women who flit across the pages of modern fiction would a
respectable Catholic admit into his home or introduce to his
family? He would not give them his company, but he gives them his
brains. The hem of his garment they may not touch, but the pith
of his life he places at their disposal. Make no mistake about
it. You cannot shake off the influence of your author. His
thoughts become your thoughts. He weaves himself into the woof of
your mind.
[Side note: 5]
How is it that when the proselytiser comes to your parish in
human shape you are all afire, but when he comes speaking, not by
one but a hundred tongues, silently but effectively sapping the
Faith or virtue of your flock, no pulpit rings with denunciation?
All these questions may be answered by another most pertinent to
the priest.
Have the people been taught to realise the danger confronting
them? Have their consciences been awakened? Have we been dumb
watch-dogs while they are being devoured?
[Side note: Apologies]
The treatment of this subject would be incomplete if the stock
apologies for dangerous reading were not dealt with.
When you remonstrate with a Catholic on the character of his
reading, you are sure to be met with some of the following, and
any one of them is supposed to be a complete justification, no
matter how bad the book:--
[Side note: Style]
"_I read these books for the style_." This is sometimes heard
from people whose pretentions to literary taste borders on the
grotesque; but let that pass. Has a paralysis fallen on every
hand that wields a Catholic pen? Does the light of Faith beaming
on a human mind quench the beauties of imagination or dull the
taste? Or, is a perfect style to be found only among the apostles
of evil? Surely the long range of Catholic writers offers an
ample variety of the most perfect exponents of literary style.
Let us be honest. It is not for the style these books are read;
it is because they gratify an unhealthy craving, because they are
soft, sensual, suggestive, and stimulate feelings not far from
the border-land of sin.
[Side note: I see no harm]
"_I see no harm in them_." Now by this answer you implicitly
admit that you see no good. Have you then no remorse for
frittering away such a precious gift of God as time? If the
damned got five minutes of that time to repent, every chamber in
hell would be empty. Yet you squander months and years without a
qualm.
You see no harm in it. Look into your own life and what do you
discover. The unction of prayer sucked out of your soul, your
relish for the Sacraments gone, a dry rot consuming your
spiritual life, a nausea for supernatural things, a taste every
day becoming more clayey, and an increasing appetite for grosser
excitements. Books that you would tremble to touch a year ago you
now devour without a pang; or perhaps the stray shreds of
infidelity are weaving themselves into your future creed. Do not
mind what you see with the eye of a conscience that is already
half-dead. Search deep into your own heart and life, and you will
quickly discover the damage done.
[Side note: Narrow-minded]
"_We cannot be narrow-minded_." Is it then a something to be
ashamed of, if in matters pertaining to our eternal interests we
are cautious and conservative? Not prone to take dangerous risks?
This is the disposition sometimes called narrow-mindedness.
Surely it is better even to be narrow-minded than pagan-minded.
But let us clear our minds of cant and squarely face the
question. Will the person who calls you narrow-minded for
exercising caution in the selection of your books, exhibit his
own breadth of mind by going into a chemist's shop, shutting his
eyes and gulping down the contents of the first bottle that comes
to his hand? Ha! You see how quickly his broad-mindedness is
replaced by most careful caution. But a library is like a
chemist's shop. The shelves may hold health-giving medicines or
the most deadly poisons. As well call the harbour authorities
narrow-minded because they close the ports against the cholera
ship, as to question the just prudence of the man who shuts his
door against the evil book.
[Side note: Up-to-date]
"_We must be up-to-date_." The man that takes this as the sole
principle by which to guide his moral conduct, not only writes
himself down "depraved," but an intellectual imbecile. What does
he mean? He means that he is incapable of thinking for himself;
that he has no fixed chart, but is tossed about in the eddy of
fashion; that he has no principle to guide his own conduct by,
but has to look to the street and follow where the crowd leads.
