Catholic Problems in Western Canada

by George Thomas Daly

Any one who has kept in touch with the stream of modern fiction is well aware to what extent its waters are polluted and have contaminated the mind and heart of our present generation. When the world has been slaking its literary thirst at sources such as H. G. Wells, Galsworthy, Ibanez—only to mention a few—should we be astonished that public opinion is drifting to paganism? If theories of "Free Love" and Divorce are rampant in our society, the responsibility to a great extent lies with our modern novel. The novels that are written and read, indicate the mind and morals of a people.

What could we not write of the Moving-Picture and the Stage? Suffice it to state with Rev. R. A. Knox—then an anglican minister, and now a catholic priest: "When a nation has lost its hold of first truths and its love for clear issues, which has had its morality sapped by sentiment, thinks of Christian marriage in the light of the problem-play . . . the moral fibre of that nation is gone." For, the vision of life and the interpretation of its pleasures and sorrows, that come from the glare of the foot-lights, or the dimness of the Movie-Screen, are surely not that given by the Catholic Church. Over the screen of the movies and the proscenium of the stage could we not very often write what the author of the play "Enjoy Life," Max Hermann Neisse, said lately to a Berlin sensation-seeking audience that was underlying with frantic applause the unsavory remarks and filthy inuendos of the closing act: "Pardon me, I did not write this act.—You dictated it to me."

In pandering to the morbid curiosity and lustful passions of a pleasure-mad world, the stage, the moving-picture, the novel, the illustrated weekly are leading Public Opinion to depths before unknown. The abyss calls to the abyss. Ways of living always follow ways of thinking. Should we then be astonished that crime-wave after crime-wave is sweeping the shores of every country.

Existing conditions in our universities, public academies and schools are not of a nature to conciliate Public Opinion with the Catholic Church. We know perfectly well that in our seats of higher-learning the Church is looked upon as an effete Institution, as something of the past that has kept a certain air of respectability. Her teachings and her history are there viewed in the light of the "evolution theory." Who has not read, a few years ago, that terrible indictment against the antichristian education of the American Universities, as it appeared in a celebrated article, under the title: "Blasting at the Rock of Ages?"

In our legislative assemblies, here and abroad, do we not find the educational problem the burning problem for Church and State? Over the head of the child swords clash, for the child of to-day is the man of to-morrow. The stand the Catholic Church takes on the educational problem—from which She never deviates—has always stirred Public Opinion against her in political and social circles. We have only to mention "separate schools" to awaken the memories of a long and bitter struggle.

The same inimical relations dominate the International Order. Rome and its world-wide moral influence have been deliberately ostracized in the recent and unhappy attempt to form a League of Nations.

So the tide of Public Opinion sweeps upon tide. Everywhere its heavy waves break into a foamy froth on the Rock of Peter. We conclude: Public Opinion is against the Catholic Church.

Our Duties to Public Opinion.

The antagonism against the Catholic Church is an overt fact. What are the causes? A distorted vision, born of misrepresentation of facts and misrepresentation of doctrine and practice; the blind prejudice against which our refutation of facts and explanation of principles are of little avail: these are the two main causes to which can be traced this universal opposition. And indeed no one will tax us with exaggeration were we to repeat here what Tertullian wrote in his "Defence of the Church," a hundred years after St. John's death: "They think the Catholics to be the cause of every public calamity, of every national ill." Have we not in our own country, organizations that live and thrive only on enmity to the Church of Rome? They cannot meet without passing resolutions of condemnation of the Church, of the Pope, of separate schools, etc. We all know how often Public Opinion, in our country, has been inflamed by prejudiced appeals to racial and religious feelings. Racial antagonism itself is only a cover for anti-Catholic fanaticism.

Let us, by clear and sound thinking, by definite and bold expression enlighten Public Opinion. To-day Public Opinion is shifting as the winds, swinging like a boat with the ebb and flow of the tide. These are days of loose thought, wild words, catchy phrases, especially in social and religious matters. Words and phrases are passed off as ideas, and fragments of an idea as the whole idea. Let ideas always be clear-cut, with a sharp, definite relief. Hazy notions are of no constructive value, and always full of danger, particularly in times of intellectual ferment, such as we are now going through. They are on the great sea of Truth as the smoke-screens, behind which lurk the destroyers of error.