Skip to content

Cleansing the temple

Raemaekers, Louis, 1917, Chromolithograph
Cleansing the temple
Cleansing the temple
Cleansing the temple
Share
Category
Library Item
Item no
32932
Title
Cleansing the temple
Description
"Ye have made it a den of thieves."

"The Temple of Theology will need a more thorough cleansing, after the war, than one fears it is likely to get. It may be said, generally, that the Christian clergy of all denominations in the belligerent countries have mobilized each in support of their own nations. While the Belgian priest in defence of their flocks acted with heroic fortitude, the Pope from time to time has published messages 'strongly pacific in character' to different Catholic dignitaries in Germany. While many thousands of French priests have served in the ranks, the clergy generally, as a critic has said, 'cannot make up their mind whether to lay the responsibility for the war on God or the devil, on divine Providence or on the Central Powers, or the Entente.' Another has observed that 'the present war marks clearly the end of an age in which men though that the misery, divisions, and burdens of the world could be fought by religious and moral teaching'. Perhaps the most courageous opponent of the patriotic churchmen who have, each in his country, identified the national cause with Christ's teaching, is Professor Wilhelm Foerster, of Munich, who drew upon himself a storm of denunciation from every quarter in Germany by his rebuke of the war delirium."
Artist / maker
Date
1917
Size
35.4 x 27.2 cm
Location
Art and Design Library
Copyright
Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.