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Show Our New Year's Wish. THIS is the season of good wishes. Numberless times the wish for a "Happy New Year" is repeated. We hear it in cities, towns and villages, !n country homes and mountain cabins, in the palaces of kings and in the huts of the poor everywhere. Children greet their parents, husbands their wives, friends their acquaintances with this wish the first thing on New Year's morning; in fact, it is the first and only - salutation exchanged between all civilized civ-ilized people in their meetings on this d;iy. There is no custom more general in its use it is "a time-honored custom: cus-tom: wherefore. The lntermountain Catholic wishes its readers and patrons all a Happy New Year. But what do men of the world generally mean by all these wishes? Good health, temporal tem-poral prosperity, success in business, happiness, contentment ana a Jong life. All these things are indeed delightful and desirable, and the custom of wishing wish-ing them is laudable; wherefore, we wish them, too, to our patrons. But we wish something more. There is no time, perhaps, in the. long history of the church- whn the power and influ-' influ-' ence f speech and press were brought to bear on her destruction more virulentlyno viru-lentlyno time when the social relations rela-tions between man and man were more extensively employed to wean the heart" from faith and morals, and, therefore, no time when the faith and fidelity of I Catholics were more severely taxed, than in this age of ours.' Our first wish, therefore, at the beginning of the New Year, to all those who come within o'r reach, is a faithful attachment - to mother Church, and urge an unswerving unswerv-ing fidelity to, and an unrelenting zeal for, the faith and cause she champions. There is nothing which the circumstances circum-stances of the times demand more urgently. There is a striking, if not terrible, similarity between tho circumstances of the close and opening of the nineteenth nine-teenth and twentieth centuries and those of the close and opening of the eighteenth and nineteenth, which is evident to every student of history. At the latter period the infidels and liberals liber-als of every country, but especially of Frame, united to form a league for the destruction of both spiritual and temporal tem-poral authority. Knowing the influence of the Catholic church in maintaining and defending both authorities, as of divine institution, all their nefarious designs were upon her she was first to be destroyed, cost what it might. Voltaire, the leader of the infidels, exhorted ex-horted without ceasing: "Labor in the vineyard, destroy the Catholic church." To accomplish this they wielded the press, published books without number, in which they derided and blasphemed everything that is venerable and sacred to Christians, denied the divinity of Christ, extolled vice as virtue, and placed the happiness of man in the gratification of carnal lust. These hellish hell-ish writings were widely circulated, and, as may well be imagined, caused a great deal of mischief. The revolution revolu-tion broke out in France and upset all the order which existed both in church and state. The king's throne was destroyed de-stroyed and all practice of the Christian religion ceased; the churches were profaned, pro-faned, the altars demolished, the pictures pic-tures of saints defaced, the priests and all those who did not deny their faith were put to death; even the king and queen ended their life by the guillotine. France was no longer permitted to believe be-lieve in a God; a lewd woman was placed upon the altar and adored as the goddess of reason. Things wear a similar aspect in our days, if we except, perhaps, their glaring glar-ing indecency. How great is the number num-ber .of unbelievers today who assert that there is no God, that the soul is mortal, that man is nothing but a rational ra-tional animaL and that all things end with death! How many there are who reject all revealed religion, who deny the divinity of Christ and believe only what they can comprehend with their weak reaspn, obscured by many passions! pas-sions! These hate the Catholic church (and not only these, but professing Christians have been taught from their very infancy to hate the Catholic church and everything Catholic what Christianity?) and would prefer to see her destroyed today rather than tomorrow. to-morrow. The weapons they use in their wars against the church are the same as those employed in the eighteenth eight-eenth century falsehood and calumny and cunning and, where these fail, brute force. Who can number the falsehoods false-hoods and calumnies which irreligious and infidel . papers propagate against the church, her doctrines, ministers and institutions? No matter how frequently frequent-ly these lies and calumnies are refuted, as many new ones arise, for the enemies ene-mies of our faith act according to the maxim: "Throw plenty of mud, some will stick." They endeavor to withdraw with-draw the school from the- influence of ! the church in order to demoralize it and to cause the rising generation to grow up in unbelief. The same they intend in-tend to do with the Christian family; the ecclesiastical blessing of the -betrothed is to be rendered unnecessary and discarded for the, civil marriage, and thus rarents with their children are to be estranged from the church and led into infidelity. In order to weaken Catholic life, these enemies desire all confraternities and religious societies to be dissolved, and every public manifestation of religion to be abrogated. If circumstances demand de-mand it, they have recourse first to cunning, then to threats and finally to brute force in order to execute their satanic projects the more effectively. In some countries, as in France, China and the Philippines, our enemies have already resorted to open violence, priests and religions are banished or exiled, the people deprived of their churches and languish in spiritual famine from want of pastors to distribute dis-tribute the bread of life. Infidels and freethinkers would everywhere enact the same scenes of they had the power, for their design is the destruction and extirpation of the Catholic church, and when she is once removed, the rest of Christianity falls easily. It is true the Catholic faith can never perish, for Christ has promised that "the gates of hell shall never prevail against it," but the individual Catholic Cath-olic has not this assurance; he may lose his faith and become a prey to unbelief. The enemies of the church have already succeeded in infecting numberless Catholics with their pernicious per-nicious maxims and in causing them, if not to fall from, at least to waver in, their faith. In large cities, where the enemies of the faith find a particularly par-ticularly fertile soil, there are numbers of freethinkers and men who have i no more fafth than the pagans of old, and whose destructive influence is everywhere felt; and, as a natural consequence, in almost every congregation congre-gation you find people who are Catholic Cath-olic only in name. What has happened hap-pened to these unfortunate victims of infidelity can also befall us; wherefore, "let him who thinketh himself to stand take heed lest he fall." It is not our intention" to usurp the place of our pastors, turn the editorial chair into a pulpit and preach a sermon; ser-mon; but we could not allow the opportunity op-portunity to pass by without directing attention to the condition of things that exists in. our midst, and suggesting suggest-ing a m-?ans of defense against the ever-flowing tide of opposition. True, the morning of 1903 has dawned upon a phenomenal growth and progress of Catholicity within these lntermountain regions, from every point of view numerical, nu-merical, material and spiritual a progress which has exceeded the most sanguine dreams and expectations of its pioneers of less than a half-century ago. And to what shall we attribute at-tribute this growth and progress? To nothing other than the hand of God, and the sympathy, zeal and fidelity which ever and everywhere mark the character and activity of the lovers and champions of a. struggling cause. Now there Is something which follows In the wake. of,every success, and which is a menace to its longevity. This something is what we will term a self-suffic&ney. self-suffic&ney. Success begets apathy, atvt apathy is "the beginning of the end" of every cause; and it is to warn our readers against apathy of this sort that we place this "leader" before them at the beginning of the new year. Ever since its advent amongst us, The lntermountain Catholic has been doing Its noble work, unostentatiously, but none the less effectively the work of grappling with and counteracting the evil power and influence of the secular, sec-ular, irreligious and infidel press. And now, entering upon Us four year of publication, we think it can point with pride to the work it has accomplished; and if you have any doubt of the power and influence of the Catholic press for faith and religion, we refer you to the little article entitled "Concerning Church Funds," in another an-other column. Dear readers, we wish you well, and we have no doubt you wish us well, but we want something more of you. We want your moral and material support. sup-port. The lntermountain Catholic has come to champion your cause, and with your cause it has come by the grace of God and your favor to stay. On the grace of God it can always count, and with uncovered head it craves your favor. 1 ilBll |