Joseph McCabe

From Philosopedia

McCabe, Joseph (Martin) (12 November 1867 - 10 January 1955)

An English atheist, anticlericalist, and critic of the Catholic Church, McCabe described himself as a “pedlar of culture.” E. Haldeman-Julius, his chief American publisher, called him the world’s greatest scholar - his 121 Little Blue Books and 122 larger books totaling 7,600,000 words earned him $100,000.

Ordained a Roman Catholic priest (Franciscan) at twenty-three and called Father Antony, he totaled the debits and credits of religion and concluded on one Christmas Eve that Christianity was bankrupt. Religion, particularly Roman Catholicism, he wrote, appealed to nonempirical, spiritual causes and thus was the chief opponent of materialism and, therefore, of science.

In his Twelve Years in a Monastery, he wrote

• I took a sheet of paper, divided it into debt and credit columns on the arguments for and against God and immortality. On Christmas Eve I wrote 'bankrupt' at the foot. And it was on Christmas morning 1895, after I had celebrated three Masses, while the bells of the parish church were ringing out the Christmas message of peace, that, with great pain, I found myself far out from the familiar land - homeless, aimlessly drifting. But the bells were right after all; from that hour on I have been wholly free from the nightmare of doubt that had lain on me for ten years.

His 1918 work, The Popes and Their Church: A Candid Account, resulted in much criticism. As John R. Burr has noted, McCabe’s aggressive frankness and skepticism seem to have offended nearly everyone, including the British Rationalist Association, which expelled him in 1928.

McCabe was an editor of the Joseph McCabe Magazine (1930–1931) and Militant Atheist (1933). Of amusement to humanists is McCabe’s novel, The Pope’s Favorite, in which Lucrezia Borgia and Giulia, Pope Alexander VI’s mistress, are featured.

He wrote,

• Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

McCabe wrote about two hundred books and thirty translations, delivered about two thousand lectures (including seven lecture tours in Australasia, the United States, and Canada), and held a score of public debates. McCabe, who described himself as an atheist and a materialist, wished his epitaph to be:

• He was a rebel to his last breath.

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