THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. (continued 4)

XXIV. The Triumph of Irish Faith.

The secret society onslaught on the attachment of the people of Ireland to their spiritual guides and to their ancient faith was treacherous, deadly, and long-continued. But, thank heaven! the Church in Ireland, has survived the shock, terrible though it was. My own Archbishop—at present, happily for Australia, placed by the Holy Father over that extensive portion of the vineyard—a Prelate who knows the Ireland of history better, I would say, than any living man, and the Ireland of the present day, as well, certainly, assured me that never since the days of St. Patrick was the Faith stronger in the country than at the present moment. The frequentation of the sacraments was at no past period more general—if ever as general. Pious Confraternities spread their blessed influence everywhere. Temperance is progressing. The clergy, numerous and well supported by the people, enlighten all by the purity, self-denial, and laboriousness of their lives. They visit their people in every home, no matter how poor, in every cabin, in every garret. They are, as ever, of and with the people. Their little means are freely given to every want of education and religion, and, as far as these means can go, to the poor. This is a condition of things that must continue to bind the priests to the people, and the whole Church of Ireland to God. These holy pastors, whom every tie of nature, affection, and duty, bind to the Irish people, are the guides who have been with them for ages. Numerous, intelligent, learned, patriotic in the highest degree, sons of the saints, they alone can lead God’s people aright. They have done so, and sad must be the hour when miserable adventurers, seeking their own gains, can so delude a nation as to seduce them from the side of God’s anointed, to what did prove, and must ever prove, if pursued by the Irish people against the loving and intelligent advice of the Irish priests, “a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.” The time is come, however, when using their own intelligence Irishmen will everywhere be able to resist the wiles and temptations of the secret society seducer, and think for themselves. The leaders, the fathers who have never deceived them, whose advices are always given for their best advantage, who suffered and died for them in the past, and are ready to do so in the present and in the future, are the clergy of Ireland, led by the Bishops of Ireland, and all following the infallible teachings of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. God grant that this guidance may never fail; that the day may never dawn when it will not be heeded; and that the race of wretched men who have so often in the past ensnared generous-hearted, Catholic Irishmen in Ireland, in Great Britain, in America, and elsewhere, may end for ever. From such false agents and from the machinations of all enemies to Irish Faith, we well may pray, God Save Ireland!

I have no doubt whatever, but this our prayer will be heard. We only want a knowledge of the evil to avoid it. Even from what I have said this evening—and I have only stated plain, unvarnished facts—it must be evident that all secret societies and societies aiming at bad and irreligious ends are no other than deadly Illuminated Freemasonry. Let them be called by whatever name, they are a part of the system of secret revolutionary fraud, invented and cast upon the earth by Satan to compass the ruin of souls, and the destruction of the reign of Jesus Christ. They are of the same kind as the Black Hand in Spain, as the Commune of Paris, as the Nihilism that now dominates in Russia. With such associations the children of God have only one duty to discharge. It is: so far from giving them any countenance or support, to oppose them by every means possible. I believe their strength has spent its force in Ireland. It only remains that the Irish abroad, who have crossed the seas to find a home, an honest living, and an honourable fortune if they can in this and in other lands, should, as I have just advised, stand on their guard against emissaries who, under pretexts as seductive as those used by the Fenian leaders to lead our countrymen to ruin, or by that degraded seducer of brave, but heedless and passionate young men, Carey, to drag his victims to murder and the gallows, may come to whisper words of conspiracy and lead far astray. The Catholic who hears the invitation from any quarter, were it from an angel from heaven, were it from a priest of God—fallen as that angel or priest should be to be able to give it—let him beware. It is a devil that speaks to him as sure as it was a devil that spoke to his mother Eve in the Garden of Eden. Let him renounce that devil and his tools and his works. Let him ask aid from on High—Good Counsel from God through the prayers of God’s Virgin Mother, and he will triumph. He will stand firm on the side of God, and one day be rewarded at His Right Hand with the most glorious triumph that can be given to man to witness—the triumph of Christ coming in His Majesty to judge the living and the dead.

