Life — March 22, 1906 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Churchmen" - Satire on Clergy and Divorce This satirical piece critiques clergy who loudly oppose divorce while ignoring their own institutional failures. The poem describes churchmen blaming the Bible for rising divorces, calling it a "justice miscarriage," yet doing nothing substantive to prevent them. The cartoons depict clergymen in various states of hypocrisy: one pair of devils "dancing round the altar, emitting blue flame" illustrates the chaos clergy claim divorce causes; another shows a clergyman "degrading complacency" receiving "high praise." The satire's core message: churches organize boycotts and employ rhetoric about "sacraments" and "compliancy," but their real solution—lowering church contributions or reforming actual practices—never materializes. The clergy profit symbolically while accomplishing nothing practical.