正文
Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion
上帝的錯覺 第九章 童年，虐待和逃離宗教
There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman.
VICTOR HUGO
每一個村莊裏，都有一把火炬：教師和一個終結者：牧師。
VICTOR HUGO
I begin with an anecdote of nineteenth-century Italy. I am not implying that anything like this awful story could happen today. But the attitudes of mind that it betrays are lamentably current, even though the practical details are not. This nineteenth-century
human tragedy sheds a pitiless light on present-day religious attitudes to children.
我從19世紀意大利的一件逸事講起。我沒有暗示這麽恐怖的事情會發生在今天。悲哀地是，當今人們的思想依舊如昔，隻不過使用的手段不同。19世紀的這場人間慘劇無情地揭示了當今宗教對兒童的態度。
In 1858 Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old child of Jewish parents living in Bologna, was legally seized by the papal police acting under orders from the Inquisition. Edgardo was forcibly dragged away from his weeping mother and distraught father to the Catechumens (house for the conversion of Jews and Muslims) in Rome, and thereafter brought up as a Roman Catholic. Aside from occasional brief visits under close priestly supervision, his parents never saw him again. The story is told by David I. Kertzer in his remarkable book, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.
1895年，意大利波羅尼亞的一個六歲孩子，Edgardo Mortara，和猶太父母生活在一起，由宗教裁判所受命，被教會警察合法抓捕，強行從哭泣的母親和焦躁的父親身邊拖走，送到羅馬的新學徒改造所。（那是專門用來強迫猶太人和穆斯林改變信仰的地方）。這以後，孩子被撫養成羅馬天主教徒。除了在教士密切監視下的幾次簡短的探訪，父母再也沒有見過他。David I. Kertzer 在那本著名的《綁架Edgardo Mortara》中講述了這個故事。
Edgardo\'s story was by no means unusual in Italy at the time, and the reason for these priestly abductions was always the same. In every case, the child had been secretly baptized at some earlier date, usually by a Catholic nursemaid, and the Inquisition later came to hear of the baptism. It was a central part of the Roman Catholic belief-system that, once a child had been baptized, however informally and clandestinely, that child was irrevocably transformed into a Christian. In their mental world, to allow a \'Christian child\' to stay with his Jewish parents was not an option, and they maintained this bizarre and cruel stance steadfastly, and with the utmost sincerity, in the face of worldwide outrage. That widespread outrage, by the way, was dismissed by the Catholic newspaper Civilta Cattolica as due to the international power of rich Jews - sounds familiar, doesn\'t it?
Edgardo的故事在當時的意大利決不是一個特例。而且神職人員綁架的理由是一樣的。每一個例子中，孩子早先由天主教的保姆秘密受洗，然後宗教裁判所聽到孩子受洗。羅馬天主教信仰係統中的關鍵部分是，一旦孩子受洗，不管是非正式，或秘密地，孩子無可挽回地成為基督徒。在他們的精神世界，允許“天主教的孩子”和他們的猶太父母生活，是不可思議的。他們無比真摯地，即使麵對全世界的憤怒，頑強地維護著這種古怪和殘忍的立場。天主教的報紙Civilta Cattolica指出，這場大範圍的暴行的取消，歸咎於富裕的猶太人在國際上的影響。聽起來非常熟悉，是不是？
Apart from the publicity it aroused, Edgardo Mortara\'s history was entirely typical of many others. He had once been looked after by Anna Morisi, an illiterate Catholic girl who was then fourteen. He fell ill and she panicked lest he might die. Brought up in a stupor of belief that a child who died unbaptized would suffer forever in hell, she asked advice from a Catholic neighbour who told her how to do a baptism. She went back into the house, threw some water from a bucket on little Edgardo\'s head and said, \'I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.\' And that was it. From that moment on, Edgardo was legally a Christian. When the priests of the Inquisition learned of the incident years later, they acted promptly and decisively, giving no thought to the sorrowful consequences of their action.
