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Show f I , "This is the ' 'i ' h r Cburd) : Universal 5 I ; I I . , faith." l CHURCH CALENDAR. I junc Dcvolion Sac-rcil Heart. 1 2ti. S. olh after Pent. ss. John and Paul. E. 1 I IVtrr -"ir: G" Iatl11- I 7. !M. St. Ladislaus. ?. T. St. Ircnaeus. ' ' I "'!. W. SS. Teter and Paul. Th. St. Paul. TO MARY THE HELP OF CHRISTIANS. ; O Mother .-when life's storms beat high And waves ric fierce and wild Then xk down fmm thy throne above On Me, thy lonely child.; When shadows lower o'er my path 'l Sweet Virgin undetiled " f ' Remember her who thee reveres And keep thy lonely child. While wand'rintf ihrouph this vale of tears ; Console, O Mother mild, 1 And ever prove a star of hope To guide thy lonely child. But. when the lat dark hour draws nigh, I I By pang and fear beguiled Ca.-to'cr me then thy mantle blue, f ) Protect thy lonely child. , . . Till earth for her shall be no more, Xo more to be exiled, i She rests withing thy loving arms, i Thy happy, happy child. I Cecilia Holzborn. A LESSON" ON" CHURCH GOING. The following from the New York Examiner, a r.aytist organ, is an index straw indicating that .Protestants are beginning to recognize the fact ; That there is a vitality in the Catholic church that i i r.nt found in Protestantism : j "Nearly every Sunday morning we have oc- I ( ii-ion to pass a large Roman Catholic church. At thai hour about 10:00 o'clock the building is crowded to the outer doors, for, probably, the sec- I'lid or third time during ihe morning. A few min- iites later, when the great congregation pours out i into the avenue, one sees that a marked feature 'X A ihe crowd is the number of young men it I vniains. What is it that attracts them there? Xo i intellectual feast has been spread fcr ihem they I would not have appreciated it had there been. Is I it not because they have been taught from child- i hood up that there is something vital and vitalizing j in t lie service i The forms of Protestant worship i : iv not vital in their character. .Elaborate or sim- pie. lhey carry in themselves no such significance as does the ritual of the Mass. It is not the ex- ; lernal observance, but the message it conveys that , gives it value, if value it has. And to give it value : t!ip message must be one that burns in the heart of : the messenger till it finds utterance. The young are not stirred by critical speculations. They want si message positive, searching, authoritative, hot ) with conviction. When a man is on tire with such a message, he will have hearers, and will find his nay to their hearts. The spirit of devotion will not be la-king when the vital truths of the Gospel are presented -with flarlming tongue and positive conviction." con-viction." THE MORALITY OF IRISH CATHOLICS. ; (Tribute by an English Protestant Clergyman.) ; llr-v. K. L. Everett, an English Protestant min- ? i-H r. who visited Ireland recently, wrote for the ClinV'ian World his impressions of Catholicity in ! thai eountry. After praising the Irish observance ef Sunday, he writes: Dy their fruits ye shall :ik.v them,' said the Lord of all Christians, speaking speak-ing of Uis diciples. Apply this to the Catholic IrMi. Is their religion all forms and superstitions, r has it a real hold upon their hearts And lives? 1 : T.ikc the text of the Ten Commandments. Is purity j a Christian virtue? Where is Protestant -Britain in comparison with Catholic Ireland in regard to tins? Simply nowhere. All statistics and al Ites- unionies affirm this. A young man who sins against ; " w oman in this respect m Ireland is" so condemned s by all his neighbors that his life is a burden to him, and he is forced to emigrate. Ewn in the wild j eirhurst of 1708. it is admitted on all hands that ii-t a woman Mas wronged at the hands of rebels, liilc both before and after it, sins against Catho- lie women on the part, of ihe troops were shamc- -fully frequent. What stronger testimony can wc have to the power of the Catholic religion than its I ri'iiity to hold in restraint the strongest passions '!" human .nature The conditions of life under whieh ihe Catholic religion obtains this conquest j hi Ireland increase our admiration for its power, j Ihf- people live there crowded together in their poor cabins, and thus necessarily are in the way of i ' mptation; and their land, too, is full of priests i swum to a single life, yet in familiar and constant -M-hd intercourse with family life and with the I "'he rsex. The island is full of inflammable ma- ;' rial and dangerous situations, yet it is the purest h'ii'l under the sun. at loat as regards the Catholic part of the population. How can any fair-minded 'hri-tian man withhold high praise to the Catholic: i t'-a'-h'-'i-s for this good practical fruit which their cachings bear? Then, again, take ihe test of fam-J fam-J jiy affection, lie that, provided not for his' own, it! especially for those of his own house, says the -postle, has denied the faith, and is worse than in infidel. I have heard steady, well conducted, rc-ligious rc-ligious men in England, if called upon to contribute (I an aged