All that secret organization of which we have been speaking so much, is being framed by Satan and his emissaries for one end long foreseen—that is, to form, and that before very many years, the vast kingdom of Antichrist, which already spreads its ramifications over the whole earth. It is, you see, determined to leave no people, or nation, or tribe, or tongue, unsubjected to its influence. It seeks now the semi-civilized empires of Asia by means of Masonic France, and other European Masonic influences. It plants in Africa the germs of a European domination, which must speedily subject to its authority the dark sons of Ham. I believe, so far as I can judge, it will soon send its telegraphs and its railways careering through that ancient Continent. Placing itself “above all that is worshipped or called God,” it will in its pride and hate obliterate the polytheism of these countries to make room for its own Atheism; and that which Christianity has been hitherto unable to effect in destroying the false gods of the heathen, it will effect, in order to plant its own dark non credo instead. It will thus one day be able to call to the standard of whoever is to be its last, long-foretold leader, countless millions to battle with the elect of God. It may be—I believe it will be—checked, if but for a few years, to afford time for the Church of Christ to manifest her glory once more, and to gather in her strength for the final combat. But that it will advance to that combat is revealed to us. Children of Ireland what a glorious place is reserved for you when that struggle does come! From the beginning you have been its opponents. When it cried—away with Christ—away with Christ’s Vicar—let him be crucified—let his temporal and spiritual power be obliterated—and when, in the nations of Catholic Europe, and of the world, it raised its cries of secularism, of infidel education, of ruin to the Christian family and every Catholic institution, who of all the people of God most withstood it? Who best, from slender resources, in all the lands where English is spoken, supported the Vicar of Christ and every Catholic principle? In their island home, during these very saddest days, from the period of the great famine till this hour, the Irish people, scattered in their millions over this country and England; over all the rising nations of great America; and the infant empires growing daily to maturity in Australia and New Zealand, and other islands of the Southern, the Indian, and the Pacific Oceans; by the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel; in the Colonies of Southern Africa; in the islands of the Caribbean Sea; amidst the decaying Christianity of Buenos Ayres; in Canada; and all the other lands of the earth which give the best promise to Atheistic machinations, the Irish people lifted up the Cross of Christ, and sustained, by the sweat of their brow, the strong, vigorous reality of the Catholic religion. They gave their daughters to the cloister, their sons to the sanctuary, their all to the cause of God. Freemasons thundered and intrigued in the legislatures round about them. Emissaries from the secret sects assailed them in the press, on the platform, everywhere. Fidelity to their religious principles was often visited with political, commercial, and even social ostracism. Ridicule and abuse rained in turn for their fidelity upon them. But the Faith of St. Patrick and the hope of God’s bright kingdom, the smile and the prayer of Mary in Heaven, were able to defeat and baffle all. In serried ranks with the pastors they had themselves brought forth, and nourished, and educated, and kept, they stood amidst the deluge of deception, allurement, and intrigue about them, firm as their own loved, distant land amidst the billows of the ocean, and went on advancing the mighty work of building up the Church which other nations were pulling down, until their very enemies paused, and wondered, and admired. And often too when these enemies saw in the lands which the Irish had evangelized, the Cross of the Catholic Church arise and pierce the heavens, where it had never been seen before, or had been proscribed for generations, they cried out that Catholicity was immortal—was divine! It comes, for instance, by the Irish into this land, just as it was before the storm banished it, the same as their fathers once saw it. And they say rightly, “so that Church is now and so will it be for ever.” Masonic Anti-Christianity will advance and do more damage than ever heresy effected. It will one day sweep the sects of heresy and the temples of idols utterly away; but it too will have its defeat, and in time must yield to Christ and to His cause the greatest triumph. Its union of all men in one vast republic; its bringing together of every people and nation; its destruction of every form of religion to make way for its sect; its advance in science, in education, in national progress, all will serve one day to place the Son of Mary supreme—to realize the prophecy made to His Mother: “And he shall be great, and be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of David His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall never be an end.”

