸福毫無關係的狹隘行為準則，美其名為道德；如果你認為應該做這做那，因為它有利於人類幸福，他們會說這和問題本身毫無關係。「人類的幸福與道德有什麼關係呢？道德的目的並不在於讓人類幸福。」
【論證與主張】無
【問題與意見】教會啊，教會！你們在做甚麼？你們訂下了甚麼奇怪的規定，讓有些人如此地反感與痛恨？若是如此，我也不是「基督徒」了，因我也無法認同這些決定。教會若把上述的例子扣上教條的帽子，我必將離開該教會，走之前順便揍神父或牧師一拳。但是，我仍信仰 上帝，那永恆慈愛的 天父、 耶穌基督的救贖、聖靈的感動與交通、以及聖經的教誨。我絕不會因為某些人奇怪的決定或行徑，影響我對真理理性的探求與冷靜。我覺得， 上帝的教誨和人的詮釋，有時可以是兩回事。而真理，將永遠只有一個。
【待續】
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