除了喚起了公眾的注意，Edgardo Mortara 和許多人的遭遇沒有什麽不同。他曾經被一個14歲的，沒有受過教育的天主教女孩Anna Morisi照看。那時，他病得如此嚴重，以至於保姆驚恐地認為他可能會死。從小被灌輸愚昧的信仰，認為沒有受洗的孩子死後將在地獄中永遠煎熬，她詢問天主教的鄰居，得知如何施洗。回來後，她從桶中舀出一點水倒在小Edgardo的頭上，說：“我奉聖子聖父聖靈之名為你施洗。”僅此而已。但從這一刻起，Edgardo成為合法的基督徒。多年以後，宗教裁判所的神甫偶爾得知此事，他們果斷，迅速地采取了行動，絲毫不考慮隨之而來的悲慘後果。
Amazingly for a rite that could have such monumental significance for a whole extended family, the Catholic Church allowed (and still allows) anybody to baptize anybody else. The baptizer doesn\'t have to be a priest. Neither the child, nor the parents, nor anybody else has to consent to the baptism. Nothing need be signed. Nothing need be officially witnessed. All that is necessary is a splash of water, a few words, a helpless child, and a superstitious and catechistically brainwashed babysitter. Actually, only the last of these is needed because, assuming the child is too young to be a witness, who is even to know? An American colleague who was brought up Catholic writes to me as follows: \'We used to baptize our dolls. I don\'t remember any of us baptizing our little Protestant friends but no doubt that has happened and happens today. We made little Catholics of our dolls, taking them to church, giving them Holy Communion etc. We were brainwashed to be good Catholic mothers early on.\'
驚異一個儀式就能給一個擴展的家庭帶來如此深遠的影響，天主教堂允許任何人主持洗禮，今天情況依舊，此人不必是神父。也不需要孩子，父母，或任何一個人同意。不需要簽署任何文件。不需要有見證人。所需要的僅是灑點水，幾句話，無助的孩子，和一個迷信，被教義洗腦的保姆。實際上，隻有後者才是真正必要的，因為如果孩子太小，無法作證，還有誰能知道？一個以天主教方式撫養長大的美國同事寫信給我， 說：“我們過去經常給布娃娃施洗。我記不清我們是否給屬於新教的小朋友施洗。毫無疑問，這已經發生了，並且今天還在繼續發生。我們將布娃娃變成天主教徒，帶它們去教堂，一起領聖餐等等。很早，我們就被洗腦，要作一個很好的天主教母親。”
If nineteenth-century girls were anything like my modern correspondent, it is surprising that cases like Edgardo Mortara\'s were not more common than they were. As it was, such stories were distressingly frequent in nineteenth-century Italy, which leaves one asking the obvious question. Why did the Jews of the Papal States employ Catholic servants at all, given the appalling risk that could flow from doing so? Why didn\'t they take good care to engage Jewish servants? The answer, yet again, has nothing to do with sense and everything to do with religion. The Jews needed servants whose religion didn\'t forbid them to work on the sabbath. A Jewish maid could indeed be relied upon not to baptize your child into a spiritual orphanage. But she couldn\'t light the fire or clean the house on a Saturday. This was why, of the Bolognese Jewish families at the time who could afford servants, most hired Catholics.
如果19世紀的女孩和今天的這位同事沒有什麽不同，一點也不奇怪Edgardo的遭遇如此普遍。即然類似的事情令人痛苦地經常發生在19世紀的意大利， 使人不由地要問一個顯而易見的問題。既然要冒著如此恐怖的風險，在教皇教區裏的猶太人為什麽要雇用天主教徒作仆役呢？為什麽他們不能更好地安排自己的生活，雇用猶太人呢？答案仍然和理智無關，牽扯的全是宗教。猶太人需要仆人不會因為他們信仰的宗教而被迫在安息日放棄工作。猶太女仆確實保證不會給你的孩子施洗，不會因此進入宗教孤兒院。但是星期六，她不能生火，不能清理房間。這就是為什麽在波羅尼亞當時能雇得起仆人的猶太家庭，大部分都雇用天主教徒。
In this book, I have deliberately refrained from detailing the horrors of the Crusades, the conquistadores or the Spanish Inquisition. Cruel and evil people can be found in every century and of every persuasion. But this story of the Italian Inquisition and its attitude to children is particularly revealing of the religious mind, and the evils that arise specifically because it is religious. First is the remarkable perception by the religious mind that a sprinkle of water and a brief verbal incantation can totally change a child\'s life, taking precedence over parental consent, the child\'s own consent, the child\'s own happiness and psychological well-being . . . over everything that ordinary common sense and human feeling would see as important. Cardinal Antonelli spelled it out at the time in a letter to Lionel Rothschild, Britain\'s first Jewish Member of Parliament, who had written to protest about Edgardo\'s abduction. The cardinal replied that he was powerless to intervene, and added, \'Here it may be opportune to observe that, if the voice of nature is powerful, even more powerful are the sacred duties of religion.\' Yes, well, that just about says it all, doesn\'t it?
