German Catholic as against an Irish Roman Catholic?
“_Ans._ If you ask, is my judgment more in approval of an
American or German than of an Irish Catholic, I should say it
was, because I do not find that the priest can control the
German as he can the Irish Catholic.
“_Ques._ Does the priest control them for evil or for good?
“_Ans._ I think that a great many priests teach them that the
end justifies the means, and that to tell a lie for mother
church is honest.
“_Ques._ Did you ever hear one preach that?
“_Ans._ Well, they were so near it—it’s all the same, probably;
but they did not use those words.
“_Ques._ Have you heard them preach?
“_Ans._ No, sir; they don’t preach much. They will stand a long
time, going through a performance, and ring a little bell for a
man to rise and kneel down, and then they will rise up again,
but they don’t preach much!”
The reader will observe the marked contempt with which those to whom
_we consign the work_ are regarded as being _really inferior_. Why, in
the eyes of this exponent of Christian doctrine and republican
practice, labor, and those who do it, are quite as disreputable as used
to be, in their own region, a class known as _poor white trash_. Now,
from the conditions of this world in which we are placed, there can
never, by any possibility, come a time (as there never has hitherto
been one) in which it will not be incumbent on two-thirds of earth’s
inhabitants to earn their _bread in the sweat of their brow_. It is
God’s decree, man’s destiny, and a large proportion of the one-third
who in any age of the world have managed to exempt themselves from the
consequence of the _fiat_ of the Omnipotent in respect to labor, have
done so by taking advantage of the honesty or simplicity of their
fellow-men. They or their ancestors must have converted to their own
use more than their share of the soil, the common heritage of the human
race and the source of all wealth. There are not wanting at this day
those who consider the laws which perpetuated the right to such
original seizures unjust, and it is just such despisers of the laborer
and appropriators of his work as this reverend gentleman who
unwittingly give the greatest occasion for discontent to those who
fancy themselves aggrieved by the existing condition of things. We are
neither communists nor agrarians, but we see that, even in this happy
country, it will be very possible to convert the laboring class into
such by subjecting them to the scorn of such men as this witness,
causing them to feel that they are regarded as really inferior, and
incidentally exciting the envy which the sight of ranches of
seventy-six thousand acres of land in the hands of one individual is
calculated to produce. Such contempt of the laborer is un-American, to
say nothing of its entire lack of Christianity, and to us it seems that
no men of any nationality or religion could be so injurious to the real
interests of any country as those entertaining it. We do not say that
we would _trade_ the Rev. Mr. Blakeslee _for a Chinaman_, but we hope
and believe that there are few Americans of his way of thinking in
regard to labor, and trust that soon there will be none of _that stock_
left. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence must have long
ceased to be remembered, and Christianity will be in her last throes,
ere such views shall obtain; and we have confidence in the permanence
of this republic, with an abiding faith that God will be with his
church.
We will not bandy words with Mr. Blakeslee as to his opinion that
Americans generally regard the Irish as _inferior in intelligence and
morality_. It is one of those lump statements which impulsive or
prejudiced men sometimes make about a whole nation in the heat of
conversation, but which seldom find their way into sworn testimony. We
are American to the manner born, and we not only do not believe the
fact, but, so far as both reading and intercourse with our countrymen
have enabled us to form an opinion, we should assert the direct
contrary. There is, we well know, about all our large cities a class
corresponding to the “hoodlums” of San Francisco (and we are sorry to
add that they are nearly all Americans) who fancy that their mere
accidental birth upon this soil has not only elevated them above all
other nationalities, but raised them above the necessity of work. We
can lay no stress on the opinions of this class. By all other Americans
not influenced by hatred of the church, and, indeed, by many who do not
regard her favorably, we have always heard remarked (and statistics
will prove) the almost entire immunity of the Irish from the crime of
fœticide; their large generosity to their friends and relatives, as
proved by the proportionately larger amounts of money yearly
transmitted by them to the old country; their unconquerable industry;
the chastity of their women, though, by their condition in life, more
exposed to temptation than perhaps any other body of females in the
world. It is denied by nobody that where a soldier is wanted the
Irishman is always on hand, and that he compares very favorably with
the soldier of any other nation. As to intelligence, Mr. Blakeslee must
surely be poking some mild fun at us under the sanctity of his oath. If
he had ever tried to get the advantage of the most illiterate Irishman
in conversation, if he had ever heard or read a true account of the
result to any one who did so, he would not, for shame’s sake, appear
making the wild assertion that the Irishman is deficient in
intelligence. The common experience of any local community in the
United States will at once brand the statement with its proper stamp,
for which three letters are quite sufficient.
