ChristMasIsALie.com

While this expose' was published years ago, with the clarity of an "insider" to the process, the censorship of public reference materials has neither vanished or faded. In fact, it is stronger today than it has possibly ever been.  The reason this material was added to the "Library", was that information concerning "Christmas" has been "censored" as well.  Until just recently, finding the historical path of "Christmas" through Europe, has been like tracing "Yeti" in China, through the Himalayas.  And while now recently, more things have been allowed into the open about it, it is only there because a decision was made, to allow it to be. (And that is the problem) Joseph McCabe brought to light in 1929.

"[published 1929 (14th edition)] the Westminster Catholic Federation, which corresponds to the Catholic Welfare organization in America, made this boast in its annual report:"

"It will be useful to give first the outcome of a somewhat cursory survey, page by page, of the first few volumes of the Encyclopedia. More important in their bearing on the Church articles in later volumes commonly have the initial X at the close, which seems to be the cloak of the CATHOLIC ADULTERATOR. This will enable any reader to compare for himself passages in the 11TH [1911] AND THE 14TH EDITIONS [1929 (with revisions, etc.)1973], but the conspirator shows his hand even in large numbers of short unsigned, especially biographical, notices. It is, of course, understood that the work had to be considerably abbreviated to accommodate new developments of science and life, in the 14th edition, but when you find that the curtailing consists in suppressing an unpleasant judgment or a fact about a Pope while unimportant statements of fact are untouched, and when you find the life of a saintly man or the flattering appreciation of his work little affected while the life or work of a heretic is sacrificed, you have a just suspicion." 

"The undisputed truth is that BY 350 A.D., BEFORE CHRISTIANITY WAS ESTABLISHED BY FORCE, there were free primary and secondary schools everywhere, and by 450 A.D. they had all perished: that in 350 the majority of the workers was literate, and by 450and for centuries afterward probably not 1 percent of them could read. Of course it is all put down to the barbarians. "Most of the public schools disappeared, and such light of learning as there was was kept burning in the monasteries and was confined to priests and monks." The monks were, as I have repeatedly shown from Christian writers from Augustine [354 - 430 (St.)] to Benedict [c. 480 - c. 550 (St.)], mostly an idle, loose, and vagrant class, and the few regular houses later established were interested only in religious education. Pope Gregory I [c. 540 - 604] forbade the clergy to open secular schools."

"The fine eight-page article on Gibbon [Edward Gibbon 1737 - 1794] by the learned Professor Bury [John Bagnell Bury 1861 - 1927] in the earlier edition could not expect to escape.Space must be saved; though one would hardly realize this when one finds 60 pages devoted to Geometry, which no one ever learns from an encyclopedia. The reviser condenses the six and a half pages of Gibbon's life and character to one page and then sublimely adds his X to Bury's initials as the joint authors of the article. You can guess how much of Gibbon's greatness is left." 

"On the other hand the notice of Pope "St." Gregory I [c. 540 - 604], the Pope who forbade the opening of schools and made the Papacy the richest landowner and slave-owner in Europe by persuading the rich that the end of the world was at hand and they had better pass on their property to the church, remains as fragrant as ever in the new edition [14th]."

"I cannot go phrase by phrase through this Catholic rubbish. In spite of all its sophistry and suppressions it leaves the Inquisition the most scandalous quasi-judicial procedure that ever disgraced civilization, yet it is not the full truth. It is true that it does not tell the lie that American apologists now do—that the Roman Inquisition never executed men—and it does not even mention, much less challenge, the definite figure of 341,042 victims of the Spanish Inquisition which Llorente, secretary of the Inquisition, canon of the church, and Knight of the Caroline Order, compiled from its archives...."