這本書中，我有意避免詳細描述十字軍的暴行和西班牙宗教裁判所那些在南美洲肆虐的征服者。殘暴和邪惡的人在任一世紀和任一宗教中都可以看見。但是這個故事中意大利宗教裁判所的所作所為以及對兒童的態度，揭示了他們的宗教思想和由宗教激發的邪惡。首先，令人吃驚地是，在宗教的頭腦中，確信幾滴水，說一句咒語，就可以完完全全地改變一個孩子的生活，而不必考慮父母是否同意，不考慮孩子是否同意，不在意孩子的幸福，不在意孩子的心理健康等等， 這些僅憑基本常識和人類直覺就能感知是很重要的東西。當時，紅衣主教Antonelli給英國的第一位猶太議員Lionel Rothschild的一封信中，清楚地闡述了這些。Lionel Rothschild曾經寫信抗議綁架Edgardo的行為，而紅衣主教回信說他無力去阻止，接著，他補充道“這也許是一個機會，讓我們觀察到，如果自然的力量是強大的，神聖的宗教義務就更勝一籌。”嗯，這就是他們的所有解釋，難道不是嗎？
Second is the extraordinary fact that the priests, cardinals and Pope seem genuinely not to have understood what a terrible thing they were doing to poor Edgardo Mortara. It passes all sensible understanding, but they sincerely believed they were doing him a good turn by taking him away from his parents and giving him a Christian upbringing. They felt a duty of protection! A Catholic newspaper in the United States defended the Pope\'s stance on the Mortara case, arguing that it was unthinkable that a Christian government \'could leave a Christian child to be brought up by a Jew\' and invoking the principle of religious liberty, \'the liberty of a child to be a Christian and not forced compulsorily to be a Jew . . . The Holy Father\'s protection of the child, in the face of all the ferocious fanaticism of infidelity and bigotry, is the grandest moral spectacle which the world has seen for ages.\' Has there ever been a more flagrant misdirection of words like \'forced\', \'compulsorily\', \'ferocious\', \'fanaticism\' and \'bigotry\'? Yet all the indications are that Catholic apologists, from the Pope down, sincerely believed that what they were doing was right: absolutely right morally, and right for the welfare of the child. Such is the power of (mainstream, \'moderate\') religion to warp judgement and pervert ordinary human decency. The newspaper Il Cattolico was frankly bewildered at the widespread failure to see what a magnanimous favour the Church had done Edgardo Mortara when it rescued him from his Jewish family:
第二個離奇的現象是神甫，紅衣主教和教皇由衷地相信他們沒有對可憐的Edgardo Mortara做任何可怕的事情。相反，超越了人類所有的理智，他們真心認為把孩子從父母身邊搶走培養成基督徒，是給他一個好的起點。他們覺得自己有保護孩子的義務！美國的一份天主教報紙替教皇在Mortara事件上的立場辯護，爭論到如果基督教組織聽任猶太人撫養屬於基督的孩子是不可思議的，並且呼籲宗教自由，“孩子可以自由地成為基督徒，而不必被暴力強製成為猶太人...麵對各種各樣的偏見和不信教的殘酷狂熱，聖父對這個孩子的保護，是有史以來最偉大的道德奇跡。” “暴力”，“強製”，“殘酷”，“狂熱”，“偏見”，你們見過有比這個更惡名昭著的誤解嗎？然而，所有跡象表明天主教護教者們，上至教皇，都真誠地相信他們做了正確的事：絕對的道德，對孩子的福利有益。這就是（主流，“非激進”）宗教的力量，扭曲了人的判斷力，褻瀆了人的尊嚴。報紙Il Cattolico 看到教會如此慷慨仁慈地將Edgardo Mortara 從他的猶太家庭中挽救出來，卻導致了大規模的批評，不由地神誌錯亂了：
Whoever among us gives a little serious thought to the matter, compares the condition of a Jew - without a true Church, without a King, and without a country, dispersed and always a foreigner wherever he lives on the face of the earth, and moreover, infamous for the ugly stain with which the killers of Christ are marked . . . will immediately understand how great is this temporal advantage that the Pope is obtaining for the Mortara boy.
如果有人想稍微嚴肅地考慮這個問題，比較一下猶太人的處境—沒有真正意義上的教堂，沒有國王，沒有國家，分散開來，不管住在地球上的任何地方，總是被當作外國人一樣排擠，更重要的是，聲名狼藉地背負著殺死基督的邪惡罪名. . .就會立即明白教皇給男孩Mortara 帶來多麽偉大的在世間的好處。
Third is the presumptuousness whereby religious people know, without evidence, that the faith of their birth is the one true faith, all others being aberrations or downright false. The above quotations give vivid examples of this attitude on the Christian side. It would be grossly unjust to equate the two sides in this case, but this is as good a place as any to note that the Mortaras could at a stroke have had Edgardo back, if only they had accepted the priests\' entreaties and agreed to be baptized themselves. Edgardo had been stolen in the first place because of a splash of water and a dozen meaningless words. Such is the fatuousness of the religiously indoctrinated mind, another pair of splashes is all it would have taken to reverse the process. To some of us, the parents\' refusal indicates wanton stubbornness. To others, their principled stand elevates them into the long list of martyrs for all religions down the ages.
