Part 1 (2/2)
In following up the various a.s.saults made by the Gates of h.e.l.l upon the Church established by Christ, one is struck by the absolute method and order they betray. There is a mind behind them all, and that mind has been working vigorously for nineteen centuries. Arianism, Manicheeism, the paganism of the sixteenth century, Protestantism, all were conceived along religious lines, and the thought of G.o.d was ever their central proposition. With the French Revolution, born of Deism in England and Rationalism in Germany, there came into view the spirit of Paganism, which has set itself against Christianity for over a hundred years. Even Paganism, with its aping of the ancients and its depreciation of Christian doctrine and morality, has yielded before the human craving for spirituality, and is falling to pieces rapidly. But the Gates of h.e.l.l never grow weary, and the mind that in past ages could trouble the peace of the Church rises to a new effort, an effort that, with strange fatuity, it dreams will be final. Arianism, Protestantism, Paganism failing, the new religion of degeneration takes on a darker, a more repellent aspect. It no longer hides behind religious phrases, but comes out into the open, and those who can read its character have called it Satanism.
Under the guise of Modernism it strove to plant its poisonous weeds even in the vestibule of the Church, but, exposed through the vigilance of our great Pontiff, it made use of the Protestant churches to propagate its errors, until in many pulpits the authority of Jesus is as much a stranger as if Christ had never been born. Out of this chaos came the strange philosophy of Charles W. Eliot with its use of Christian phrases and its negation of the Christian religion. Eliot's nonsense, however, was but a stepping stone whereby the last a.s.sault might be made upon the Church. The plans of this a.s.sault have been developing for years in many universities of the country, in the yellow press, and in many organizations of men who have grown weary of law and seek in absolute license the gratification of animalism. Satanism is thus the danger of the day.
After many exemplifications of the creed of Satanism in the matters of divorce, abortion, race suicide, white slavery, not to speak of burnings at the stake and the thousand and one horrible crimes that a ”wicked and adulterous generation” perpetrates in the open light of day, the world was prepared to hear its praises sung from the rostrum of one of America's largest educational establishments.
One evening last year an eminent professor, speaking in one of our largest universities, formulated some of its tenets, the horror of which, let us hope, will shock even the most depraved of minds. In Satanism charity shall be no more; that spirit of love which made life tolerable, which brought the smile to the face of poverty and suffering, which, born of Divine love, spreads its wings over the darkness of earth and creates faith in better things and hope of higher destinies--that charity shall have no place in the creed of these men, no more than it shall have place in that land of eternal despair whence first that creed came forth. More satanic still, the hand of this new religionist is red with the blood of the helpless, the infant whose feeble wailings wring the heart of a human mother, the blood of the infirm whose hollow cheek bespeaks the pity of the more fortunate, or whose halting step awakens the manhood of the young and n.o.ble, the blood of the aged who have given the years of their lives to the cause of humanity. To Satanism all these, to whom Christ had said, ”Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy burdened, and I will refresh you,” are obstacles, in the pathway of conquest to the Gates of h.e.l.l. This Satanism gives as its excuse the cause of economy as against humanitarianism, as if Divine Providence during the many centuries that have pa.s.sed has not fully demonstrated Its ability to care for the world, to prevent by natural means the danger of over-population to keep the balance in human affairs as wonderfully as It has in the circling of the stars in the firmament.
One notes these various a.s.saults not with any sense of fear for the Church to which Christ has promised His a.s.sisting presence, until the end of time, but as signs of the times, as warnings to those who thoughtlessly are led into the toils, to those who for a little temporary gain would deliver up the souls of their children that they may drink the doctrines of Satanism and lie down in pleasant places to die of its noxious poison.
_MODERN LITERATURE._
The day has gone by when the discussion was between Christian and Christian; it is now a stand-up fight, a fierce struggle, every day becoming more fierce, between faith and infidelity. A spurious philosophy has prevailed under one name or another in every age, from the days of Democritus down to our own; but it has received recently an impetus from the teachings of Materialists. Emboldened by their success in research, the professors of the Materialistic school have attempted to lift the mysterious veil of nature, and have challenged the truths of Revelation on the most fundamental principles of the Christian creed.
In fact the Materialistic theories which today deify reason and make matter eternal, and which recognize in matter the principle and perfection of every form of life, are the substratum underlying almost every species of modern literature. It is this materialistic philosophy in the trappings of popular literature which is filling the earth with crime and making the lives of men a veritable inferno. Its pernicious influence has been stealing over the minds of men till it has succeeded in shaking to its centre the whole fabric of social life in almost every civilized country.
The irreligious works of the European continent have been translated into English, and circulated in every variety of form from the most ornate to the cheapest and most accessible. They are on the counters in the department stores, in the most flas.h.i.+ng advertis.e.m.e.nts where their most prurient qualities are held out as inducements to the buyer. Nor are works of a similar spirit and tendency wanting in our own literature. And these works, adapted to every cla.s.s of readers, and to every grade of intellect, revive the old errors, while fertile in the production of new ones, flatter the pride of the understanding, stimulate the pa.s.sions of the heart, and diffuse their poison in every department of human learning and through every form of publication by which the popular mind can be reached.