father or mother, complain most bit-j bit-j ierly of having ihe old father or mother hung i. s round their necks. The feeling and conduct of the' !ri-h to their aged parents might well shame such :;- these, and I have quoted actual words heard from 3 he lips of agricultural laborers decidedly above the . n vera go of their class. In the histories of evictions in Inland, three generations are generally found in the cabins; a place by the turf fire having cc-cii kept for ihe old folks. Then look at the mone.v t- ni from America to ihe father-land by the ex-iled ex-iled lrih. How many a rent which the lend would ti -t carry has been paid out of the earnings :f sons and daughters in America, sent over here by rhem to the old folks at home ? There was no no poor law in Ireland till IStf-S; until ihen lhey had to keep iheir old fltid sick, or see ihem iiiarvc. In the early part of this cenlury ihe support of these were ', tually estimated to cost the poor of Ireland some :;.ti00.ono a year out of their incredibly scant earn- ir.ps. No doubt the poor law has been a bad school master in England, and the absence of it may have strengthened family ties in Ireland. But the poor I law has never, .we believe, been the chosen Catholic mode of relieving the poor. And in Catholic Ire- i land it is certain that family aeffction and family Jnutual. help far exceed what are to be seen in P.ritain. This again is a good fruit of no mean 1 "rler. Take again, the lest of ordinary crime. Out- 1 i-ide of agrarian outrages there is less of' murder nud of savage brutality, or of stealing, or wife-b'-ating, ov of drunkenness, than in England. The records of the court show this. In our own . travels in the country we saw only three druukeu men, and ? thpy were .each of them, English soldiers. If it ( were not for the land question they would hardly need any police in Ireland. Even with the crimes 1 j :wHch sprung cut of a bad system and bad fovcrn- i ment, there is. less crime per head of the population popula-tion in Ireland than in England. So that when tried by the test of obedience to the Ten Commandments, Command-ments, Catholic Ireland again carries awav the palm from Protestant Britain. I am told by the Protestant residents in Ireland that, as household servants. Catholic girls arc proverbially preferred, even to protcstant girls. Is not there material in all this for much profitable reflection on the pari' of those of us who have been brought up to regard ropery as a child of the devil ? SAINT-MAKING. The earliest conscious note of the church Is sanctity. While it was yet. fresh in Memory that the church was one and Catholic and apostolic, the. creed ran, "1 believe in the Holy Church." Catholic was added afterwards, and one and apostolic later ill. " This may be said of the essence of the church; for if it were one, Catholic, and apostolic, as the Book of Common Prayer has it, without being holy, it would not be the Church of Chrts. Xow the church is holy in its saints; and that the faithful niay know who these are, the church must declare it. It is therefore a function of the living church not only to nurture saints in all ages, as a vine is cultivated to produce fruit, but to declare them to be such, as, the keeper of the vineyard does in saying : '"These are not wild grapes but grapes from my vine." This function is exercised by Borne in beatification beatifica-tion and canonization, and by Rome alone. The Church of England is destitute of the power. All the asints whose days are now marked by services in her prayer books are, what, may be called, Xew Testament saints, principally apostles. In her calendar, other saints are noted as almanac marks, but have on services, and were all canonized by Rome before the sixteenth century, except Iving Charles (martyr) 30th of January, King Charles II (29th of May), and Papists' King Charles II (29th of May), and Papists' conpiracy (5th of Xovem-ber). Xovem-ber). These two latter saints have for many years past been in disgrace and deprived of their services. Since the ''Reformation' Rome has gone on with the process, and added many illustrious saints to the calendar; such as St. Ignatius, St, Charles Borromeo, St. Alphonsus, St. Paul of the Cross, St. Philip Xeri, St. Francis Xavier, St. Teresa, St. Francis of Sales, St. Vincent de Paul. etc. But, with the exceptions mentioned above, the Church of England has not added one. The stock of saints she took over from the Catholic church, and on her authority, still forms her capital. As some people believe that the age of miracles ceased with the Xew Testament, so lo the Church of England saint-making ended with the "Reformation." "Reforma-tion." Cannot a sincere inquirer see in Ihese facts a proof which of the two claimants is the true and living Church of God? Do not the saints bear witness wit-ness to the Church of Rome? St. Francis Xavier spreading the faith "of Rome in India; St; Philip Xeri saluting the English students at Rome with "Salvcte flores raartyrum;" the .children of St. Ignatius Ig-natius giving their lives to preserve the faith of Rome in England; St. Paul of