第三就是狂妄自大。每一個宗教人士，不需要任何證據，確認他們出生時賦予的信仰是唯一正確的，其他的要麽背離正道，要麽百份之一百的謬誤。上段的引用活靈活現地展示了基督徒的這種態度。如果認為當事雙方是平等的，那就是帶著有色的眼鏡看待這件事。隻有孩子們接受了神甫的懇求，同意給他們受洗，我們才有可能指出把孩子要回來，會給他們帶來衝擊。問題是Edgardo首先被幾滴水和十來個無意義的字偷走。這就是被宗教灌輸的腦袋的愚昧，另外幾滴水就可以使這個過程逆轉。我們中間有些人認為父母的反對顯示了墮落和執拗。另一些人則認為他們對原則的堅持足以將他們列入自古以來所有宗教殉道者的長名單中。
\'Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man: we shall this day by God\'s grace light such a candle in England, as I trust shall never be put out.\' No doubt there are causes for which to die is noble. But how could the martyrs Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer let themselves be burned rather than forsake their Protestant Littleendianism in favour of Catholic Big-endianism - does it really matter all that much from which end you open a boiled egg? Such is the stubborn - or admirable, if that is your view - conviction of the religious mind, that the Mortaras could not bring themselves to seize the opportunity offered by the meaningless rite of baptism. Couldn\'t they cross their fingers, or whisper \'not\' under their breath while being baptized? No, they couldn\'t, because they had been brought up in a (moderate) religion, and therefore took the whole ridiculous charade seriously. As for me, I think only of poor little Edgardo - unwittingly born into a world dominated by the religious mind, hapless in the crossfire, all but orphaned in an act of well-meaning but, to a young child, shattering cruelty.
“Ridley主人，振作起來，像一個男子漢：今天，靠神的恩典，我們在英格蘭點燃這樣的蠟燭，我確信它永遠不會熄滅。”無疑這是以獻身為榮的那些人的原因。但是怎樣才能使殉道者Ridley, Latimer和Cranmer寧願被燒死而不放棄新教皈依天主教呢？難道從哪一頭打開煮熟的雞蛋如此重要嗎？這是頑固不化的，或者從你的觀點來說，令人敬佩的， 宗教頭腦中的堅定信念。 Mortara們不可能自己抓住由無意義的洗禮所帶來的機會。難道他們沒有擺手，或施洗時小聲說“不”。他們沒有，因為在（非激進的）宗教的熏陶下，他們將整個荒謬的象征過程看到非常重要。對於我來說，我僅考慮可憐的小Edgardo—毫不知曉的誕生在宗教占統治地位的世界上，又不幸地處在火力交叉點上，經過充滿好意的舉動，對小孩子來說，是粉碎性的暴行， 幾乎成為孤兒。
Fourth, to pursue the same theme, is the assumption that a six-year-old child can properly be said to have a religion at all, whether it is Jewish or Christian or anything else. To put it another way, the idea that baptizing an unknowing, uncomprehending child can change him from one religion to another at a stroke seems absurd - but it is surely not more absurd than labelling a tiny child as belonging to any particular religion in the first place. What mattered to Edgardo was not \'his\' religion (he was too young to possess thought-out religious opinions) but the love and care of his parents and family, and he was deprived of those by celibate priests whose grotesque cruelty was mitigated only by their crass insensitivity to normal human feelings - an insensitivity that comes all too easily to a mind hijacked by religious faith.
繼續同一主題，第四點，假設認定6歲大的孩子就能夠信仰某種宗教，不管是猶太教，基督教或其它的。換一種說法，給一無所知，尚不能理解的孩子施洗，就可以將他一下子從一種宗教改變到另一種宗教，這種想法太荒謬了，更荒謬的是將小小的孩子一開始就規定屬於某一教派。對Edgardo真正重要的不是“他的”宗教，（因為他太小了還不能慎重考慮教義），而是父母和家庭的愛護和關心，這一切都被獨身的教士們剝奪了。他們極度扭曲的暴行給對人類正常情感的全然冷漠稀釋了—這種冷漠容易來自被宗教信仰綁架的思想。
Even without physical abduction, isn\'t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about? Yet the practice persists to this day, almost entirely unquestioned. To question it is my main purpose in this chapter.
即使沒有身體上的綁架，給太小還沒有足夠的心智考慮宗教的孩子規定一種宗教，難道不屬於虐待兒童嗎？現在，這種習俗依舊保留著，幾乎沒有人質疑。本章的主要目的就是要質疑這種做法。
上帝的錯覺 第九章 童年，虐待和逃離宗教
There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman.
