II. On The Relative Morality Of Catholic And Protestant Countries.

It has been gravely asserted that the confession of sin and the doctrine of absolution tend to the spread of crime and immorality. Statistics are produced to show that murder and illegitimate [pg 370] births are largely in excess in countries under Catholic influence, and that this prevalence of wickedness is the result of confession and easy absolution.

If our system of absolving those only who both repent and confess leads to laxity of morals, how much more must the Protestant system, which omits that which is most humiliating and admits the sinner to reconciliation on condition of mere interior dispositions? As all our catechisms teach, and as every Catholic knows, there is no pardon of sin without sorrow of heart and purpose of amendment. It is a great mistake to suppose that the most ignorant Catholic believes he can procure the pardon of his sins by simply confessing them without being truly sorry for them. The estimate which so many Protestants set on the virtue of even the lower classes of Roman Catholics is clearly enough evinced in the preference which they constantly manifest in their employment of Catholics—practical Catholics—Catholics who go to confession. I maintain, therefore, that confession, far from being an incentive to sin, as our adversaries have the hardihood to affirm, is a most powerful check on the depravity of men and a most effectual preventive of their criminal excesses.

But is it true that crimes, especially murder and illegitimacy, are more prevalent in Catholic than in Protestant countries? I utterly deny the assertion, and also appeal to statistics in support of the denial. Whence do our opponents derive their information? Forsooth, from Rev. M. Hobart Seymour's “Nights Among Romanists” and similar absolutely unreliable compilations, the false statements of which have been again and again refuted.

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Rev. Mr. Seymour gives the following list of the number of murders in England, France and Ireland:

Ireland: 19 homicides to the million of inhabitants France: 31 England: 4

The reader of the above might well draw back in astonishment and exclaim, “Truly moral atmosphere of England!” But how do these statements compare with the official records which I submit to the unprejudiced reader? Recent returns from the “Hand-Book” for France, and “Thom's Official Directory for England and Ireland, 1869,” are as follows:

Convictions (and sentences to death). Executions.

1864.--France95

1867.--England and Wales2710

Ireland30

These figures, which are from authenticated sources, do not bear out our accusers in their assertion that murders are more prevalent in Catholic than in Protestant countries. The statistics of this crime are limited, or they are not in very general circulation. But we have more extensive information in reference to the other great crime which, it is charged, prevails to a much more alarming extent in countries under Catholic influence, viz., illegitimacy. Here again we shall meet statistics with counter-statistics to refute unjust declarations. We do not wish to be understood as advocating the immaculateness of Catholic communities. We frankly admit and heartily deplore the disorders which Catholics commit, but we deny that they are worse than their Protestant neighbors; and still more emphatically do we deny [pg 372] that the Church is responsible for their disorders.

The Journal of the Statistical Society of London, of the years 1860, '62, '65, '67, gives the number of illegitimate births in England and Wales as 6-1/2 in every hundred, whilst in the Catholic kingdom of Sardinia the number is slightly over two in the hundred, and in Ireland three in every hundred. If the test of illegitimacy is a correct index of the morality of a country, how refreshing to pass from Protestant England across to Catholic Ireland or to the Continent and visit Sardinia! The moral atmosphere of these countries, compared with England, must be as a healthful breeze to a pestilential marsh.

That we may see at a glance the real condition of European countries in reference to this species of crime, I will here insert as correct a table as can be made from the latest reports. (Vid. Catholic World, Vol. XI., p. 112.)

Percentage Of Illegitimacy In Protestant And Catholic Countries Of Europe.

Protestant.Per cent.

Holland4.0

Switzerland5.5

Prussia (Protestant)10.0

England and Wales6.5

Sweden and Norway9.6

Scotland10.1

Denmark11.0

German States14.8

Wurtemburg16.4

Catholic.

Italy5.1

Spain5.5

France7.2

Prussia (Catholic)6.5

Belgium7.2

Austria11.1

Ireland3.0

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We have divided Prussia into Protestant and Catholic because statistics are kept according to the religious creed of the people; and we discover that, whilst among the Catholic portion of the empire there is but a percentage of six and a half of illegitimate births, among the Protestants it runs up to ten per cent. And the same remark is applicable to Ireland.

The Scotman, whose statements are based on the report of the British Registrar-General, publishes the following statistics:

“The proportion of illegitimate births to the total number of births is in Ireland 3.8 per cent.; in England the proportion is 6.4; in Scotland 9.9; in other words, England is nearly twice, and Scotland nearly thrice worse, than Ireland. Something worse has to be added, from which no consolation can be derived. The proportion of illegitimacy is very unequally distributed over Ireland, and the inequality rather humbling to us as Protestants, and still more as Presbyterians and Scotchmen. Taking Ireland according to the registration divisions, the proportion of illegitimate births varies from 6.2 to 1.3. The division showing this lowest figure is the western, being substantially the Province of Connaught, where about nineteen-twentieths of the population are Celtic and Roman Catholic. The division showing the highest proportion of illegitimacy is the north-eastern, which comprises, or almost consists of, the Province of Ulster, where the population is almost equally divided between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and where the great majority of Protestants are of Scotch blood and of the Presbyterian church. The sum of the whole matter is, that semi-Presbyterian and semi-Scotch Ulster is fully three times more immoral than wholly Popish [pg 374] and wholly Irish Connaught—which corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that Scotland, as a whole, is three times more immoral than Ireland as a whole.”

It is worthy, too, of notice, that in the tabular statement above presented the percentage of illegitimacy in Holland and Switzerland, where there are large Catholic minorities, is lower than in any other Protestant country.

We have at hand evidences, furnished by Protestant writers, of the hideous immoralities of certain European nations that are more thoroughly Protestantized than England itself. Thus, Mr. Laing writes: “Of the 2,714 children born in Stockholm, 1,577 were legitimate, 1,137 illegitimate; making only a balance of 440 chaste mothers out of 2,714; and the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate children not as one to two and three-tenths, but as one to one and a half.”—A Tour in Sweden in 1838.

But we are not disposed to parade these monstrous vices, no matter by whom committed. We allude to them with feelings of shame, not of pleasure; and give them a passing notice merely in self-defence against the gratuitous assertions of our adversaries. We certainly do not wish to excuse or palliate the evil deeds of Catholics, who, with all the blessed aids which their religion affords, ought to be much better than they are. Yet we will add, quoting the words of the Catholic World: “If we are not very much better than our neighbors, we are not any worse; and are not to be hounded down with the cry of vice and immorality by a set of Pharisees who are constantly lauding their own superiority and thanking God they are so much better than we poor Catholics.”

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