| OCR Text |
Show FUTURE RELIGIOUS ISSUE. . Are two mighty forces Catholicity and atheism athe-ism to contend in-a deadly, gigantic struggle for supremacy, the issue of which will be fraught with terrible consequences to the human race!1 Will the different isms and strange, unique doctrines become be-come welded together in one marvelous organization organiza-tion of infidelity? At the present time there is apparently a strong reaction in favor of the Catholic Cath-olic Church a constant drift back to the faith of our ancestors. Protestant bodies are daily showing show-ing unmistakable signs of still greater disintegration. disintegra-tion. Perhaps it would not be a wild prophecy to assert that the time is rapidly approaching when Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, etc., will have to unite with the Mother Church of Christendom for self-preservation and in order to present a united front to all powerful opponents of Christianity. A great many Socialists are materialists, pure and simple. May not a few years find all these nien and measures, political and non-religious, welded together in one great sect of atheism, whose battle cry will be "Away with Christianity." Will infidelity lock arms Avith Roman Catholicity for the very life of one or the other t If there be no God, the Catholic Church is bound to fall. She has no earthly strength. Her commandments are harsh, inharmonious and puerile to the free thinking spirit of the age. Only on her spiritual side can she boast of superhuman power. Without belief in the Divinity of Christ, and a promise of happiness sorrow beyond the grave, she cannot keep her millions mil-lions of followers together. Christianity was brought forth in sorrow and travail. Its life has born- testimony to the nature of its birth. Greater sufferings may be before it in the future. Its antagonists are most zealous in propagandism at the present time. Stronger energy marks their efforts. Every vein and heart throbs with keen yearning to efface a belief in God. Where are the Pauls and Bernards to lead the vanguards van-guards of the Savior's followers? Some such men are at present in dreadful need. Many of those who are linked to Christianity by birth, education or affection, or even duty, are growing cold in their faith and charity. It is custom and not vital conviction that makes thousands participate par-ticipate in sacred ceremonies. What is the remedy? rem-edy? Away from the pulpit Juimau eloquence is dead. Out of t lie eighty-five or ninety millions of inhabitants in ihe United States, thirty millions follow Christianity, leaving between fifty and sixty millions non-Christians. It is useless and cowardly cow-ardly to evade the issue. All non-Christian and many sectarian bodies whose members incline in-cline more to hatred of the Catholic Church than love of Christ are drifting rapidly rap-idly to the massive ranks of modern paganism.. Atillas and Alarics are rising in thousands secreting secret-ing themselves in a temporizing cunning behind the palladium of various isms and theories. When the opportune time presents itself they will throw off all disguise, the skull and erossbones will be hoisted: cutlasses will W J tn 1. : ment of dreadful blasphemies, and neither women nor children, nor anything held in reverence will escape desecration. By such men they never were and by such men they never will be. -Iugersollians and French infidels think no more of Christ thfin Annas, Caiaphas, Herod, Judas and Pilate did. If he came again in humility instead of as he will conic, in terrible majestic power, grandeur and authority, au-thority, these are the men who would urge the easily swayed multitudes to cry out for the release re-lease of Barabbas and kill the Savior. They can not deny it because past history proves it. The Sadducees and Pharisees were sectarian, contentious, proud and self assumed reformers of the theocratic government of God on earth as represented rep-resented by the Israelite religion of Judoa. There never was and never, will be a religious reformer, whether he he prompted by laudable motives or not, whose followers did not loot and desecrate. A ro- former of morals is God-given, but an iconoclast of all that is holy and true who tries to change the immutable doctrines of eternal omnipotence is verily of an evil source.' What do these modern pagan soldiers of Pome stand for? They stand with serried ranks for detestation of Christ and all He represents, for the total abolition of spiritual spirit-ual instruction in parochial or public schools, for easily contracted civil marriage and a consequently felicitous violation of the sacred covenant between man and woman, giving to the home the manners of the stable and the slime of the hog pen. To sum up. they stand for all things that are the incarnation incarna-tion of evil, with satan at. their head urging them on, in iheir own infatuous blindness, to eteriml perdition. per-dition. What does Christianity represent, encourage encour-age and propagate? Obedience to duly appointed and elected governors, rulers and laws; the sanctity sanc-tity of the home and the married state; the proper instruction of children to reverence God and obey their parents; the indissolubility of the connubial contract; in fact, the incarnation of all that is good and holy, with Christ and eternal life as the final, unutterably happy goal. The Catholic Church never was, is not now and never will be cowardly. It accepts the challenge of all its numerous antagonists and those within her fold who may be tempted to align themselves against her and will fight, with the lion-hearted courage of Christ her founder, which lie exhibited when he looked bravel jt t10 muititudes shrieking for His death. Chris lost l!l;lny believers and fob-lowers fob-lowers by His uncompLj mi.-;,,,, att;tll,ie and dauntless daunt-less heroic stand IS - th, trutu and so ha., His church. She lost Engl,ild because of one divorce. di-vorce. Again, in th be,sllining Gf Elizabeth's reign, the church had the oP1)ortimity of regaining regain-ing the country if the puling pontiff at Borne would recognize Elizabeth's legitiIna(.y 0f birth, but no ; the Pope said her mother was an adulteress and she herself illegitimate and n.,t entitled by the laws of God or man to England's throne. In consequence conse-quence of this unalterable decree, of Rome, Elizabeth Eliza-beth turned Protestant, alihough she was crowned a Catholic. It would be well if th0,t fditors 0f publications of comparatively large non-Catholic religious bodies who are constantly belaboring the Catholic church and her doctrines would direct more ot their great energy, talents and time in making common com-mon cause against 1h0 restless : and resourceful enemies of Christianity. for rit large in glittering-letters glittering-letters of gold on the horizon of the future are-the signs of a rapidly approving colossal conflict that will be waged between the followers and worshippers worship-pers of idols of gold and infidelity and those of the Roman Catholic Chujreh nf Christ. So it has been in the past. So it will be in the not far-distant future. |
