Sacred Heart Review | The Other Side of Mark Twain (30 April 1910) | Transcript
The death of Mark Twain has been the signal for a great deal of adulation of the humorist. We hate to sound a jarring note in this chorus of praise—but let us have the truth about Samuel Langhorne Clemens. George Eliot calls those who parody lofty themes "debasers of moral currency." What shall we say then of Mark Twain who tries to make the Church of God the butt of his ridicule? The sight of the Coliseum in Rome recalls to him the time when the pagan emperors "were wont to put Christians in that arena and turn the wild beasts on them for a show. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye." This pagan way of treating Christians, however, he declares to be far less cruel than the treatment meted out to them subsequently by the Church. " When holy Mother Church," he says, " became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, Who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they [the Church] urged the barbarians to love Him; and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor Him—first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers— red-hot ones, because they are more comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little,and finally by roasting them in public. These methods always convinced those barbarians. The true religion properly administered as the good Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive, also." This one passage—not to mention others, —this attempt to misrepresent and to cover with ridicule the most sacred and beneficent institution on this earth, will forever render infamous Mark Twain's memory.