But here comes the real gist of Mr. Blakeslee’s charge of immorality
and stupidity against the countrymen of Swift and Burke, of Wolfe Tone
and O’Connell, of Moore and John of Tuam. “If,” says he, “it were not
for Romanism, they would be in course of time a very excellent people.”
In other words, if they would cease to be what they are, if they would
sit under the ministrations of Rev. Blakeslee and his like, if they
would now give up the religion from which centuries of persecution and
penal laws have failed to dissever them, they might finally come to
have as thorough-paced a contempt for labor and as strong a belief in
the inferiority of the laborer as this reverend gentleman himself.
“Paddy,” says Mr. Blakeslee, “you are a Papist, you are an idolater,
you are very immoral, and you have very little sense. Will you be good
enough now to become a Congregationalist?” The Irishman’s blood boils,
fire flashes from his eye, the church militant is roused in him, and
away runs Rev. Blakeslee, more than ever convinced of the inferiority
of the mean Irish and their imperviousness to the charms of
Protestantism!
Among the ephemeral sects of the day, depending, as they do, on the
temporary whims or idiosyncrasies of the individuals who “run them,”
there is apt to arise a fashion in morality, so that it is something
not unlike fashion in ladies’ dress—very different this season from
what it was the last. Now, these sects are loud and noisy, making up in
vehemence for what they lack in numbers, logic, and authority. Just
now, and for some years past, the sin which it is the fashion to decry
to the neglect of all others is that of drunkenness, which the church
has always held to be a great scandal amongst men and a sin against the
Almighty. But, while the church has received no new light on the
subject, the various sectaries have erected “drinking” into the one
typical, the sole crying vice, the incorporation of all the other sins.
A man is now practically “a moral man,” provided he does not use
liquor; and no other crime, short of murder, is, in the eyes of the
Protestant community, so damning as is addictedness to drink. There is
no doubt but that, in the early part of this century, liquor was drunk
by the Irish to too great an extent. There is just as little doubt that
a great change for the better has come over the Irish in this regard,
and that the good work is still going on. But the Irish at no time
exceeded the Scotch in their consumption of liquor, nor did they ever
equal either the Danes or Swedes, both thoroughly Protestant nations.
But if you give a man a bad name you may as well hang him; and the same
holds good of a nation. It suited the sectarian temperance orators to
select the Irish as the “shocking example” among nations, and falsely
to attribute the exaggerated drunkenness which they represented as then
existing to the influence of the church. Such a cry, once well set
going from Exeter Hall and the various Ebenezer chapels, is not easily
quelled; and as it is much easier for most men to take their opinions
ready made than to frame them for themselves, there does remain on the
minds of a large number of people a lurking distrust of the sobriety of
the individual Irishman, and a general belief that drunkenness is his
peculiar and besetting national vice. The statistics of the quantity of
ardent spirits consumed in Ireland since the year 1870, as compared
with the quantities used in England, Scotland, or Wales, will convince
any one who desires to know the truth; and we are not writing for those
who are content to defame a people by the dishonest repetition of a
false cry. These tables prove that, man for man, the consumption
referred to is in Ireland not so much as in Scotland by over three
gallons, in England by nearly two gallons, and in Wales by a little
less than in England. So long, however, as Sweden overtops the
consumption of the highest of them by the annual amount of two and a
half gallons per man, and Catholic Ireland holds the lowest rank as a
consumer of ardent spirits, we have no hope that it will “suit the
books” of sectarian temperance agitators to call attention to the
facts. It is much easier to defame than to do justice, and by this
craft many people nowadays are making a livelihood. Yet this false
charge of a vice which betrays by no means the blackheartedness
involved in many others—which, bad as it is, is by no means so heinous
as defrauding the laborer of his hire, swindling the poor of their
savings, watering stocks, accepting bribes, etc., etc., and which is
not even mentioned in the decalogue—is the only one that could at any
time have been charged with a decent show of plausibility against the
Irish as a nation, or against the individual Irishmen whom we have in
this country. We ourselves must admit that we thought there was some
truth in it, till we searched the statistical tables to find out the
facts, and we here make to the Irish people the _amende honorable_ for
having misjudged them on the strength of the cry of sectarian
demagogues.
