Part 10 (1/2)
Let these enemies of the country unfold their banners of ”Infidelity,”
”Socialisht,” ”Scepticism,” ”Communism,” ”No God,” ”No Christ,” ”No Pope,” ”No Church,” and a thousand others; let therind their teeth, let thee, let them shake their heads with an air of majesty, as if they would say to the Church, ”We bury you to-morrorite your epitaph and chant your De Profundis; our league is hty, our forces are multitudinous, our weapons are powerful, our bravery is desperate”
The Catholic Church calmly answers, ”I know you hate me because I am the palladium of truth and of public and private morality; I am the root and bond of charity and faith; I love justice and hate iniquity But it is for this very reason that I will re, in the end, always victorious, I will not cease to bless and to triumph All the works of the earth have perished; time has obliterated them But I remain, because Christ remains, and I will endure until I pass from my earthly exile to my country in heaven
”Human theories and systeht, but they have vanished; numberless sects have, like so ainst , have been lost in the vast ocean of forgetfulness Kingdorandeur are no more; dynasties have died out, and have been replaced by others
”Thrones and sceptres and crowns have withstood me; but, immutable, like God, who laid my foundation, I am the firm, unshaken centre round which the weal and woe of nations move--weal if they adhere to it--woe if they separate froold, I will bless the world with one of wood
”Tear down le fold of it if you dare! Sound your battle-cry; rally your hosts--marshal your ranks! Storm these lofty su that waves above theuard that flag have never flinched before the foe, and the bravery that shoots through every film of these hearts has never faltered On with the conflict! Let it rage! Our line of battle reaches back to Calvary That line has never been broken by wildest onset! These soldiers have never fled! We are the sons of veterans who have hteen hundred years--marched and never halted-- to the old Imperial Guard of Faith! We never yet have met a Waterloo!
”I am a queen--but a warrior-queen You will never find me on a throne here below Banner in hand, I aranted a day of truce to ainst all ar against Christ--war against all ar against ainst truth--this is my destiny
”Peace here below, I have never known Rest here below, I have never found I am always on the !
”Therefore, in the storm and shock of my battle of to-day with my enemies, my soldier-children fear not Around h soain--and the deserters are not h a Judas Iscariot h a few of craven spirit may flee? The ranks they left are filled by brave men and true
”From the hill of Calvary to the hill of the Vatican, from Peter before the Council to Pius before the Sardinian, , uninterrupted battle--and lorious victory”
We cannot but smile e hear infidels talk of the downfall of the Church What could hell and its agents do more than they have already done for her destruction? They have employed tortures for the body, but they could not reach the spirit; they have tried heresy, or the denial of revealed truth, to such an extent that we cannot see room for any new heresy; they have, by the hand of schism, torn whole countries from the unity of the Church; but what she lost on one side of the globe, she gained tenfold on the other All these have ignominiously failed to verify the prophecies of hell, that ”the Church shall fall”
Look, for instance, at the treether with its twin sister--the unbelief of the nineteenth century Whole legions of church reforation, and a thousand and one systeainst the Chair of Peter, and swore that the Papacy would fall, and with it the whole Church Three hundred years are over, and the Catholic Church is still alive, and, to all appearances, orous than ever The nations have proved that they can get along very ithout reformers, but not without the Catholic Church Men are foolish enough to dreaame, and, from the summit of his empire, walked into exile, whilst his victireat stateso, that those who tried to s the Papacy, and with it the whole Church, always died of indigestion Let the enemies of the Catholic Church beware! If they dash their heads against this rock, they must not be astonished to find them broken
And what power has Protestantism to check the National Crime--the murder of helpless innocents? Everybody knoho knows anything about the subject, that a the Roman Catholic population this crime is hardly known The reason for the rare occurrence of this criion The doctrine of the Catholic Church, her canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without exception, teach, and always have taught, that even the intention of preventing or destroying human life, at any period from the first instant of conception, is a heinous criuilt to the crime of murder
Now as to the power of Protestantisuished Protestant physician of Boston, says: ”We are compelled to admit that _Protestantism_ has failed to check the increase of criminal abortion” (Criminal Abortion, p 55) ”There can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked, on the one hand, by the confessional, and by denouncement and excommunications on the other, has saved to the world _thousands of infant lives_” (Ibid p 74) ”During the ten years which have passed since the preceding sentence ritten, we have had ample verification of its truth _Several hundreds of Protestant woainst whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon further inquiry, that all but tere only no to the confession”--(Ibid)