"The article "Libraries" is the next on which X employs his subtle art. I have explained, I think, that X is not one encyclopedic Catholic writer who does all this marvellous work. The explanation given of the X in the first volume of the 14th edition is that it is "the initial used for anonymous writers"; just as the lady whosesins are not to be disclosed in the court is called by the police Mlle X. In all earlier encyclopedias anonymous writers, who do the great body of the hackwork of the encyclopedia, did not need any monogram. But, of course, this was aspecial arrangement with the Catholic body. It assumes that Committees of Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic were appointed to scrutinize all articles bearing upon Catholic myths and to cut out and modify, no matter on what authority it rested, any statement that the Catholic clergy do not like. Whether any other sort of anonymous critics were allowed to do similar work and wear the mask I do not know. I have not noticed an X anywhere except where truth has been slain or mutilated by a Catholic sword."

"Father Taunton [11th edition)] ["Jesuit Father Taunton...more liberal than a good Jesuit ought to be" (36)]—once more in agreement with our historians—says thatTorquemada [1420 - 1498 (Dominican ("The Hounds of Hell"!))] burned 10,000 victims of the Inquisition in 18 years ["while"] the reviser inserts "but modern research reduces the list of those burned to 2,000." As no signature is subjoined while Taunton's initials are suppressed, the reader is given to understand that this correction ofLlorente's [(see 378) Juan Antonio Llorente 1756 - 1823, Spanish priest and historian (see: Cambridge Bio. Dict., 1990, 905)] figures is given on the authority of the Britannica. As a matter of fact, what the writer means is that one or two Catholic priests like Father Gams have been juggling with the figures so as to bring down enormously Llorente's figure of the total victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Their work is ridiculous. Llorente was not only for years in high clerical dignity and esteem in Spain, but, as its secretary, he had the archives of the Inquisition and copied from them. But this is one of the new tricks of Catholic writers. Saying that "recent research" or "recent authorities" have corrected some statement about their church they give a few names of priests, knowing that the reader never heard of them and suppressing the "Rev." or "Father." A priest can become an expert on a section of history as well as any man but he will never tell the whole truth about it and he will strain or twist the facts at any time in the interest of his church."

"Three things are today certain. [1] The Vatican and its national branches are red to the shoulders with the blood that was shed ['"World War II"']. From the outbreak of Franco's rebellion—the curtain-raiser of the war—and the trouble in Czecho-Slovakia to the year when Russia turned the tide against the Germans and an Allied victory seemed at least probable the Roman Church, in its own interest, acted in the closest co-operation with the thugs. One can quote even Catholic writers (Teeling, etc.) for that. [2] The second is, that the Japanese religion, Shinto and Buddhism alike, were similarly, in fact openly, working with the blood-drunk Japanese leaders. This was emphasized at a World Congress of Religions in Chicago several years before the war broke out. [3] Thirdly, the Protestant churches in America enfeebled the warning against Japan, in the interest of their missions, the Lutheran Church in Germany bowed servilely to the Nazis except when Hitler interfered with its doctrines, and the British churches were equally guilty in the pre-war period. This attitude of the organized religions was of vital use to the aggressors. But we couldn't tell that, the editors of the Encyclopedia will protest. And that is just one of the grounds of these criticisms. The Encyclopedia Britannica does not tell the reader factsand truths if the clergy do not like them, and that covers a considerable territory in regard to history, science, and contemporary life. The 14th edition not only does not tell them but suppresses them if earlier editions told them, and even allows untruths to be inserted."

"Give a priest an inch and he will take an ell [sic] of a lot. He does not learn casuistry for nothing. Under cover of the need of abbreviation he has deleted whole paragraphs, even columns of facts which were offensive to him because they flatly contradicted what he said or wrote, and then, possibly fearing that he had cut out too much, he inserted sentences or paragraphs which "put the Catholic point of view." He has taken phrases or paragraphs of the original writers of the articles and, while r[e]taining their initials, he has repeatedly turned them inside out or has said that "recent research" (the gymnastic of some other Catholic apologist) has corrected his statements."