Going to church can, in the mind of Mr. Blakeslee, mean only one
thing—_i.e._, going to hear a sermon—and so he says that “_Catholics
can hardly be said to go to church_.” Certainly the prime object of a
Catholic in going to church is not _to listen to a sermon_, nor should
it be so. It is hardly worth while to attempt to enlighten a man like
Mr. Blakeslee, who himself habitually sheds light from both pulpit and
press; but if we are to take the knowledge he seems to possess of the
Catholic Church as a specimen of the information he diffuses on other
points, what rare ideas must not his hearers and readers attain of
matters and things in general! Yet he is a man who professes to have
made a theological course, which should involve not only the study of
the doctrines and practises of his own sect, but also, to some slight
extent, of the remaining sects of Protestantism, to say nothing of the
church on which two hundred million Christians rest their hopes of
salvation. He knows no more of the celebration of the Blessed Eucharist
in the Church of Rome than to describe it as “_going through a
performance and ringing a little bell for a man to rise and kneel
down_”; and yet the fellow does not hesitate to announce what is the
doctrine and what the practice of the church—nay, to hold himself forth
as a champion against her tenets, as though he were divinely
commissioned to instruct thereon. To see ignorance is at all times
unpleasant; blatant ignorance combined with assumption of knowledge is
doubly nauseous; but the supereminent degree of loathing is only
excited when ignorance or conceit of knowledge elevates itself into the
chair of the spiritual guide and denounces what it in no whit
understands. _Be these thy gods, O Israel?_ Surely it is not to hear
the lucubrations of men of this stamp that any sane people would go to
church. We can only wish to the sheep of such a pastor increase of
knowledge, decrease of prejudice, and an enlarged ability to tell truth
on the part of their shepherd! We repeat that Catholics do not go to
church primarily or solely to hear a sermon. But they do go there to
join in spirit at the celebration of the divine Sacrifice, to pray to
God for grace to assist them through life, to make and strengthen good
resolutions, and to obey the command of the church. We all believe that
the devout hearing of one Mass is far more valuable than the hearing of
all the sermons ever delivered or printed since the sermon on the
Mountain of Beatitudes; and we lay no stress whatever on the best
formulæ of words ever strung together by the ingenuity even of the most
pious and learned of mere men, when compared with the expiatory
sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood, instituted by him and celebrated,
not merely commemorated, by the priest to whom he has given the power.
Should it ever happen—and as the mercy of God is infinite, and his ways
past finding out, it is not impossible—that this poor deluded man
should be brought to a knowledge of the truth, with what shame and
confusion of face would he not read his ignorant and impudent travesty
of the worship of God in his church!
If there be, as there doubtless are, other Protestants who get their
instruction about Catholics from Mr. Blakeslee and his like, and who
believe with this witness that the _priests mean to keep them_ (the
Catholics) _as a power in America_ under their (the priests’) control,
it would not be, and is not, worth our while to attempt to argue the
point with such. They will so believe, like the relatives of Dives,
though one rose from the dead to confute them. Ephraim is joined to his
idols; let him alone! But we appeal to the Catholic voters of this
country, of American or foreign birth, to answer: Has your bishop or
parish priest ever undertaken to dictate to you how you should vote?