It is, then, not Protestantism, it is the Catholic Church alone that has the power to oppose herself to the propagation of so heinous a cri the blood of helpless innocents
The third great evil which hasus, so as already to have extorted e tie_
The faroundwork of civil society If the family be Christian, the State will also be Christian; and if the fa untarnished It is the holy sacraives sanctity to the fath to civil society To reject that sacrament is to sow the seeds of revolution Revolution in the faovernment, which, by its very nature, should restrain immorality, allows the separation of ht of revolution in the faovernment will feel the dire effects of its own corrupt doctrine
Now it is a e tie, so prevalent in our country, is owing to Protestantism If any one wishes to learn how the Continental Reforarded the Sacrae (if he can do so without a blush), or, better still, the dog peraain, that has always regarded the Christian e as the corner-stone of society; and at that corner-stone have the Popes stood guard for eighteen centuries, by insisting that Christian e is one, holy, and indissoluble Woman, weak and unprotected, has, as the history of the Church abundantly proves, found at Rouaranty which was refused her by him who had sworn at the altar of God to love her and to cherish her till death
Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to the world the sad spectacle of divorces as nues, of separations of husband from wife, and wife fro to lust the widest e and adultery; whilst the nineteenth century records in its annals the existence of a coamists within the borders of one of the most civilized countries of the earth, wefroar to repudiate his laife, in order to give his affections to an adulteress
The female portion of our race would always have sunk back into a new slavery, had not the Popes entered the breach for the protection of the Unity, the sanctity, the Indissolubility ofwhich the conqueror and warrior swayed the sceptre of eht but that of force, it was the Popes that opposed their authority, like a wall of brass, to the sensuality and the passions of the hty ones of the earth, and stood forth as the protectors of innocence and outraged virtue, as the chaainst the wanton excesses of tyrannical husbands, by enforcing, in their full severity, the laws of Christian e If Christian Europe is not covered with hareained a foothold in Europe, if, with the indissolubility and sanctity of matrimony, the palladium of European civilization has been saved fro to the Popes ”If the Popes”--says the Protestant Von Muller--”if the Popes could hold up no other ainst the brutal lusts of those in power, notwithstanding bribes, threats, and persecutions, that alone would render thees”
And how had they to battle till they had gained this s had they to endure, what trials to undergo? When King Lothair, in the ninth century, repudiated his laife in order to live with a concubine, Pope Nicholas I at once took upon hihts and of the honor of the unhappy wife All the arts of an intriguing policy were plied, but Nicholas remained unshaken; threats were used, but Nicholas re's brother, Louis II, appears with an army before the walls of Rome, in order to compel the Pope to yield It is useless--Nicholas swerves not froed; the priests and people are maltreated and plundered; sanctuaries are desecrated; the cross is torn down and trampled under foot, and, in the e, Nicholas flies to the Church of St Peter; there he is besieged by the arhts; left without food or drink, he is willing to die of starvation on the tomb of St Peter, rather than yield to a brutal tyrant, and sacrifice the sanctity of Christian e, the law of life of Christian society
And the perseverance of Nicholas I was croith victory He had to contend against a licentious king, as tired of restraint; against an emperor, ith an army at his heels, caainst two councils of venal bishops, the one at Metz, the other at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had sanctioned the scandals of the adulterousit cost hi ages we find Gregory V carrying on a si Philip of France In the thirteenth century, Philip Augustus, htier than his predecessors, set to work all the levers of power, in order to is Hear the noble answer of the great Innocent III:
”Since, by the grace of God, we have the firm and unshaken will never to separate ourselves from Justice and Truth, neither moved by petitions, nor bribed by presents, neither induced by love, nor intio on in the royal path, turning neither to the right nor to the left; and we judge without any respect to persons, since God Himself does not respect persons”
After the death of his first wife, Isabella, Philip Augustus wished to gain the favor of Denis The union had hardly been solemnized, when he wished to be divorced frone, and annulled his lawful e