The most un-up-to-date people that ever lived were the early
Christians. When thousands were swarming to the butcheries of the
Coliseum they refused to be up-to-date and kept carefully away
from the taint of blood and savagery. When the debaucheries of
the festivals disgraced the city, they again refused to be
"up-to-date." No doubt they were sneered at and called
"old-fashioned," "priest-ridden," &c. But it was they, and not
those who taunted them, who showed loftiness and nobility of mind
in taking, not the craze of the hour, but the Gospel of Jesus
Christ as the standard of their conduct.
[Side note: How to meet the Danger]
We have now taken the full bearings of the Danger of the Hour.
The remaining question is--How to meet it? To expose the bad book
is but half our task--its place must be supplied by the good one.
How can this be done? The answer naturally suggests itself. Have
we not the Catholic Truth Society? Yes, and it is a splendid
weapon if worked as it should be; and its admirable publications
pushed into every home.
There is a temptation to belittle these works because they cost
only a penny. Though they are reduced to that humble price to
meet the wants of the millions, we must not forget that most of
them are the productions of the ablest pens, and some of them
contain more thought between their modest covers than many a
pretentious volume. They have the special advantage of being at a
price and in a form accessible to the young. There are many
thousands reading these booklets who would never venture, even if
they could, to face the four hundred paged volume. But the
Catholic Truth Society works do not cover all our needs. They do
two things--they serve to create a thirst for more knowledge, and
act as pedagogues to lead the child to the door of the parochial
library. Here we strike the goal.
[Side note: The Parochial Library]
The parochial library is the crying want of the hour. The one
weapon by which we must beat back an evil which threatens
appalling ruin. Our service of God must vary with the need of the
different ages. At one time He is best served by the pouring out
of martyr blood, at another by the building of splendid churches;
but to any man who watches the drift and danger of our
generation, it is clear as noonday, that the most effective work
a priest can offer God to-day is a well stocked library, open to
every child of the parish.
It has been said that if St. Paul were on earth now, he would be
found editing a Catholic newspaper.
We have seen the devil using the Press with terrible effect for
the destruction of souls; let us wrench it from him and baptize
it for the service of Christ.
The parochial library as an instrument of defence and propagation
is no new discovery.
[Side note: Encyclopedia Britannica]
"As Christianity made its way," says the "Encyclopedia
Britannica," "the institution of libraries became a part of the
organisation of the Church. So intimate did the union between
literature and religion become, that alongside every Church the
Catholic bishops had a library erected." Now, if in times past,
when not one man in twenty could read, the unerring foresight of
the Church led her to adopt the parochial library as her most
able auxiliary, the wisdom of that adoption applies with ten-fold
force to our times.
[Side note: The Blunder of the Past]
Fifty years ago we taught the people how to read; awakened within
them the native desire for knowledge, and then--stopped. When the
national school was built had we established the parochial
library and made it the means of continuing the child's
education, we would have a different Ireland to-day.
We made the youth hungry and then stepped aside. The British
publisher came and occupied the place we should have held. He has
been feeding them on garbage and gutter literature since. God
grant that it is not too late to undo the mischief of our
neglect.
[Side note: What we spend]
It is estimated that we spend four hundred and forty-six thousand
pounds every year on English papers, books and magazines. Almost
half a million of money! How many of our honest rooftrees would
not that sum keep standing? How many of our pure boys and girls
would it not save from the "hells" of Chicago and New York.
It is bad enough to part with the bone and muscle, but a nation
loses her most precious asset when she exports her intellect.
While we have gone on helping the British publisher to the
carriage and the suburban villa, the young Irishman, who feels
the fire of genius throbbing in his blood, sees but two
alternatives before him--to starve at home or sell his brains in
a foreign market.
To-day the priest holds the field, but for how long? Recent
convulsions should warn us; the ground may rock again; then let
us arouse ourselves to the task before us.
[Side note: Awake!]
Whether the priest moves or not the library is sure to come, and
what in his hands would be a centre of diffusive light to the
parish, under the control of semi-educated or conscienceless men
may prove a dark curse.
