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Show II'KINLEY ARRAIGNED. (From the Catholic Union and Times, Buffalo, N. Y.) BY REV. -FATHER CRONIN. The administration office-holders in convention at Philadelphia assembled have renominated McKinley as their presidential candidate. The formal presentation of McKin-ley's McKin-ley's name throughout the country for four years more of imperialism, and from the viewpoint of his second term of irresponsible power, raises a question ques-tion of vast importance not only to the people of the United States generally, but especially to those of Catholic faith. With the stock-jobbing scandal, the saturnalia of loot and plunder, with the defalcations in Cuba, the famine in Porto Rico, the wholesale slaughter in the Philippines, this paper has no opinion opin-ion to express except regret, which all right-minded people feel that such things could be permitted in the name of liberty and civilization. I With the merely political aspects of the situation we do not desire particularly partic-ularly to deal. 'It is against the continual, con-tinual, shameless outrages on the Catholic Cath-olic Church that this paper lifts its voice of protest and condemnation. Greater space than the columns of the Union and Times afford would be necessary to describe adequately the countless offenses committed by Med iation" against thhe Catholic peoples of our new possessions Following the example of the outspoken out-spoken Eishop of St. Paul, this paper issues an urgent appeal to the Catholic press of this enlightened land to acquaint ac-quaint their readers with the record of McKinley's treachery and hostility to our faith. He has notoriously ignored Catholics in his appointments to the various commissions com-missions w-hich he has sent to rule these Catholic lands. He has permitted ms appointees in their public and official reports to insult in-sult the clerical and cloister celibacy prescribed by the Catholic Church. He has countenanced those officials in recommending that marriage as performed per-formed by the Church shall not be legal unless ratified by the civil authority, although no such rule prevails in the United States. He has not appointed a single Catholic Cath-olic to any foreign mission or consulate. consul-ate. He has. with full knowledge and without rebuke, allowed his soldiery in the Philippines to plunder and desecrate churches, to use the sacred vessels of the altar for unnamable purposes, to masquerade in priestly vestments, to expose the same for sale, to despoil the sanctuary of the gold and silver ornaments, orna-ments, to turn the churches themselves into barracks and telegraph stations, and, finally, and worst of all to scat ter the sacred hosts upon tne noor ana trample them under their defiling feet. He has commuted the punishment of every convicted soldier when the offense of-fense was directed against the Catholic Church. He has modified or abrogated the sentence in every case where his ruf-fiian ruf-fiian soldiery have violated native women. He has, through his creatures in tne United States Senate and in the House of Representatives, blocked every appropriation ap-propriation for institutions with which Catholics had anything to do, in the District of Columbia, in the territories of the United States and wherever the federal government extends. He has, by the foregoing offenses, insulted every Catholic in the; Republican Repub-lican party notably the Archbishop of St. Paul, who did so much to place him in the chair of power which he has used for Catholic undoing. What Catholic, worthy of the name, cognizant of these facts, but must feel his soul big with tho indignation which inspired Thomas Jefferson to arraign George III in the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence; which impelled Edmund Burke to pillory Warren Hastings, the oppressor of India, In-dia, and which has inspired all later historians to cover with infamy the name of Nero, who, in his day, turned his drunken soldiery loose upon the infant. in-fant. Church. But the Church which has outlived the Neros will survive the McKinleys. Yet every Catholic owes it as a duty to himself to co-operate in the movement move-ment inaugurated by the Bishop of Trenton to hurl from power the little canting Methodist lay deacon of the White House. It should be our pride, as it is a sacred obligation, to make this year memorable not merely by the defeat of McKinley, but by the total obliteration of his anti-Catholic regime. -A |