VICTOR HUGO
每一個村莊裏，都有一把火炬：教師和一個終結者：牧師。
VICTOR HUGO
I begin with an anecdote of nineteenth-century Italy. I am not implying that anything like this awful story could happen today. But the attitudes of mind that it betrays are lamentably current, even though the practical details are not. This nineteenth-century
human tragedy sheds a pitiless light on present-day religious attitudes to children.
我從19世紀意大利的一件逸事講起。我沒有暗示這麽恐怖的事情會發生在今天。悲哀地是，當今人們的思想依舊如昔，隻不過使用的手段不同。19世紀的這場人間慘劇無情地揭示了當今宗教對兒童的態度。
In 1858 Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old child of Jewish parents living in Bologna, was legally seized by the papal police acting under orders from the Inquisition. Edgardo was forcibly dragged away from his weeping mother and distraught father to the Catechumens (house for the conversion of Jews and Muslims) in Rome, and thereafter brought up as a Roman Catholic. Aside from occasional brief visits under close priestly supervision, his parents never saw him again. The story is told by David I. Kertzer in his remarkable book, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.
1895年，意大利波羅尼亞的一個六歲孩子，Edgardo Mortara，和猶太父母生活在一起，由宗教裁判所受命，被教會警察合法抓捕，強行從哭泣的母親和焦躁的父親身邊拖走，送到羅馬的新學徒改造所。（那是專門用來強迫猶太人和穆斯林改變信仰的地方）。這以後，孩子被撫養成羅馬天主教徒。除了在教士密切監視下的幾次簡短的探訪，父母再也沒有見過他。David I. Kertzer 在那本著名的《綁架Edgardo Mortara》中講述了這個故事。
Edgardo\'s story was by no means unusual in Italy at the time, and the reason for these priestly abductions was always the same. In every case, the child had been secretly baptized at some earlier date, usually by a Catholic nursemaid, and the Inquisition later came to hear of the baptism. It was a central part of the Roman Catholic belief-system that, once a child had been baptized, however informally and clandestinely, that child was irrevocably transformed into a Christian. In their mental world, to allow a \'Christian child\' to stay with his Jewish parents was not an option, and they maintained this bizarre and cruel stance steadfastly, and with the utmost sincerity, in the face of worldwide outrage. That widespread outrage, by the way, was dismissed by the Catholic newspaper Civilta Cattolica as due to the international power of rich Jews - sounds familiar, doesn\'t it?
Edgardo的故事在當時的意大利決不是一個特例。而且神職人員綁架的理由是一樣的。每一個例子中，孩子早先由天主教的保姆秘密受洗，然後宗教裁判所聽到孩子受洗。羅馬天主教信仰係統中的關鍵部分是，一旦孩子受洗，不管是非正式，或秘密地，孩子無可挽回地成為基督徒。在他們的精神世界，允許“天主教的孩子”和他們的猶太父母生活，是不可思議的。他們無比真摯地，即使麵對全世界的憤怒，頑強地維護著這種古怪和殘忍的立場。天主教的報紙Civilta Cattolica指出，這場大範圍的暴行的取消，歸咎於富裕的猶太人在國際上的影響。聽起來非常熟悉，是不是？
Apart from the publicity it aroused, Edgardo Mortara\'s history was entirely typical of many others. He had once been looked after by Anna Morisi, an illiterate Catholic girl who was then fourteen. He fell ill and she panicked lest he might die. Brought up in a stupor of belief that a child who died unbaptized would suffer forever in hell, she asked advice from a Catholic neighbour who told her how to do a baptism. She went back into the house, threw some water from a bucket on little Edgardo\'s head and said, \'I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.\' And that was it. From that moment on, Edgardo was legally a Christian. When the priests of the Inquisition learned of the incident years later, they acted promptly and decisively, giving no thought to the sorrowful consequences of their action.