Let the coarse and sensuous literature of England drop from our
people's hands. Let us encourage native genius to dip her pen
into the old holy well of Catholic truth, and build up a
literature that will be racy of the soil and redolent of its
Faith. Let us feed the minds of the young on the untainted
productions of our own countrymen and women. Let us brace them
with robust Catholic principles that are mortised into the solid
bed-rock of knowledge. Then the most powerful foe the future
holds will blow the trumpet in vain.
But to the priest who slumbers, heedless of the swift march of
time, and the forces of evil now possessing our land, I say--
Dream on, dear gentle soul, dream on! The day may come when you
will awake with a thunder-clap, perhaps to find the Irish Church
in chains.
CHAPTER EIGHTH
THE YOUNG PRIEST'S ACTIVITIES
I should like to see the priest at the head of every movement for
the bettering and uplifting of the people.
[Side note: The Last Fortress]
Ireland is the last fortress of Catholic Christendom. Latin
Christianity is having to struggle for existence; and for us,
time will but multiply, from within and without, the forces
organised by Satan to capture the last stronghold that flies the
Papal banner.
[Side note: Satan's First Move]
His first effort will be in the future, as it has ever been in
the past, to drive a wedge of separation between the priests and
the people. That accomplished, half his battle is won. If he can
get the people to despise the priest in any capacity as a social
man, a politician, &c., he knows that time rubs out fine-drawn
distinctions; they will cease to respect at the altar the man
they are accustomed to flout on the street; and if they once come
to despise the priest, they will soon despise the sacraments he
administers, and challenge the Gospel which he preaches. Let us
forestall him, and bind the people to our hearts with hoops of
steel. For their sakes more than for ours we cannot make our hold
too firm or root ourselves too deeply in their affections. For
what hope could there be for souls if a chasm should yawn between
the pastor and his flock, if those God has united by so many and
such sacred ties should glare hatred and distrust from opposing
camps?
The priest is supreme in Ireland to-day; but in the near future
he may have many a rival claimant; and should the people pass
under alien sway, the last fortress is gone.
Now, when we unroll the map of social Ireland, we discover a
multitude of ways by which the priest can keep in touch with,
direct and uplift the people, and each effort for their sakes
means a fresh strengthening of the bonds that bind the hearts of
priests and people.
Let us take a survey of the situation. That done, the number of
ways by which the priest can become the reformer of his parish
will at once disclose themselves.
[Side note: A Statement of Facts]
Have you ever faced the sad problem:--Why are our asylums
enlarging while our general population is shrinking?
Three main causes are responsible.
[Side note: Food]
_The food we are eating_, especially the use of overdrawn tea. A
gentleman of over twenty years' experience, as governor of a
lunatic asylum, assured the writer that next to drink, overdrawn
tea was the most responsible agent for insanity. That week he had
received a farmer's wife and five strapping sons all stark mad
from the poison stewing by so many of our hearths.
Whilst we were guided by the healthy traditions of our own race,
we fed on solid food--oatmeal, specially suited to our climate,
being a heat-producer, a bone-builder and a tissue-former, rich
milk, butter, vegetables and home-cured bacon. What a poor
substitute for these luscious foods are the weak white bread and
thin cup of tea! The Scotsman has stuck to his national diet; he
has done more, he has forced his porridge on the bill of fare of
every first-class English hotel.
[Side note: Activity I]
Could not the curate, from the lecture platform, in the school
and in private conversation, drive home to the people and open
their eyes to the suicide they are committing? I know one priest
who gets every farmer in his parish to sow every year a quarter
acre of oats for home use. Could not others do the same?
[Side note: Drink]
_The second cause is Drink_. On this question I shall content
myself with quoting a few statistics. They supply melancholy food
for reflection.
In 1899, out of every three placed in the dock for drunkenness in
the capital of this Catholic country one was a woman. I think you
may search the world for a more shameless exhibition.
Out of every thousand of the general population in England, fifty
persons are arrested for drunkenness; out of every thousand of
the general population in Ireland, one hundred and forty-three.
In other words, we produce almost three convicted drunkards to
their one. And still we plume ourselves on our superior virtue.
Our total income from agriculture, the staple industry of the
country, is forty millions. On this, mainly, the nation has to
live. Yet before a penny is touched for food, clothing or
education, almost fourteen out of the forty millions are handed
over to the sellers of drink.