An evil press, largely circulated and read by many who suspect no evil, is rapidly sapping the faith of the mult.i.tudes.
Unfortunately there exists in our nature a propensity to evil. Whatever flatters our pa.s.sions or vicious inclinations we, as a rule, are readier to follow than what is good and virtuous. Hence we find that bad books are more generally read than good ones, and that newspapers wherein religion and morality are outraged, have a very wide circulation. If anything more than bad example tends to propagate vice, it is bad reading. Vice in itself is odious, but when decked out in the false coloring of a cleverly written book it becomes enticing. Young inquisitive people--and young people are generally inquisitive--are tempted.
After perusing such a book their horror of vice is much lessened; they take up another, and so, by degrees, their ideas become perverted.
Nearly all men agree that it is the familiarity with vice which develops all the immoral and vicious propensities of human nature, and it is this familiarity with the face of vice which is so contagious, and draws so many into the vortex of crime in the large cities while its absence keeps country life so pure and untarnished.
It is indeed hard to say which is the more dangerous among books--those which are written professedly against Christ, His Church and His laws, or the furtive and stealthy literature which is penetrated through and through with unbelief and pa.s.sion, false principles, immoral whispers and inflaming imaginations. To read such books is a moral contagion--it is to imbibe poison--it is certain spiritual death.
It is certainly a melancholy reflection, that any such books should be extant among us. It is sad to think that any of the human species should have so far lost all sense of shame, all feelings of conscience, as to sit down deliberately and compile a work entirely in the cause of vice and immorality, which, for anything they know, may serve to pollute the minds of millions, and to propagate contagion and iniquity through generations yet unborn--living, and spreading its baneful influence long after the unhappy hand that wrote it is mouldering in the dust.
It is a striking observation made by one of the Fathers of the Church that ”as the authors of good books may hope to find their future crown lightened by the degree of wisdom and virtue which their writings impart through successive generations, so the writers of evil books may well dread an increase of punishment in the future world proportionate to the pollution which they spread, and the evil effects which their writings shall produce as long as they continue to be read.”
To what frightful deserts must the writers of modern literature look forward in accordance with such a prediction! The literature of today, light and popular, stately and philosophical alike, teems with immorality and infidelity. It displays itself in every form of poetry and prose, in lectures, essays, histories, and in biblical criticism.
There it stands palpable and terrible, like Milton's Death, black and horrible, obstructing the light of heaven, and overshadowing G.o.d's fair creation. The press is a Catholic inst.i.tution: a Catholic invented it; a Catholic first printed books, and the Catholic Church first fostered it.
But the enemies of Catholicity have seized it and turned it into an engine of destruction to faith and morals.
The newspapers in most cases teem with scandals which absorb the thoughts or arouse the pa.s.sions. Such reading familiarizes the young with the details of vice, and their better nature is overshadowed by the vicious existences pictured, while the moral strength to resist temptation is slowly but surely weakened.
Then there is that inward strife and struggle--that warring of the pa.s.sions from which no one is free--that tendency to evil which seeks to cast off the salutary restraints of religion, and which has carried down with the current of innate corruption the greater part of mankind. All these things are borne in upon the soul, day by day, and year by year, as though life were to last forever, until the unhappy reader begins to abandon the absolute realities of life and law and to dwell in the house of a diseased imagination like a leper waiting for the moment of final dissolution.
What we want thus today is an arousing of the Catholic conscience in this regard, the cultivation of Catholic instincts, and the acquiring of Catholic habits of thought. While the banners of atheism and anarchy are waving throughout Europe, the forces of infidelity and indifference are doing their deadly work at home. The spirit of revolt, born of corruption and bred of disease, has swept across the ocean and finds a resting place nearer home. The enemy has laid hold of a great part of the Press and is using it for the destruction of morality and the perversion of truth. The wells of knowledge and the fountains of truth are being daily and hourly poisoned by means of the current literature.
A spiritual pestilence is pa.s.sing over the earth, and the souls of millions are peris.h.i.+ng through its foul agencies.
If G.o.d, therefore, has given to Catholics wealth of ability and strength of mind, and richness of opportunity to engage in the intellectual combat which is being fought everywhere around us, they ought to use these means to oppose the tide of infidelity and indifference which is sweeping over the nations by putting against it the barrier of good books and Catholic reading. In many quarters the mists are beginning to lift; many intelligent people are beginning to look to the Catholic Church because of her openly proclaimed doctrines, her magnificent works in building up the mighty fabric of the social world, and her lofty ideals of humanity. Secularism in education is confessing its failure at home and abroad.
The toiling ma.s.ses are turning to the Church for the solution of the vexed problems of labor. The creeds are falling to pieces for want of unity, cohesive principle and authority. Thousands are flocking back to the old Church in sheer weariness of spirit. The thousands would swell into millions if we were up and active in the dissemination of good books, and did our part in helping on the cause of Catholic literature.
The Catholic book, the Catholic magazine, the Catholic newspaper is the fiery cross spread from hand to hand, to light up the darkness and to kindle the faith of the mult.i.tudes.
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