除了喚起了公眾的注意，Edgardo Mortara 和許多人的遭遇沒有什麽不同。他曾經被一個14歲的，沒有受過教育的天主教女孩Anna Morisi照看。那時，他病得如此嚴重，以至於保姆驚恐地認為他可能會死。從小被灌輸愚昧的信仰，認為沒有受洗的孩子死後將在地獄中永遠煎熬，她詢問天主教的鄰居，得知如何施洗。回來後，她從桶中舀出一點水倒在小Edgardo的頭上，說：“我奉聖子聖父聖靈之名為你施洗。”僅此而已。但從這一刻起，Edgardo成為合法的基督徒。多年以後，宗教裁判所的神甫偶爾得知此事，他們果斷，迅速地采取了行動，絲毫不考慮隨之而來的悲慘後果。
Amazingly for a rite that could have such monumental significance for a whole extended family, the Catholic Church allowed (and still allows) anybody to baptize anybody else. The baptizer doesn\'t have to be a priest. Neither the child, nor the parents, nor anybody else has to consent to the baptism. Nothing need be signed. Nothing need be officially witnessed. All that is necessary is a splash of water, a few words, a helpless child, and a superstitious and catechistically brainwashed babysitter. Actually, only the last of these is needed because, assuming the child is too young to be a witness, who is even to know? An American colleague who was brought up Catholic writes to me as follows: \'We used to baptize our dolls. I don\'t remember any of us baptizing our little Protestant friends but no doubt that has happened and happens today. We made little Catholics of our dolls, taking them to church, giving them Holy Communion etc. We were brainwashed to be good Catholic mothers early on.\'
驚異一個儀式就能給一個擴展的家庭帶來如此深遠的影響，天主教堂允許任何人主持洗禮，今天情況依舊，此人不必是神父。也不需要孩子，父母，或任何一個人同意。不需要簽署任何文件。不需要有見證人。所需要的僅是灑點水，幾句話，無助的孩子，和一個迷信，被教義洗腦的保姆。實際上，隻有後者才是真正必要的，因為如果孩子太小，無法作證，還有誰能知道？一個以天主教方式撫養長大的美國同事寫信給我， 說：“我們過去經常給布娃娃施洗。我記不清我們是否給屬於新教的小朋友施洗。毫無疑問，這已經發生了，並且今天還在繼續發生。我們將布娃娃變成天主教徒，帶它們去教堂，一起領聖餐等等。很早，我們就被洗腦，要作一個很好的天主教母親。”
If nineteenth-century girls were anything like my modern correspondent, it is surprising that cases like Edgardo Mortara\'s were not more common than they were. As it was, such stories were distressingly frequent in nineteenth-century Italy, which leaves one asking the obvious question. Why did the Jews of the Papal States employ Catholic servants at all, given the appalling risk that could flow from doing so? Why didn\'t they take good care to engage Jewish servants? The answer, yet again, has nothing to do with sense and everything to do with religion. The Jews needed servants whose religion didn\'t forbid them to work on the sabbath. A Jewish maid could indeed be relied upon not to baptize your child into a spiritual orphanage. But she couldn\'t light the fire or clean the house on a Saturday. This was why, of the Bolognese Jewish families at the time who could afford servants, most hired Catholics.
如果19世紀的女孩和今天的這位同事沒有什麽不同，一點也不奇怪Edgardo的遭遇如此普遍。即然類似的事情令人痛苦地經常發生在19世紀的意大利， 使人不由地要問一個顯而易見的問題。既然要冒著如此恐怖的風險，在教皇教區裏的猶太人為什麽要雇用天主教徒作仆役呢？為什麽他們不能更好地安排自己的生活，雇用猶太人呢？答案仍然和理智無關，牽扯的全是宗教。猶太人需要仆人不會因為他們信仰的宗教而被迫在安息日放棄工作。猶太女仆確實保證不會給你的孩子施洗，不會因此進入宗教孤兒院。但是星期六，她不能生火，不能清理房間。這就是為什麽在波羅尼亞當時能雇得起仆人的猶太家庭，大部分都雇用天主教徒。
In this book, I have deliberately refrained from detailing the horrors of the Crusades, the conquistadores or the Spanish Inquisition. Cruel and evil people can be found in every century and of every persuasion. But this story of the Italian Inquisition and its attitude to children is particularly revealing of the religious mind, and the evils that arise specifically because it is religious. First is the remarkable perception by the religious mind that a sprinkle of water and a brief verbal incantation can totally change a child\'s life, taking precedence over parental consent, the child\'s own consent, the child\'s own happiness and psychological well-being . . . over everything that ordinary common sense and human feeling would see as important. Cardinal Antonelli spelled it out at the time in a letter to Lionel Rothschild, Britain\'s first Jewish Member of Parliament, who had written to protest about Edgardo\'s abduction. The cardinal replied that he was powerless to intervene, and added, \'Here it may be opportune to observe that, if the voice of nature is powerful, even more powerful are the sacred duties of religion.\' Yes, well, that just about says it all, doesn\'t it?
