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Show SUICIDE. It has long been recognized as a fact, by persons who take an intelligent interest in the existing social so-cial and moral conditions of civilized nations, that the crime of self-murder is committed more fre--q.uently in non-Catholic than in Catholic countries. Official statistics have long since established that sociological fact, An editorial writer ui a Transatlantic Trans-atlantic daily' alluded to the fact, as a matter of general .knowledge, in an article which he penned the other day and he was ' immediately taken to task by a reader who had as little discretion as he had acquaintance with the subject, lie was a thorough-going follower of Luther, and he stoutly denied de-nied a statement as to the truth or falsity of which be had not the faintest, idea. In replying to him the writer of the article mentioned the sources of his information, saying: "Those are Emile Durk-heim's Durk-heim's 'Le Suicide; Etude de Sociologie'; Wester-gaard's Wester-gaard's 'Die Lehre von Mortalitat und Morbilitat'; Morselli's 'Suicide Charts;' the vital statistics of various' countries. Both Durkhehn and Morselli. working independently on the statistics, and neither having any preconception to prove or support, sup-port, arrive at the conclusion that Catholicism is a greater social preventive of and protection against ' suicide than Protestantism. It was of these writers writ-ers I was thinking when I wrote that the fact I was stating was the outcome of the studies of 'sociologists 'so-ciologists of great repute.' " |