the Cross praying for the conversion of England. Disraeli made famous fa-mous the saying, ''For my part, I am on the side of the angels." Who will be on the side of the saints? THE SCAPULAR. r Suppose that some one who signalized himself in the defense of his country is honored by that country with some badge of distinction, will such a person cast aside his honors contemputuously ? Should not the piece of brown' cloth, made in the form of a scapular, and entitling" us to special 1 blessing, bo worn with respect ? It may be held that the wearing of the scapular is simply a bit. of superstition. Granted if we attribute at-tribute any power to the material object, the bit of cloth. But we do justly attribute great power to the Mother of God in whose honor scapulars are worn. The Blessed Virgin herself, when, in 1237 she appeared to St. Simon Stock of England, as-sure4 as-sure4 him that those wearing scapulars with honor and devotion would never be punished with eternal torments; surely, the Mother of the Savior has the power of putting her promise in execution. The wearer, however, must hold the badge with veneration venera-tion and endeavor to lead a life of rectitude. It will not do to expect protection through the scapular scapu-lar unless there is a corresponding endeavor to lead such a life as will merit the stamp of her approval. Since the advantages are great and the requirements require-ments few, the badge of the Blessed Virgin should be worn with respect as a garment of protection, just as one wears the insignia of office of privilege, placing trust in the protective power of the Mother of God. All Catholics should be careful not to neglect to avail themselves of the simple means of grace by enrollment among those who desire the aid of the Mother of God against the temptations of life and in the struggle of the hour of death. LUTHER'S FAILURE. But what a change has come over the non-. non-. Catholic world since the days of Luther. Luther's fN grievance against the-church wa$,that it kept "ihe Bible, the word of God, from the people. So he ; : said, and his battlecry, " as lie rose in rebellion against ihe church. ' was, "The Bible,' ihe whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible!" But what most ardent admirer of Luther would dare to raise that battlecry loday? The only defender of the whole Bible now is the Catholic church. A few years ago a Protestant minister in one of our Xew York .churches, seeing how 'the Bible was slipping from the fingers and front the hearts of his congregation, read from the pulpit ihe encyclical of Pope Loo XIII iu defense of the Scriptures as the word of God. Martin Luther must have turned in his grave! In many who attack the 'Bible in ihis age one is pained to note a great want of fair reading. They seem afraid to tight under their mil' colors. Thus while tearing out page after page ihe great book lhey inist that lhey are not attacking the Bible at all, nor criticising it, but only trying to see it as it is. The man who is doihg'all in .his, power to reduce re-duce the Bible to -the" level of ordinary literature, to remove i,t. from ils pedestal apart from all otkf r books and simply to place it on the ordinary shelves of our libraries "alongside of Ilomcr. .Dante and Shakespeare thai man, whatever his holjow professions profes-sions niay be. is attacking' the Bible with all his might and main. Rev. William O'B. Pardew, S. J. THE CHURCH AND MARRIAGE. Week in and week out we have been dwelling upon the clear fact that the Catholic church is the mother and protector of morals, that her stable stand on the great question of matrimony as a sacrament sac-rament has ever been the safeguard of all who listen to the honest distates of conscience and accept her advise and teachings on this subjest, says, the Lone Witness.- We have shown that she is the bulwark of the state be that state-Catholic or Protestant and that in order to save the entire social fabric from being honeycombed by, vice and tottering to its downfall.- her .principles, have to be admitted and accepted. Protestants generally admit all this in their hearts, but few ever openly express the same.' The Chicago Tribune, a non-Catholic organ, dealing with this same subject,- from the f vo-f old standpoint of religion and national needs, has paid a splendid tribute to the Catholic church in this regard, re-gard, and so truthful are its remarks, and no timely the tribute that we will reproduce it. Mark it well, and you will find tha-t it is merely-the voicing by an honest writer of the belief -and sentiments of thousands: "While we are searching the recesses of our chaste souls for words to expres our shuddering horror of simultaneous polygamy as practiced by the Mormons, we might to our consternation find that we had been providing our enemies with words most unforfortably applicable to consecutive polygamy poly-gamy as practiced by ourselves. Father Sherman said the other day that in the United States during vorccs. Father Sherman stands against a back-the back-the last twenty years therc had been 300.000 di-ground di-ground which might