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Show BEEFSTEAK CATHOLICS, scanda? (Sidney (Australia) Catholic Press.) "With perhaps more desire to ingratiate ingrati-ate themselves with their Protestant friends than to gratify their appetites, there are. it is sad to relate, a large number of Catholics wno break the law of Holy Church by eating meat on a Friday, it is a phase or shoneenism fortunately found little among the poorer people, who make the majority of the Church in this country, butv affecting af-fecting chiefly those well-to-do and falrly-to-do who benefit so little by prosperity that as they get on in the world they begin to think more of the approval of man than of heaven. By ordering a steak in a public restaurant ! on Friday they hope to give the impression im-pression that they are broad-minded, ! that there is no bigotry about them, and that they belong to altogether a superior class to those benighted coreligionists co-religionists of theirs who scrupulously I order fish. This type of Catholic is to be found well represented in' Sydney, and in the various eating houses we have seen them in numbers aping this false liberalism in religion. But if they only knew it, instead of creating a good impression on Protestants, whose opinion they would appear to hold dearer than that of God. His Church and their fellow Catholics, they are earning contempt and derision, for, -curiously enough, the Protestant mind can no more be reconciled to a Catholic Catho-lic eating meat on a Friday than the Christian mind to a pork-eating Jew. Instead of impressing his Protestant friends with the idea that he is a decent de-cent fellow with no nonsense about him. they regard him with a vague distrust, and among themselves talk of him as a bad Catholic. His action savors of hypocrisy, especially whe they know that he goes to Mass, and they are rather inclined to dislike than like him for his laxity. 4 ?v $ "We are at present treating this subject sub-ject from a purely world point of view, and we can assure Catholics who are so very anxious to stand well with Protestants that they will never lose their friends by remaining faithful to the precepts of their religion. The Catholic servant who enters a Protestant Protest-ant household and hopes to secure her position by eating mutton on Friday, at once becomes an object of suspicion, and her mistress is far more likely to count the spoons daily than raise her wages. It has been observed that when a Catholic girl has descendefl to petty peculation she has grown careless care-less of her Church, and one of the first signs of Catholic indifference is the non-observance of the law regarding Friday. In society the same feeling obtains. The Catholic young man who happens along on a Friday to take pot luck with a Protestant family, and with an affection of liberality, and says nothing when he is helped to bef incurs the suspicion of his hosts. "He Is ashamed of his religion," they whisper, whis-per, and they regard him as a 'poor fellow, a weak-kneed sycophant, who cannot be trusted. On the other hand, respect and esteem is the portion of "the man who quietly declines the meat and reminds them that.it is a day of abstinence ab-stinence with him. It Is just what they would expect, and he wins that additional regard which any man of any denomination inspires by unaffected unaf-fected adherence to his principles. It is just the difference between the sho-neen sho-neen and the gentleman, and Protestants Protest-ants are quick to appreciate it. Dr. Corbett, Bishop of sale, once met a Protestant gentleman who sought to pose as a liberal man in religious matters, mat-ters, half hinting that he was ready to become a convert. "For," said he, "I am afraid that I am a bad Protestant." Protest-ant." "Therefore," observed the bishop, bish-op, icily, "I am afraid you would make an equally bad Catholic." Just as undesirable un-desirable to Protestants is the meat-eating meat-eating Catholic, In fact, they would prefer even a pork-eating Jew. 4 But this meat-eating practice is not confined to public restaurants and chance dinners where silly and coward- ly Catholics try to be smart and semi-atheistic semi-atheistic to win an approving smile which thev are astonished to find is uithheld. It is to be found in the home of the really bad Catholics, and in the I home of the mixed marriage. The wife who marries a Protestant will sometimes some-times plead that she has an excuse to ignore her religious obligations. But there is none. Her husband has married her as a Catholic, and only in extreme cases does ho endeavor to make her lax in her religious duties. Even agnostics agnos-tics prefer a religious wife, if only for the sake of the children, who, in after life, reflect their mother. The excuse sometimes advanced by the Catholic ; wife for her laxity is the trouble of preparing two sets of meals on Friday Fri-day one for her husband and one for herself and. children. So out of nothing noth-ing more than laziness she sits down to meat and offers her children the worst possible example. How can she expect her little ones to grow up good Catholics if they see her every week violating one of the ordinances that at school and in church they have constantly con-stantly impressed upon them? If the mother is prepared to take the church so lightly, the children will come to regard re-gard their religion in the same way, and from eating meat on Friday will soon leave off attending' mass. Sometimes Some-times ill-health is pleaded, but they do not trouble to get the dispensation any priest will readily grant if the case is genuine. Very rarely has the meat-eating Catholic the shadow of an excuse. Usually the habit is begotten of either indifference, laziness or shoneenism. It is the thin end of the wedge which opens the way to the worst results. Complete neglect of Church duty very easily follows, and the breaking of any or several of the commandments becomes be-comes a very easy thing. Once a Catholic Cath-olic becomes indifferent to, or breaks away from his faith, his complete spiritual, ruin becomes be-comes only a matter of time. Yet, perhaps, the majority of the meat-eating meat-eating Catholics do not imagine they are running any such danger. So absorbed ab-sorbed in things of the world are they that, losing sight of the spiritual aspect as-pect of the case, they backslide with the hope of gaining the most frivolous of material advantages. Some want to get on in society; others do not desire to put their hosts to a momentary inconvenience; in-convenience; others, again, will not deny their appetites, and yet another finds it too great a task to fry a piece of fish for themselves, while they grill a steak for their Protestant husbands. In every case meat-eating on Fridays is the outcome of moral cowardice, and in every case, too, the man is unworthy of the sacrifice, even if it were attained, at-tained, which is very rare. One can generally exclaim, at the sight of a Catholic eating meat on a Friday: "Here is a shoneen," a creature upon whom no one can rely, for he is betraying, be-traying, for the sake of his stomach or through moral cowardice, not only a. sacred law of the Church, but a principle prin-ciple which Catholics all over the world, in all stages of life and under every circumstance, have honored throughout through-out the ages. Dr. Johnson said a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket, and while many are disposed to regard punning as an amiable weakness, weak-ness, it is certainly true that all classes and creeds in every country look with suspicion on the Catholic who puts his appetite above a religious principle. prin-ciple. And the most despicable of all Friday meat-eaters is the Irishman, or the son or daughter of Irish parents. For through the dark ages of persecution and privation to which no other race was subjected, our forefathers preferred pre-ferred death with honor to the tempting tempt-ing dishes ofthe souper. How contemptible, contempt-ible, therefore, are their degenerate sons who so disgrace their creed and nationality in a land of luxury! |