Some months later Monsignore Oppiszoni, Archbishop of Bologna, himself
celebrated the marriage of M.P. Cadova's wife and M.P. Cadova's
ex-clerk.
Of course, you'll say, P. Cadova was dead. Not a bit of it. He was
alive, and as well as a broken-hearted man could be. The Church, then,
winked at a case of bigamy? Not so. In the States of the Church a
woman may be married at the same time to a Jew and a Catholic, without
being a bigamist, because in the States of the Church a Jew is not a
man.
CHAPTER XVI.
EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.
All the world knows, and says over and over again, that education is
less advanced in the Papal States than in any country in Europe. It is
a source of universal regret that the nation which is, perhaps, of all
others the most intelligent by God's grace, should be the most
ignorant by the will of priests. This people has been compared to a
thorough-bred horse, reduced from racing to walking blindfolded, round
and round, grinding corn.
But people who talk thus take a partial view of the question. They
don't, or they won't, see how entirely the development of public
ignorance is in conformity with the principles of the Church, and how
favourable it is to the maintenance of priestly government.
Religions are founded, not upon knowledge, or science, but upon faith,
or, as some term it, credulity. People have agreed to describe as an
"act of faith" the operation of closing one's eyes in order to see
better.
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