[148] Sic, Fr. Slater, S.J., in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, February, 1905. “If such a sum [£l] could be stolen without grave sin, its amount would prove too great a temptation for the virtue of large numbers of people who wish to save their souls, but make little of venial sins” (p. 109). But Fr. Ojetti is much more liberal to persons of the class described, and gives them up to £4 (p. 100).
[149] I may draw attention in this connexion to a striking and valuable study of the effect of American democracy on Jewish immigrants published in the Times of January 4, 1908. As regards Catholicism, it appears from a comparison of the statistics of emigration from Ireland with those of Catholicism in the U.S.A. that about 50 per cent of the Irish Catholics abandon their religion in the New World. The Irish are also shown by the criminal statistics of the States as well as by the observation of students of the criminal classes like Mr. Josiah Flynt, to furnish a far greater proportion of criminals in that country than obtains in the case of any other nationality contributing to its population. Yet they also give to American life some of its very best elements, and they are notoriously the most crimeless of people at home. The degradation of character commonly produced by Christianizing the Hindu is so uniformly attested by residents in India that it cannot be discredited. See, in this reference, an article entitled ‘The Failure of Christian Missions in India,’ by Dr. Josiah Oldfield, Hibbert Journal, April, 1903. Of course it may be said that the original error lies in the identification of ritual and observance with religion and morality.
[151] “Per l’ asprezza della penitenza e continuo piagnere, era diventato quasi cieco, e poco vedea.”—Fioretti, III. He had “wholly shattered his body,” says Thomas of Celano (Second Life of St. F., Ch. CLX.).
[152] A discussion of the subject, with special reference to the rapid decay of the Franciscan Order, will be found in Mr. G. G. Coulton’s paper ‘The Failure of the Friars,’ in the Hibbert Journal for January, 1907. See also criticisms on this paper by two English Franciscans, Friar Cuthbert and Friar Stanilaus, in the same journal for April, 1907, and Mr. Coulton’s rejoinder, July, 1907.
[153] When the ascetic ideal is regarded as admirable in a saint, it naturally leads to still more lamentable perversions by being practised by persons who have never withdrawn themselves from ordinary social relations. Thus a Catholic priest has lately given as an instance of the “spiritual tendency and unworldliness of the Irish peasant” the case of a farmer’s wife, the mother of a large family, who, by a long course of secret austerities, brought herself “to an untimely grave, and, no doubt,” adds the reverend author, “a martyr’s crown.” To keep herself in health and do her duty to her husband and children would, it appears, have been “worldliness.” Such cases, we are told, are not uncommon. (Scenes and Sketches in an Irish Parish, by the Rev. J. Guinan, C.C., 4th ed., 1906, p. 87.)
[154] The Teaching of Epictetus, by T. W. Rolleston, p. 36. Dissertations, III, xxii.
Suns that have set return as bright,
But we, when sets our little light,