avciI lend him an aspect of authority. au-thority. Fifteen hundred years ago when turbulent barbarians settled within the confines of the Roman empire, it was the Catholic church that coerced the vagrant lust of the. barbarian heart and bound one woman to one man till death did them part. Today when the sacrament of marriage is threatened not so much by savage boisterousness of passion as by the frivolity and insincerity of men and women to whom unshaken belief has become impossible, it is the Catholic church that still refuses to make a single concession to legalized promiscuity, and that still keeps unblemished the ideal of an indissoluble fepiritual union between man and wife. If we cannot can-not subscribe to the theology of the Catholic church in this matter, neither can be fail to subscribe sub-scribe to its prastical morality. The Smoot case ought to give a tremendous impetus to the demand for a uniform federal divorce law. The easy route to consecutive polygamy ought to be beset with more obstacles. The voice of the wholq Christian community ought to become as clear and emphatic em-phatic as the voice of the Catholic church." A BEAUTIFUL MISSAL. One of the most notable contributions to a branch of ecclesiastical art comparatively neglected nowadays that is the art of book illustration was furnished by the missal prepared for the Pope's used during the Gregorian celebrations. It was the work of the nuns of St. Cecelia of Solesmes daugh ters of St. Benedist. They have been banished from France through the act of M. Combes, and have taken refuge in the Isle of Wight, in the South of England. There they decorated the beautiful missal mis-sal which the Pope used in the Mass which he celebrated on the 11th -of April, before 50,000 people from all lands. What a debt of reparation that man Combes must owe to France that he deprives of so many great, noble and useful citizcus.. CHURCH ATTENDANCE. Wre have remarked many scores of times of late hqw frequently Protestant clergymen, especially in the United States, are complaining about the meagre church attendance in their various parishes." The Paulists's Calendar gives a series of reasons why these Protestants do not attend church. The entire subject is condensed into a very short passage, pass-age, and yet what a world of information, what a mass of facts, it contains. It runs thus: "Some Protestants-stay away from church because, be-cause, although earnest and pious and attached to the church and members of it, they are over-worked, and Sunday is to them a day of rest, there being no definite strict obligation for them to go, as there is upon Catholics to hear Mass. Moreover, there is no definite sanctity in the church service; a Protestant Pro-testant can read his Bible and pray at home; it is essentially the same thing. The main thing which brings them to church is the preaching, if that is edifying and ministers to their spiritual welfare, or is even interesting, the church is well attended. But some of the more spirtually minded do not-go because be-cause they are not benefited. They recognize in the minister nothing authoritative, do not depend upon him because he is a minister. It js only if he has special gifts that he is depended upon. "A great cause for non-attendance is undoubtedly undoubt-edly unbelief. Members of Protestants churches do not, except rarely, believe the. Bible, as they once did, to be all of it the ward of God. As a minister once said: 'I prove to my people that such a thing is in the Bible, and they admit that it is, but they will not believe it to be true, for the Bible, in their eyes, is no longer all true."' - This is the sum and substance of the whole affair. af-fair. In another place in this issue we publish a most ' interesting treatise on this very subject of the Bible, and its disappearing influence among Protestants. ' THE USE OF LATIN. . Why does the church use the Latin language? For these reasons: First Because a universal community requires a universal language. The Church of Christ is universal. uni-versal. , Second Because it does not change. If, for example, the church should use French in one of her formulas alone, that of baptism,-she would have been obliged to change it over" sixty times. In the so-called Anglo-Saxon of one thousand years ago she could not be understood except by experts. Third Because nothing can equal the dignity of the Latin language, its clearness or its beauty. It is the language "of science and-civilization, a.d deserves to be the language of an unchangeable religion. re-ligion. ' Fourth Because it lifts the ' liturgy of the church above the everyday usage of words, which alters their sense and debases its by licentiousness. ; This misfortune has actually befallen the English liturgy of the Anglo-American, Episcopalians. Fifth Finally,' a universal language speaks 'of a universal brotherhood, and makes a ' Catholic-at home in all Catholic churches of the world. Besides, he understands the language,, though unlearr.ad by the ceremonies of the church, or from his prayer book, which contains its entire meaning in his own tongue. |