Has your vote, on whatever side given, interfered in the slightest
degree with your status in the church? Do you know of a single instance
in which one or the other of these things has taken place? We cannot
lay down a fairer gauge. If these things take place they cannot occur
without the knowledge of those among whom they are done and upon whom
they are practised. They are Americans, and it is a free country. Long
ere this would the country have rung with the proof, had any such been
forthcoming. Mr. Blakeslee’s lying charge meant, if it meant anything,
that Catholics were to be kept apart as a political power; for neither
we nor any other Catholic desires or hopes otherwise than that the
church, _as a religious body_, shall, till the end of time, be kept
separate and apart from all the sects of Protestantism, which we
believe to be heresy and schism.
One would naturally always rather give an adversary the credit of
having honestly mistaken the facts than be obliged to consider him a
wilful slanderer and falsifier. But there are circumstances in which
the assertion made is so patently false, or has been so often
thoroughly refuted, that, though the heart would fain take refuge in
the former course, the brain refuses to accept any but the latter. Such
a case occurs where Mr. Blakeslee says that “_a great many priests
teach them that the end justifies the means, ... that to tell a lie for
mother church is honest_.” Every Catholic who has learned his catechism
knows that this is not so. We believe that _he_ knew it was not so when
he said it, but that his own innate malevolence against the church, and
the spirit of the father of lies speaking through him, compelled him to
the utterance of this vile slander. For which great sin may God forgive
him: he stands in sore need of it.
But after all, if Satan is so easily caught on a cross-examination as
he on this occasion allowed his servant to be, we need not stand in
much dread of his lies. The same man whose lips are not yet dry from
saying _on oath_ that the priests teach their people to tell lies, when
asked if he ever heard any single priest so teach, shuffles out of it
thus—his own words need no comment from us:
“_Ans._ Well, they were so near it; it’s all the same,
_probably_! They didn’t use those words!
“_Ques._ Have you ever heard them preach?
“_Ans._ _No, sir!_
We, on the contrary, think that it was not all the same “_probably_,”
and heartily thank his satanic majesty for his negligence in failing to
inspirit his servant with the knowledge that, in order to be believed,
in swearing as to what priests preach in their sermons, it is necessary
to be able also to swear that the witness has heard at least one such
sermon. _Valeat_ Blakeslee.
Other preachers testified; and when the question arose as to Catholic
foreigners, more especially Irish Catholic, all betrayed the cloven
hoof, though some veiled their hatred in much more seemly words than
did others. It had been our intention to examine their testimony, in so
far as it touched the church, _seriatim_; but further reflection
induces us to believe that from these few pages the reader can learn
sufficiently the depth of the ignorance and the extent of the hatred of
these blind leaders of the blind. If the reward in heaven be exceeding
great to those whom all men shall hate, revile, and despitefully use,
surely the glory of Catholics, and of Catholic Irishmen especially,
will be great in the next world; for certainly they are not loved of
men in this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A LITTLE SERMON.
FROM “THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS.”
The Poor One of Assisi trod one day
Bevagna’s road, and, praying by the way—
His heart seraphic, like the choirs above,
Filled with the sweetness born of heavenly love—
Lifting his eyes, that loved the earth’s fair face,
He saw, thick gathered in a bosky place,
A host of birds that flitted to and fro,
Filling the boughs with twittering murmur low.
“Wait here, my brothers,” fell in gentle speech;
“Unto this multitude needs must I preach:
“Here by the wayside, good Masseo, bide
Till I these little birds have satisfied.”
Into the field he passed, the flowers among,
Where, on the bending stems, the songsters swung.
Gathered the wingèd things about his feet,
Dropped from the boughs amid the grasses sweet:
Reverent dropt down to listen to God’s word,
Silenced their song that his Poor One be heard.
Touching with his gray robe their eager wings,
St. Francis softly stilled their flutterings.
Sedate they sat with crested heads alert,
The near ones nestling in their brother’s skirt.
