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Show OPEN ADDRESS TO THE CATHOLIC FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF THE DIOCESE OF SALT LAKE. To you, who know how jealously your church guards the chastity of your wives and daughters, and the care she takes in' teaching and explaining 1 the law and will of God; how lhat unalterable and imperishable church of Christ your church and ' mine insists on the sanctity of the human soul I . created to the image of God. and the dignity of the i . human body consecrated by Jesus Christ when he I Assumed our flesh and blood, we address ourselves I in this epistle. I To you. Catholic lather and mothers, intrusted j to our spiritual care, who know how the life of the I infant in the womb is defended in its helplessness J by the threat of eternal damnation to the abortion- I it ; how, over the head of the faithful wife that a lustful and brutal husband would throw aside for another, she holds the shield of her supreme au- I ' thority, and draws around the unhappy woman a j circle of excommunication which man crosses at Lis 1 peril In you we appeal. iWe live in an age. and in a land that attribute very little to the grace of God, that question His right to interfere with human affairs, and which 5 scarce dream of admitting a hereafter. We live in i ' a country where ihe Catholic church and its insti- I tutions have been sn long and so systematically cal- I uminatod that the unthinking masses row look up- 5 on her as the incarnation of superstition, despotism f and tyranny. Xow. as in the time of our Divine I Lord, 1 ho evil forees destroying society -protest again-t the interference of Jesus Christ with its I purpose? and pleasures, saying now as they did when I Christ, wa upon earth: '"Jesus of Nazareth, art I thou come 1o destroy us ' We know thee, who thou art, the holy one of God!" (Luke, 4:34.) " Jesus, ihou son of the Most High God, we adjure thee by C4od that thou torment us not.' (Mark, 5:7.) So-eiety So-eiety sinking into irrcligion and immorality protests pro-tests against Jesus Christ or His Church intrud-, intrud-, ing upon its domain, and demands to be let alone prying out with the demoniacs of Judea: "Why ?omest thou to torment us C I Material civilization, culture and naturalism ere now so pre-eminently valued, that men are for- retting iheir own souls, and are overlooking the I horrors and abominations of domestic and social I life revealed in almost daily trials for murder, se- duction. alienation and divorce. This alarming cou-I cou-I dition of society which is now looked upon as a I matter of course is habitual, constant and threat-' threat-' ening. I Numerically our country is Protestant. Though I discovered, explored and charted by Catholics, it j' "'as settled and peopled by Protestants. Why, then, are we retrograding in all that makes for the honor, 1 he morality, the nobility of our people? Has hereby here-by become akin to paganism, or is every departure I from the Catholic church a step backward to heath- I en materialism i Infidelity is fast driving all sense of shame, all ! iJ'"a of individual and family purity from among I men and women, boys and girls, and. the degreda- I tion into which women of wealth, education and j outward respectability are falling marks the decay ! " Christian life in Protcstanism. The shocking j debasement of female chastity and the loathsome r depths of an educated man's foulness revealed by ; -the. woman now on her trial for murder in Wash-" I ington, 1he story told by her is so obscene and I morally revolting, that we gasp for breath while i reading it- These degenerates sounded the depths of the sea of heathen abominations. All history records re-cords no fouler tale of beastly lust, of vulgar adul-1 adul-1 ' . -, ll IIBWl.JW". Illllllll. 1 Ullllll I I, - I pu, WWWWI W JM ! I ! tery, of the shameful and cowardly murder of infants in-fants forming in the womb and unable to defend themselves, of inhuman hard-heartedness, of violated violat-ed pledges, of unparalleled contempt for Christian decency, than is told in the testimony of this sinful woman. In the vilest annals of heathen Rome, in the bestiality of human savagery, there i9 no fouler tale. Never was the honor of man or the heart of woman wo-man impeached with viler sins, meaner acts or more unpitying heartlessnesg, and never was a man or woman more execrated by the "clean of heart" than the dead man and his living paramour. Catholic fathers and. mothers you who believe that the voice of the New Testament is the speech of God, listen to this: "These sons of malediction have eyes full of adultery, sensual men, walking according ac-cording to their own desires, they are ragiug waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion to whom the storm of darkness is reserved forever." (Peter, 11 LP.) And to this: "And as they liked not to havejlod in their judgment, God delivered them over to a reprobate sense to do these things that are not fitting; being filled with all unclean- ness, wickedness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, mur-der, strife, deceit." Pom., 1:2S.) And St. Paul, once again, brands these wicked people with the marks of traitors when lie writes: "They who do such things, I have told you, and now again tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ." (Phill., 111., S.) Nor may it be said in extenuation that these people the Browns, the Bradlcys, the Thaws, the Beers sin and are foul through ignorance. The woman who is now on her trialfor murder, who. to save her worthless life confesses to a participation in the most shameful acts of dishonor and sin. was a member of the Salt Lake Woman's club, of the Poet's Pound Ta- ' ble, of the Woman's Press club and of a pretentious religious organization which calls itself a church, and denies the. Divinity of Christ. With the sinful sin-ful man whom she lured from his legal wife, she read the poets: "We readvBurns, Tennyson and Chaucer together," she boasts. They were not of the Orchard and Adams class, thtey were educated in the public and high schools; and one of them in a university. But with all this education were they ever taught, ordid they ever sincerely, honestly say a prayer to God j Did they ever give a hearing to conscience the voice of God warning the human soul? Did they believe in the incarnation, the crucifixion, the divinity of our Lord; in the judgment to come, in' "Depart from me you accursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." And if not, of what use now is his education to foie murdered man whose body is decomposing in one c-f our cemeteries. It is with deep anguish and bitter regret we are forced to admit that our criminal and divorce courts are becoming be-coming the common tombs where the honor, the modesty and the chastity of many of our educated women are being interred. "Well," you ask, "what can we Catholics do to arrest the decay or stay the degeneracy V Nothing. Apart from our prayers, our example and the purity of our own lives, absolutely nothing. Stand aside; these people will exterminate themselves; they are doing it now. They did it in New England, and the old and historic names, familiar to our fathers, have disappeared from the census. It is as true now as in the days of the prophet: "The people who will not. serve God shall perish." It is almost impossible to live, uncontaminated, in a social at- mospnere cnarged with mepnitic impurities, where even boys and girls of tender years are morally deceased, but Catholic parents saved themselves and their children from infection in a more corrupt land and age, in Rome, in Antioch, in Alexandria, and by adopting the same precautions and making use of the same sacramental remedies. Catholic parents can do it now. It is supremely sad; but these people are destroying de-stroying themselves by divorce, by murder, by suicide, sui-cide, by abortion. We appeal to our clergy and to Catholic fathers and mothers to instruct well the young Catholic children in the saving truths of the church, to watch unceasingly and faithfully over their morals and to lead them often to the sacraments that they may be saved from the contagion of the social and moral diseases corrupting and destroying society. L. SCANLAN, Bishop of Salt Lake. |