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• n  a derogatory reference to priests who use their influence to control secular or political affairs
• n  the skills involved in the work of a priest

• In the 1820s and '30s, there was the Workingmen's Movement, pitted against the evils of "kingcraft, priestcraft and lawyercraft.

Quotes

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• Mark Twain in Philadelphia Inquirer
  We were in the heart and home of priestcraft - of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting unaspiring worthlessness,Twain wrote from rural Italy. "And we said fervently, it...