“My little birds, ye owe deep gratitude
To God, who has your forms with life imbued,
“And ever in all places should ye praise
Your Maker, who in love keeps you always,
“Since by His hand to you is freedom given
To fly where’er ye will, on earth, in heaven:
“Since from his strong and loving hand ye hold
Your double garments guarding you from cold:
“Since, that no evil blight fall on your race,
He gave in Noe’s ark your sires a place.
“And unto him deep gratitude ye owe
For this pure air whence life itself doth flow.
“And then ye sow not, neither do ye reap,
Yet God for you doth plenteous harvest keep;
“The streams He gives you, and the limpid spring
Where ye may drink of waters freshening;
“He gives the hills and valleys for your rest,
The great-armed trees where each may make his nest.
“And, since ye cannot spin nor sew, his care
Weaves the soft robes ye and your fledglings wear.
“How much he loves that doth so richly give!
Praise him, my little birds, all days ye live!
“So keep ye well from sin of thanklessness,
And God keep you, whom let all creatures bless!”
Bowed all the little birds their heads to earth,
Oped wide their bills, and sang with holy mirth
Their _Deo gratias_ when St. Francis ceased,
Yet rose not till his hand their wings released
With Christian cross signed in the happy air,
Giving the songsters leave to scatter there.
Softly, so blessed, the grateful birds up-soared
And marvellous music in their flight outpoured:
Looked not at earth, nor him they left behind,
Parting in ways the holy cross had signed.
Singing they cleft the quarters of the sky—
Type of St. Francis’ mission wide and high:
Type of his little ones who nothing own,
Whose humble trust is in their Lord alone—
So nourished as their brother birds are fed,
Whose great Creator doth their table spread.
Listening the lessening chant, St. Francis smiled,
Praising his Lord for joy so undefiled.
—_From the French of F. A. Ozanam_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF MARY. By the Rev. J. De Concilio, Pastor of St.
Michael’s Church, Jersey City, author of _Catholicity and
Pantheism_. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co., 9
Barclay Street. 1878.
We must apologize to Father De Concilio for being late with our notice
of his book. Our excuse is, simply, lack of time for its
perusal—anything but lack of desire; for, on learning that the author
of _Catholicity and Pantheism_—a work that has won unstinted and
generous praise from all competent critics, and established the fame of
its author as a profound philosophical thinker—was engaged upon a work
about the Blessed Virgin, we hailed the promised boon as a feast, both
intellectual and devotional, of the rarest kind. And are we
disappointed? On the contrary, our most sanguine expectations are
surpassed.
Father De Concilio tells us in his preface that this new book is “a
necessary part” of his former work on _Catholicity and Pantheism_,
“though it may seem to have very little to do with it.” “For Mary,” he
says, “is the best refutation of pantheism, the universal error of our
time. The substance of this error is to absorb the finite in the
infinite, and, consequently, to abolish, to do away with, all created
agency. Now, Mary, as we shall prove, represents created agency in its
grandest, sublimest, and most magnificent expression. She represents
created agency in all the mysteries of God relating to the creature.
She is, therefore, the best and most convincing refutation of
pantheism, the rock against which the mighty waves of this universal
error must exhaust their force.” Again: “Pantheism, in pretending to
exalt humanity, degrades it and deprives it of everything that causes
its glory. Mary, the grandest specimen of human nature, exhibits human
personality in its most colossal proportions, and is the glory, the
pride, the magnificence of our race.”
We quote these passages from the author’s preface, because they furnish
the key-note to the whole work.
The volume opens with an admirable “Introduction,” showing how
Christianity was needed to bring fallen man to the knowledge and love
of God, and how “the world owes Christianity, along with its results,
to Mary”; also, how the same instrument must bring back the knowledge
and love of God to-day, lost again as they have been in great part;
whence “the necessity of true, accurate, solid knowledge of Mary.” Then
follow the five books into which the essay is divided, the chapters of
each book being subdivided into articles. This arrangement at once
gives conciseness to the argument, and much relieves the strain upon
the reader’s thought.