Whoa 😬

📖 DOSTOYEVSKY ON ROMAN CATHOLICISM

Roman Catholicism is worse than atheism, that is my opinion! Yes! That is my opinion! Atheism preaches only zero, while Catholicism goes further: it preaches a disfigured Christ, a Christ whom they themselves have belittled and mocked - a perverted Christ! They preach an anarchist, I swear to you, I assure you! That is my personal conviction today, and it has tormented me a lot too... Roman Catholicism believes that without a universal state power the church cannot exist on earth, and so it cries: Non posmus! In my opinion, Roman Catholicism is not even a religion at all, but an immediate, direct continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and in it everything is subordinated to that thought, starting with faith.

...The Pope has seized the lands, the earthly empire, and he has taken up the sword. And since then everything has been going on like this, only they have added to the sword lies, deceit, fraud, fanaticism, superstition, crime; they are shaking with the most sacred, righteous, simple-hearted, fiery feelings of the people! They have sold everything, everything for money, for a low earthly kingdom.

... Isn't that the doctrine of the Antichrist?! Could it not lead to atheism? Atheism was born from them, from that Roman Catholicism! Atheism was first conceived among them: because, could they believe in themselves? Disbelief in God took root due to the general aversion to Catholicism, it is the product of Jesuit lies and spiritual weakness! Atheism! With us, only certain, marginalized classes do not believe... But there, in Europe, there, the terrible masses of the people themselves are already beginning to disbelieve - once because of Catholic obscurantism and lies, and now out of fanaticism, out of hatred for the church and Christianity.

... I never even spoke about individual representatives of the church. I spoke about Roman Catholicism in its essence, I spoke about Rome.

... That is precisely where we are all wrong, in that we still do not see that it is not only, and exclusively, a theological matter! For socialism is also a Catholic offspring and of Catholic origin! It, like its brother atheism, arose out of despair, as a moral resistance to Catholicism in order to replace the lost power of religion with itself, to quench the spiritual thirst of thirsty humanity, and to save it not with the help of Christ, but by violence! And this is freedom through violence, this is also unification by the sword and blood. You must not believe in God, you must not have property, you must not have personalities, and, “fraternité ou la mort - two million heads!” “By their deeds you will know them” - so it is said in the Gospel!

📚 Part from the novel The Idiot.

💬Says of Prince Lev Myshkin - the main character of the novel.