Within fifteen years we lost half a million of our people, but we
consoled ourselves by opening eleven hundred and seventy-five new
public-houses within the same period.
[Side note: Activity II]
To these figures I shall not add one word: it would only weaken
the argument. Will any one deny that the young priest has here an
ample field for his zeal and energy, and a splendid opportunity
of proving himself the reformer and saviour of the people?
[Side note: Emigration]
_The third, most powerful source of lunacy, is Emigration_. It
may seem a paradox to say that the lessening of our people must
naturally mean the increase of insanity. When we say the country
loses forty thousand of its inhabitants yearly, we make but a
partial statement of the case. Whom do we lose? Not the average
class--the youth, and the youth only go. Two consequences follow.
A boy, when he has arrived at his eighteenth year, has cost the
country two hundred pounds, and a girl one hundred and fifty. Up
to that time they were consumers, they produced little. This
enables us to arrive at the appalling fact that Ireland every
year pours seven millions worth of human cargo into the emigrant
ship.
Would that this was all, but worse remains to be said. Who stay
with us? The aged, the delicate, the infirm. The kernel of the
race is going, the husks are remaining with us. Intermarriage
among these, intermingling of enfeebled and tainted blood is one
of the main contributory causes why the walls of our asylums are
enlarging.
[Side note: Remedies]
Let us see what the priest can do to fight the national curse,
and stay the national haemorrhage.
[Side note: The Points to Fix on]
In dealing with the drink question his main purpose should be to
purify public opinion. Till that is done, every other effort must
fail. What use in our inveighing against a vice if the people
insist on labelling it a virtue? Our first effort must be to get
the people to view it in an honest light--to see it as we see it.
Public opinion up to this could scarcely be more depraved.
[Side note: The Village Scandal]
It was not an unusual thing to see young boys feigning
drunkenness and staggering through the village. Why? They were at
an age when pride began to crave for notoriety and applause. They
knew the public to which they appealed, and they took the
shortest cut to win its approbation, and that was by pretending
to be drunk.
An action like that is a terrible verdict against the national
conscience. If public opinion were healthy, if it held for such
mock heroes, not the incense of applause, but a lash of scorn, if
boys were persuaded that so far from exhibiting in their conduct
a manly trait, they were only proving themselves degraded
puppies, the cure would be immediate.
[Side note: Perverted Judgments]
Listen to people talking of a man who has sent his children out
on the world, and his wife to an untimely grave, and you would
think it was some visitation of Providence overtook him, and that
he deserved all our sympathy.
The agent that dares to threaten an eviction has to carry
revolvers and walk the country under the shadow of police
protection; but the father and husband who evicts his own
children and flings them into the slums of foreign cities, and
sends his broken-hearted wife to the grave, not only has his
crime condoned but, by the same people, he is daily smothered in
the rose-leaves of apology. "Poor fellow! Ah, it is a good man's
fault!" Not one hard word. Yet the world outside the shores of
this country are pouring scorn on the degraded name of drunken
Ireland.
[Side note: The Young Men's Pride]
Why not appeal to the patriotic pride of the young men by showing
the contempt and distrust that follow our race because of this
vice? It would touch them to the quick.
[Side note: The Hereditary Taint]
Another point to be insisted on is:--The crime of the drunkard
does not die with himself. Like lunacy or consumption it
transmits a sad heritage to his offspring. Ninety out of every
hundred are drunkards because they inherited tainted blood.
Parents shudder at the bare possibility of their child being born
an idiot, or with some repulsive birth-mark. Yet, before the
infant can lift its hand in protest, the parents poison its life
at the very source and send it on the world with a moral
deformity marking its nature.
[Side note: The Dawn]
These were the two sources of weakness in the past: a public
opinion that fostered, instead of smiting, the curse, and an
hereditary taint that grew stronger with every generation, while
the will to resist became more feeble. Thank God, the dawn of a
brighter day is with us: there is a healthy awakening of public
opinion. The Gaelic revival has for the first time in our history
linked sobriety with patriotism: the word has gone forth that
reconstructed Ireland must not rest on staggering pillars. The
young priest of the future has the rising tide with him, and
Ireland has seen her darkest day.
