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Show CATHOLIC OPINION. "The Irish guards," soys the London Tablet, "marched (on St. Patrick's day) to the English Martyrs (church), Great Prescott street, wearing the queen's shamrock." This is the first we have heard of the "queen's shamrock." sham-rock." What sort of plant is it and where does it stow? New York Freeman's Free-man's Journal. We never relished the creation of a great navy for the United States. We did not think one. was needed, as. we had no -foreign possessions to protect, and no nation was foolhardy enough to i attack us at home. But since we have become an imperial power we presume we shall have to have a great navy. One objection we had to a navy was its fondness for kicking, up a fuss in foreign waters. To this has been added the danger of our old tars going off at half cock whenever they get a few drinks in them. We hope something will be done to eliminate both these menaces to the peace of the world. Western Watchman. The New York Tribune strongly commends com-mends the righteous severity of a Brooklyn judge, who instead of merely fining two women found guilty of the public use of bad language, sent them to prison for a considerable term and announced his intention to impose like heavy penalties on all persons eonviet- ! ed before him of like offenses. Says I the Tribune: j The use of profane and obscene language lan-guage in public is a great evil. The , streets, the parks and all places of I popular resort are infested with it. There ought to be protection against indecent sounds as well as against in-I in-I decent sights and acts. j Nor is the evil confined to ruffians ; and harridans. It is unhappily true ! that there is a considerable prevalence of bad language among men and women, wo-men, too of otherwise decent morals and of much refinement and culture. Especially has there been in recent years a reallystartling increase in the use of one certain expletive, to the thoughtful and reverent mind perhaps the most shocking of all. To take the name of God in vain in any form is bad enough. But worst of all, and now unhappily most common, is it to take it in vain in the form of the name of Him whom even a sometimes ribald playwright described as A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed. Tt would be in the interest not only of piety, but of common decency, to put a check upon this incessant profane pro-fane bandying of the name of Jesus, and upon all evil language. In the Catholic church societies of the Holy Name exist now in almost every parish, not only to check the temptation to profanity among men and boys, their members, but also in protest against this awful sin and in reparation for it. The Pilot. A Protestant clergyman. Rev. J. R. Wakeford, speaking recently at a meeting of the English Church union at Liverpool, said this about Orangemen: Orange-men: "The knowledge that William III won the battle of the Boyne is the entire en-tire theological knowledge of Orangemen. Orange-men. Orangemen have changed their religion but never their character that of truculent rascality." With the character of the Orangemen Orange-men as thus emphasized there is nothing noth-ing in conflict in the entire history of the brotherhood. They have been a "bad lot" from the start. Western Watchman. Under the heading. "This Wpv for Rome," a staff writer in Reynolds' Newspaper (London) makes interesting remarks as to the tendency of ritualism ritual-ism in England. He says: "Many good people are unaware that the established church in England is dirfting rapidly into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. It is known, that at least half the state-supported clergy are what is called ritualists. The interiors of the state churches, where these gentlemen officiate, are hardly distinguishable from those of the Catholic Cath-olic church. Indeed, they repudiate the term 'Protestant,' and now call them- ! selves 'Catholics.' thnf i" rrr"- ? the universal Christian church, which, Of COlirse. is the Phnrrh ,t .... . vi. so-called Church of England, w hich embraces em-braces not a third of the population of the kingdom, is purely an article of parliamentary manufacture. The state made it. the state rules it, the state can unmake it." And he says that the .ritualistic clergy are being constantly received into the Catholic Church." noting the fact that "only the other day one of this proselytizing band, in charge of an Anglican church in the east end of London, went over to Rome with about a hundred members of his former Protestant Pro-testant congregation." The same writer, while emphasizing the "danger," pays tribute as follows j to the work of the Catholic Church: ! "There are Protestant societies alive J to the danger, but they err by being too much of zealots. They can see no good in a church which, whether or not I one agrees with all its dogmatic tenets has the everlasting credit of preserving preserv-ing art and learning through the dark j ages and standing as the protectors of the people against the rapacious and bloodthirsty nobles of the feudal period. pe-riod. The very cathedrals, which are the glory of our country, were built by Catholics, and in all the Protestant period there has not been erected even one church building to equal any of these hymns to God in stone." The Protestants had no need to build cathedrals. They stole what they wanted from the Catholics, and in Ireland Ire-land they seized and held all the noble church fabrics erected by Catholics and they hold them still, without even the excuse they had in England, that the mass of the people had become Protestants. New York Freeman's ' Journal. |