這本書中，我有意避免詳細描述十字軍的暴行和西班牙宗教裁判所那些在南美洲肆虐的征服者。殘暴和邪惡的人在任一世紀和任一宗教中都可以看見。但是這個故事中意大利宗教裁判所的所作所為以及對兒童的態度，揭示了他們的宗教思想和由宗教激發的邪惡。首先，令人吃驚地是，在宗教的頭腦中，確信幾滴水，說一句咒語，就可以完完全全地改變一個孩子的生活，而不必考慮父母是否同意，不考慮孩子是否同意，不在意孩子的幸福，不在意孩子的心理健康等等， 這些僅憑基本常識和人類直覺就能感知是很重要的東西。當時，紅衣主教Antonelli給英國的第一位猶太議員Lionel Rothschild的一封信中，清楚地闡述了這些。Lionel Rothschild曾經寫信抗議綁架Edgardo的行為，而紅衣主教回信說他無力去阻止，接著，他補充道“這也許是一個機會，讓我們觀察到，如果自然的力量是強大的，神聖的宗教義務就更勝一籌。”嗯，這就是他們的所有解釋，難道不是嗎？
Second is the extraordinary fact that the priests, cardinals and Pope seem genuinely not to have understood what a terrible thing they were doing to poor Edgardo Mortara. It passes all sensible understanding, but they sincerely believed they were doing him a good turn by taking him away from his parents and giving him a Christian upbringing. They felt a duty of protection! A Catholic newspaper in the United States defended the Pope\'s stance on the Mortara case, arguing that it was unthinkable that a Christian government \'could leave a Christian child to be brought up by a Jew\' and invoking the principle of religious liberty, \'the liberty of a child to be a Christian and not forced compulsorily to be a Jew . . . The Holy Father\'s protection of the child, in the face of all the ferocious fanaticism of infidelity and bigotry, is the grandest moral spectacle which the world has seen for ages.\' Has there ever been a more flagrant misdirection of words like \'forced\', \'compulsorily\', \'ferocious\', \'fanaticism\' and \'bigotry\'? Yet all the indications are that Catholic apologists, from the Pope down, sincerely believed that what they were doing was right: absolutely right morally, and right for the welfare of the child. Such is the power of (mainstream, \'moderate\') religion to warp judgement and pervert ordinary human decency. The newspaper Il Cattolico was frankly bewildered at the widespread failure to see what a magnanimous favour the Church had done Edgardo Mortara when it rescued him from his Jewish family:
第二個離奇的現象是神甫，紅衣主教和教皇由衷地相信他們沒有對可憐的Edgardo Mortara做任何可怕的事情。相反，超越了人類所有的理智，他們真心認為把孩子從父母身邊搶走培養成基督徒，是給他一個好的起點。他們覺得自己有保護孩子的義務！美國的一份天主教報紙替教皇在Mortara事件上的立場辯護，爭論到如果基督教組織聽任猶太人撫養屬於基督的孩子是不可思議的，並且呼籲宗教自由，“孩子可以自由地成為基督徒，而不必被暴力強製成為猶太人...麵對各種各樣的偏見和不信教的殘酷狂熱，聖父對這個孩子的保護，是有史以來最偉大的道德奇跡。” “暴力”，“強製”，“殘酷”，“狂熱”，“偏見”，你們見過有比這個更惡名昭著的誤解嗎？然而，所有跡象表明天主教護教者們，上至教皇，都真誠地相信他們做了正確的事：絕對的道德，對孩子的福利有益。這就是（主流，“非激進”）宗教的力量，扭曲了人的判斷力，褻瀆了人的尊嚴。報紙Il Cattolico 看到教會如此慷慨仁慈地將Edgardo Mortara 從他的猶太家庭中挽救出來，卻導致了大規模的批評，不由地神誌錯亂了：
Whoever among us gives a little serious thought to the matter, compares the condition of a Jew - without a true Church, without a King, and without a country, dispersed and always a foreigner wherever he lives on the face of the earth, and moreover, infamous for the ugly stain with which the killers of Christ are marked . . . will immediately understand how great is this temporal advantage that the Pope is obtaining for the Mortara boy.
如果有人想稍微嚴肅地考慮這個問題，比較一下猶太人的處境—沒有真正意義上的教堂，沒有國王，沒有國家，分散開來，不管住在地球上的任何地方，總是被當作外國人一樣排擠，更重要的是，聲名狼藉地背負著殺死基督的邪惡罪名. . .就會立即明白教皇給男孩Mortara 帶來多麽偉大的在世間的好處。
Third is the presumptuousness whereby religious people know, without evidence, that the faith of their birth is the one true faith, all others being aberrations or downright false. The above quotations give vivid examples of this attitude on the Christian side. It would be grossly unjust to equate the two sides in this case, but this is as good a place as any to note that the Mortaras could at a stroke have had Edgardo back, if only they had accepted the priests\' entreaties and agreed to be baptized themselves. Edgardo had been stolen in the first place because of a splash of water and a dozen meaningless words. Such is the fatuousness of the religiously indoctrinated mind, another pair of splashes is all it would have taken to reverse the process. To some of us, the parents\' refusal indicates wanton stubbornness. To others, their principled stand elevates them into the long list of martyrs for all religions down the ages.