"And I say that for an encyclopedia to allow this and not candidly explain it to the public but even try to prevent the Catholics disclosing it is a piece of deception. The writers who did the work had not the decency—or were they forbidden?—to give their names, as other contributors do. It is therefore possible that the plea may be urged that various groups of folk were engaged in the work of correcting errors in the 11th edition and it was thought best to lump all these little men together as Mlle. X. We are, however, intrigued by the fact that all these alterations, suppressions, and additions that I have examined uniformly SERVE THE INTERESTS OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDA AND ARE GENERALLY CHARACTERIZED BY THE FAMILIAR CHIEF FEATURE OF THAT PROPAGANDA UNTRUTHFULNESS.'"

"When the Catholic objects that "historians" dispute a point he generally means that it is disputed by historians of his own church: the men who say that Peter was buried at Rome and Torquemada burned only 2,000 heretics, that the Dark Age was bright with culture and virtue and the Age of Chivalry and the Crusaders irradiated the entire world, that the church was just tainted a little by a wicked world at one time but it soon purified itself by a Counter-Reformation, that there was horrible butchery at the French, Russian and Spanish Revolutions, that the Christian church abolished slavery and gave the world schools, hospitals, democracy, art, and science, and a thousand other fantastic things. If encyclopedias propose to embody these SELF-INTERESTED ANTICS OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDISTS the public ought to know it."

"In short, THE 14TH EDITION OF THE BRITANNICA HAS BEEN USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF CATHOLIC PROPAGANDA.  I do not in the least say that it is the only work of public reference that has been so used. The new Encyclopedia Americana betrays a lamentable degree of Catholic influence, and even the more scholarly Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics has curried favor with Catholics by entrusting a number of important articles ("Inquisition," etc.) to Catholic writers, with the usual disastrous results; while manuals of European, especially medieval, history by some American professors strain or suppress evidence scandalously to suit Catholic authorities. I HAVE HERE MERELY GIVEN THE DEFINITE EVIDENCE IN ONE FIELD THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH USES ITS ENORMOUS WEALTH AND VOTING POWER TO POISON THE WELLS OF TRUTH AND TO CONCEAL FROM THE PUBLIC THE FACTS OF HISTORY WHICH MAKE A MOCKERY OF THE FANTASTIC CLAIMS IT ADVANCES TODAY."

"Who wants in a modern encyclopedia the mass of stuff about saints and martyrs, which are to a great extent pure FICTION". French Encyclopédie—Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné dessciences, des arts et des métiers—for which the first prospectus appeared in 1750....Ostensibly the Encyclopédie was a reference work; but its main purpose, from the very first volumes in 1751 and 1752, was to bend its readers to rational and scientific points of view rather than merely to impart knowledge and information. Rousseau[1712 - 1778] and Voltaire [1694 - 1778] were among its contributors, and throughout the thousands of pages in the twenty-eight volumes into which the encyclopaedia finally grew there were strong notes of skepticism, firm emphasis on subjects of positive knowledge, science, and technology rather than on theology and religion, and sly criticism of existing conditions in France and other parts of Europe."

"The first two volumes were suppressed as injurious to royal authority and to religion, and the police tried to seize all copies and the manuscript of the next volumes....Diderot [1713 - 1784] was harassed by official interference, this time by a decree stopping the sale and an order to burn all copies. From this point on until completion of the massive work in 1765, Diderot was forced to work in secret, but he succeeded in completing his tremendous undertaking with the occasional connivance of friendly French authorities. For his important work, Diderot was said to have received a meager sum, while the publishers of the Encyclopédie amassed fortunes." 

from: The Myth of the Britannica, Harvey Einbinder, Grove, 1964."

"The practice of rewriting religious material to meet the approval of different groups was sharply criticized by the Watch Tower Society, the official spokesman of Jehovah's Witnesses. It declared in its magazine Awake! (November 22, 1962) that in the conflict between Truth and "Tolerance" the Britannica has sacrificed the truth to avoid making enemies. To support this charge, it compared a number of entries in the eleventh [1911] and 1959 [14th edition] editions."