[..]the successful candidate is drawn from the church and even the convent- from the mode of education and life that are most adverse to reason, humanity and freedom. In the trammels of servile faith he has learned to believe because it’s absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might deserve the esteem of a rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues, to place the saints of the calender above the heroes of Rome and sages of Athens and to consider the missal, or the crucifix as more useful instruments than the plough or loom.
Edward Gibbon, the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire, pg 632
Random thoughts 