SUICIDE OF JUDGE NORMILE.
*A reply to the Western Watchman, published in the St. Louis
Globe Democrat, Sept. 1, 1892.
Question. Have you read an article in the Western Watchman, entitled "Suicide of Judge Normile"? If so, what is your opinion of it?
Answer. I have read the article, and I think the spirit in which it is written is in exact accord with the creed, with the belief, that prompted it.
In this article the writer speaks not only of Judge Normile, but of Henry D'Arcy, and begins by saying that a Catholic community had been shocked, but that as a matter of fact the Catholics had no right "to feel special concern in the life or death of either," for the reason, "that both had ceased to be Catholics, and had lived as infidels and scoffers."
According to the Catholic creed all infidels and scoffers are on the direct road to eternal pain; and yet, if the Watchman is to be believed, Catholics have no right to have special concern for the fate of such people, even after their death.
The church has always proclaimed that it was seeking the lost—that it was trying in every way to convert the infidels and save the scoffers—that it cared less for the ninety-nine sheep safe in the fold than for the one that had strayed. We have been told that God so loved infidels and scoffers, that he came to this poor world and gave his life that they might be saved. But now we are told by the Western Watchman that the church, said to have been founded by Christ, has no right to feel any special concern about the fate of infidels and scoffers.
Possibly the Watchman only refers to the infidels and scoffers who were once Catholics.