I say that when this consummation comes, as come it surely must, few nations shall have a more glorious record than the people of what is called “poor Ireland.” Few nations shall have done more to prepare for the final combat, or shall have manifested to a greater extent in Christian heroism the last and most terrible trial. No nation whatever shall show a grander roll call of martyrs, confessors, virgins, and souls saved, than the land and the race evangelized by St. Patrick, whose sacred name already adorns the most glorious and promising churches now existing in the world.

XXV. Catholic Organization.

In conclusion, it is proper that I should say a word to you upon the attitude of the Church, at the present moment, in the face of the forces of the Organized Atheism of the world. That organization has now arrived at the perfection of its dark wisdom, and is making rapid strides to the most complete and universal exercise of its power. It has succeeded. Through it the Church is despoiled. The Vicar of Christ is a prisoner, and has been so for over fourteen years. The religious orders are virtually suppressed in nearly every country of Europe. Freemasonry is supreme in the governments of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and works its will in nearly all the republics of Southern America. It rules Germany, terrifies Russia, distracts Belgium, and secretly gnaws at the heart of Austria. Everywhere it advances with rapid strides both in its secret movements against Catholicity and the Christian religion generally, and in open persecution according to the measure of its opportunity and power. No hope, humanly speaking, appears on the horizon to warrant us at this moment to look for a change for the better. But God has promised never to desert His Church. That promise never can be broken. When the darkest hour comes, it is not for Catholics to look for dissolution, but for life and hope. The crisis in the conflicts of Christianity is the hour of victory. This has been realized more than once since the combat began between Atheistic Masonry and the Church. What hour could be darker than that which saw Pius VI. taken prisoner to France in the white heat of its Revolution, and dying abandoned and forsaken in the dungeons by the Rhone? The Temporal Power after an uninterrupted peace of nearly four centuries, during which the disturbances common to it in the middle ages, had absolutely ceased, passed at a blow and apparently for ever. Rome’s treasures of art and religion were carried in triumph to grace the capital of Infidelity, or scattered throughout the earth. The Cross and Keys were without a defender, and the tricolour floated in triumph over the palace of the Popes. The crisis had arrived when God’s promise should be realized. In the twinkling of an eye, a strange force, under a strange commander, Suwarrow, descends like lightning upon Italy. The power of the Revolution passes like an uneasy morning’s dream. Rome belongs to the Pope, and Pius VII. sits calmly, as if nothing happened, upon the throne of his banished, I may add, martyred predecessor. Another event more strange occurs. The temporal power falls again, and the legions of the strongest potentate Europe had seen since the days of the Cæsars holds it as the heritage of his only son. The Pope is once more a prisoner—for years a persecuted circumvented prisoner. Napoleon mocks at his feebleness, and laughs at his predictions. The temporal power of the Popes was, he says, but never will be. The condition of the world is changed—the Empire returned. Is it so? The crisis has come for the hundredth time. The very cardinals are taken from the side of the Pontiff. He is alone in the power of his base tormentor as much as St. Peter on Montorio was in the power of Nero. Things cannot be darker. The light must dawn; and it does. In a month, God’s elements blast the power of the tyrant; and while millions applaud the return of the Pontiff to the Chair of St. Peter and to his power at Rome, Napoleon passes to his solitary dungeon in the midst of the waters, to ruminate on the verification which in his case, as in the case of every persecutor of the Church, attends the predictions of Peter. In our day, the Atheistic Conspiracy is as determined as ever to destroy, but it is wiser. Slowly it has surrounded God’s Vicar. It has taken care so to master the councils of every European country that help to him, when it assails, may be impossible. Under pretence of guaranteeing his independence, it has stolen from him everything. His trustiest servants are torn from his side, stripped, despoiled, degraded, scattered. His resources have been astutely lessened to the lowest possible point. A prisoner of the Infidels, as much as Pius VI. or Pius VII. in the strongholds of France, under the appearance of being free, he is really bound hand and foot and rendered completely impotent. His power is cancelled under pretext that his city is necessary to the unification of Italy. No other city will suit Italian jealousies as the capital of the new nation. And who will sacrifice the welfare of the new nation to the wants of the Pope? Astuteness is now the characteristic of the Revolution, determined and callous as ever. But hope again appears. To the persecutions of Pius IX., many and grievous as they were, God opposed a Pontiff simple as a dove in the snares of the spoiler. He took away from the ruffian hands of Masonry its only real argument. But now when all is gone, help appears in the person of another Pontiff, whose greatest characteristic is wisdom, and whose wisdom, slowly but surely, is telling upon the nations. No Pontiff has been more firm in maintaining the rights of the Holy See, violently wrested as he found them, by the force and upon the pretexts used by Freemasonry. Despoiled of everything, he has, nevertheless, drawn together the scattered strength of the Church. Commencing with the foundation of all Christianity, its teaching, he has caused philosophy to be so purified, and so based on sound principles, as to be in reality a true handmaid to theology and a deadly foe to rationalistic, Atheistic, and infidel theories of whatever kind. He has caused the teachings of St. Thomas to assume more than at any past period, their supremacy in Christian schools. He has mastered the difficult, tangled web of European diplomacy. He has found out the true wants of Christian peoples. He has satisfied them: and then, finally, by his immortal Bull, Humanum Genus, he has dealt a death blow to the progress of Freemasonry, and elevated into a system the means by which the guides of God’s people are for the future, to save these people from the evils of our days.