第三就是狂妄自大。每一個宗教人士，不需要任何證據，確認他們出生時賦予的信仰是唯一正確的，其他的要麽背離正道，要麽百份之一百的謬誤。上段的引用活靈活現地展示了基督徒的這種態度。如果認為當事雙方是平等的，那就是帶著有色的眼鏡看待這件事。隻有孩子們接受了神甫的懇求，同意給他們受洗，我們才有可能指出把孩子要回來，會給他們帶來衝擊。問題是Edgardo首先被幾滴水和十來個無意義的字偷走。這就是被宗教灌輸的腦袋的愚昧，另外幾滴水就可以使這個過程逆轉。我們中間有些人認為父母的反對顯示了墮落和執拗。另一些人則認為他們對原則的堅持足以將他們列入自古以來所有宗教殉道者的長名單中。
\'Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man: we shall this day by God\'s grace light such a candle in England, as I trust shall never be put out.\' No doubt there are causes for which to die is noble. But how could the martyrs Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer let themselves be burned rather than forsake their Protestant Littleendianism in favour of Catholic Big-endianism - does it really matter all that much from which end you open a boiled egg? Such is the stubborn - or admirable, if that is your view - conviction of the religious mind, that the Mortaras could not bring themselves to seize the opportunity offered by the meaningless rite of baptism. Couldn\'t they cross their fingers, or whisper \'not\' under their breath while being baptized? No, they couldn\'t, because they had been brought up in a (moderate) religion, and therefore took the whole ridiculous charade seriously. As for me, I think only of poor little Edgardo - unwittingly born into a world dominated by the religious mind, hapless in the crossfire, all but orphaned in an act of well-meaning but, to a young child, shattering cruelty.
“Ridley主人，振作起來，像一個男子漢：今天，靠神的恩典，我們在英格蘭點燃這樣的蠟燭，我確信它永遠不會熄滅。”無疑這是以獻身為榮的那些人的原因。但是怎樣才能使殉道者Ridley, Latimer和Cranmer寧願被燒死而不放棄新教皈依天主教呢？難道從哪一頭打開煮熟的雞蛋如此重要嗎？這是頑固不化的，或者從你的觀點來說，令人敬佩的， 宗教頭腦中的堅定信念。 Mortara們不可能自己抓住由無意義的洗禮所帶來的機會。難道他們沒有擺手，或施洗時小聲說“不”。他們沒有，因為在（非激進的）宗教的熏陶下，他們將整個荒謬的象征過程看到非常重要。對於我來說，我僅考慮可憐的小Edgardo—毫不知曉的誕生在宗教占統治地位的世界上，又不幸地處在火力交叉點上，經過充滿好意的舉動，對小孩子來說，是粉碎性的暴行， 幾乎成為孤兒。
Fourth, to pursue the same theme, is the assumption that a six-year-old child can properly be said to have a religion at all, whether it is Jewish or Christian or anything else. To put it another way, the idea that baptizing an unknowing, uncomprehending child can change him from one religion to another at a stroke seems absurd - but it is surely not more absurd than labelling a tiny child as belonging to any particular religion in the first place. What mattered to Edgardo was not \'his\' religion (he was too young to possess thought-out religious opinions) but the love and care of his parents and family, and he was deprived of those by celibate priests whose grotesque cruelty was mitigated only by their crass insensitivity to normal human feelings - an insensitivity that comes all too easily to a mind hijacked by religious faith.
繼續同一主題，第四點，假設認定6歲大的孩子就能夠信仰某種宗教，不管是猶太教，基督教或其它的。換一種說法，給一無所知，尚不能理解的孩子施洗，就可以將他一下子從一種宗教改變到另一種宗教，這種想法太荒謬了，更荒謬的是將小小的孩子一開始就規定屬於某一教派。對Edgardo真正重要的不是“他的”宗教，（因為他太小了還不能慎重考慮教義），而是父母和家庭的愛護和關心，這一切都被獨身的教士們剝奪了。他們極度扭曲的暴行給對人類正常情感的全然冷漠稀釋了—這種冷漠容易來自被宗教信仰綁架的思想。
Even without physical abduction, isn\'t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about? Yet the practice persists to this day, almost entirely unquestioned. To question it is my main purpose in this chapter.
即使沒有身體上的綁架，給太小還沒有足夠的心智考慮宗教的孩子規定一種宗教，難道不屬於虐待兒童嗎？現在，這種習俗依舊保留著，幾乎沒有人質疑。本章的主要目的就是要質疑這種做法。
評論
目前還沒有任何評論
登錄後才可評論.
