Would you condemn to silence your reason and your conscience because you are promised amusement? Would you wish, as a return for your money, to have sung on the stage words you despise, words you would repulse if they were spoken? Would you put a temptation before your children, in leading them to the opera—these same children whom you tried to bring up in honesty, in religion, in piety, and the observance of all Christian duties? Do you believe that at the opera, where religion is made a plaything, where it is exposed to contempt, attacked and calumniated, they will learn to esteem and to obey it? Will they learn good morals, decency, and propriety from the dancers of the ballet? It is sufficient to place before you these questions; you will answer them yourselves. But why this severe criticism? What will result from it?
Will my words succeed in turning dramatic music from its bad course, and making it enter on a better? Will the thousands and thousands of individuals who find their greatest pleasure in modern opera take notice of them at all? I do not count upon that. But I hope with confidence, gentlemen, that my words will engage you to examine more closely the subject of which I have been treating. You will not form your judgment from charlatans of criticism and enthusiastic partisans of sensuality; but you will judge for yourselves, by vigorously applying your Christian principles. If you are thus affected, my words will have borne fruit.
[98] Lecture of M. Stein, Curate of Cologne. Delivered before the Catholic Congress at Düsseldorf.
THE STUDY OF SACRED HISTORY.[99]
It has been said that a distinguished English lady, remarkable for her intelligence in the treatment of many questions affecting the condition of the proletarian classes, and by whose persevering efforts the erection and management of reformatories for juvenile offenders, and industrial schools for that vagrant portion of the community known in our civilized era as “street Arabs,” and who herself personally superintended most admirably a reformatory for young girls in Bristol, was accustomed to say to her visitors, in reply to their astonishment at her wonderful perseverance and success: “Whenever I see anything that I can call radically wrong, I never feel satisfied till I can render to myself an intelligent reason why it has gone wrong; and then, when I know what the causes are, I set myself to the task of preventing, as far as possible, the occurrence of anything of the same kind in the future.”
This practical view of the duties of life, which proved of such benefit to the beneficiaries of that philanthropic lady, seems to have been adopted by the author of the work before us, and to have been applied on a more comprehensive scale. Becoming convinced, after long investigation, that one of the evils which at present afflict society arises out of spiritual ignorance of the history of the church and of the pre-Christian era, instead of supinely contenting himself with bemoaning the calamity, he set to
work and produced a book which, under its present modest title, contains a concise history not only of the Catholic Church, but of the ways of God’s providence to man from the creation, as far as they have been revealed to us through the pages of Holy Writ and in the writings of ancient authorities. The reverend author by this admirable work hoped, if he could not contribute to dispel the mists of doubt and dissent now so widespread in both hemispheres, to at least put into the hands of the rising generation a preventive and an argument against those who would either deny the existence of a revealed law, or, admitting, would pervert its commands to their own weak or vicious purposes. His success so far has been proportionate to his ability and purity of motive.
We are all aware that the best part of the Christian people has been plunged into profound grief and stupefaction by the recent murder, or, as the Holy Father more emphatically expressed it, the parricide of the late Archbishop of Paris, and so many of his faithful clergy. Now, who were the perpetrators of that most foul deed? In one sense, certainly, not a wild, tumultuous mob, acting without system or guidance, nor yet private assassins in the employment of the secret societies, or moved thereto by personal malice or revenge. On the contrary, the deed was done in the open day, by the arbitrary orders of what was claimed to have been a regularly established government, and executed by its armed soldiery, two of whom, even when about to