No matter how we may deplore emigration, we must deal with it as
a fact.
[Side note: Is the Emigrant Prepared]
[Side note: His Peril Abroad]
From what class are the emigrants drawn? From the young. It is
hard to part with them: but there is one consolation. They go to
build up the Church in other lands, but every precaution must be
taken to strengthen them for the trials awaiting them. Now, every
returned American and Australian priest will candidly tell you
that the Irish emigrant is poorly equipped for his new
surroundings.
Dr. Kenrick and Cardinal Gibbons go so far as to say that the
neglect of the Irish priest in preparing his emigrating flock, is
the main source of leakage in the American Church. They are not
able to answer the most ordinary objections, and they have not
moral strength to withstand the shafts of ridicule. In the fierce
cross-currents of unbelief, he is poorly able to keep his
foothold. Many stagger; some fall, never to rise.
We reply:--Look at our Confirmation classes, and at the admirable
lives of the youth before they leave us. Neither of these weaken
the contention. At the age a child is confirmed, he is incapable
of reflective reason; his knowledge is three parts memory. It is
between the Confirmation day and the twentieth year that the
convictions and principles that guide a lifetime are formed. Yet,
this is the precise period during which the young boy is
permitted to starve.
Secondly, the good life of a person reared in a purely Catholic
atmosphere is no guarantee of what he may become when
transplanted to a country where the very atmosphere palpitates
with doubt and denial.
[Side note: Activity III]
Here surely is a field that urgently demands a young priest's
activities.
_Every young priest should be the eldest brother to the young men
of the parish_, the repository of their confidence, the director
of their sports, the organizer of their Feis; and when there is
danger of angry passions running high or of drunkenness getting
in among them, the curate's place is not the study, but the
football field.
To such a curate it would be an easy task to organize the young
men of the parish for a Sunday meeting during the four winter
months, and give them a thorough course in "Catholic belief" or
"Faith of Our Fathers."
This would be a distinct advantage not only to those who are
leaving, but to those who remain. The Catholic mind of this
country is now, by travel and reading, brought into constant
contact with Protestant and infidel thought.
These meetings should wear as little of the appearance of a class
as possible. Boys should be taught to look upon them as friendly
meetings of brothers discussing the weapons with which to face
the future: the session might appropriately close with an
excursion or a social evening.
Now that we have treated emigration as a fact, let us turn to a
few of the means by which it might be lessened.
[Side note: The Summer Swallow]
A constant source of temptation is the sight of the returned
emigrant with flash jewellery, superior airs and stories of
boasted wealth.
[Side note: Activity IV]
When summer brings these returned swallows, a spirit of
discontent with their social surroundings seizes the youth. The
priest's duty is to impress upon them that the bright side of the
picture alone is presented to them: there is another side of
awful darkness.
The successful one they see, but the fate of the submerged
ninety-nine is hidden from their eyes.
Our people emigrate without a knowledge of skilled labour; they
have to take the lowest occupations and bring up their children
in vile surroundings: they are lost in shoals.
Had the youth of this country the writer's experience: did they
see hundreds of their countrymen sleeping in the parks of Sydney,
without the shelter of a roof and without knowing where to turn
in the morning for a bit: could they hear the thirty-two accents
of Ireland in the low streets of dens where souls and bodies rot,
they would try their hands at a dozen means of winning honest
bread before turning their faces towards the emigrant ship.
Could we but take the twenty-two thousand Irish-born convicts out
of the jails of one city--New York--with their clanking fetters
and arrow-branded jackets, and march them through the length and
breadth of Ireland, and show the youth, that, if some wear
bangles, others wear handcuffs, it would go far to cure the
microbe of unrest.
Every tale of distress, failure and hardship abroad should be
repeated in the Irish provincial journals. No effort should be
spared to show the people, not one but both sides of the picture.
[Side note: Activity V Amusements]