According to my humble ability, I have endeavoured as best I could, this evening, to carry out the first part of the instruction of Our Sovereign Lord, Leo XIII., who is for me and for over two hundred millions like me, as much a Monarch, as if he reigned in the Quirinal instead of Humbert II. That is, I have endeavoured to show you what Secret Association was, and is, and ever will be, till the end. I am persuaded, that if the evils of secret society plotting have succeeded so far, it is mainly, because from one reason or another, the mask was permitted to be worn by Freemasonry. Voices were raised, I know here and there, now and again, against it, and against Secret Societies of every kind; but they were either not heard at all, or, if heard, were very soon forgotten. The utmost efforts of Freemasonry of every kind were exerted to keep itself hidden, and that it had power to remain hidden is looked upon by Monsignor Segur, and Monsignor Ketteler, and others, as one of the most remarkable evidences of its real power. It had and still has means to silence all who may proceed against it. It murdered, as we have seen, in this very century, a free citizen of America, who attempted to write a book in which only the least part of its secrets—its absurd ceremonial, its grips, passwords and oaths, were revealed to “the profane.” It threatened and used the dagger, or calumny, or bribery, or whatever suited against those who attempted to expose it. Exposure is its death—the death at least of its influence over its intended dupes amongst Catholics. Therefore, comes the word of command to us all, from the great Vicar of Christ—“Tear the mask from off Freemasonry;” and consequently, it becomes a plain duty, a duty not to be performed in any desultory manner, but in season and out of season, to expose Freemasonry. The Supreme Pontiff, despoiled though he be, will find in the generous devotion of the children of the Church who fear no power of man or demon in the discharge of duty, not one but ten hundred thousand voices ready for the task. Thank God! the labours of devoted, Christian men—bishops, priests, and learned laymen—have resulted in enabling us to know the real character of Masonry, and enabling us to “tear the mask” off the horrible thing with ease. Nor is this confined to the Continent or to ecclesiastics. The work has been nobly inaugurated already in our midst by Mr. O’Donnell, M.P., and I trust will be continued by him and by many more. The religious orders will, in the solitude of their cells, make a special study of the machinations of the terrible sects, the secular clergy in their Colleges and home retreats, and above all, the Catholic press will not cease to expose the malignant hydra in constantly recurring references and discoveries. The whole host of God is needed to march and to act against the foe in the manner indicated by our Holy Father; for the question is one of the salvation of the world, of the spread of the Gospel, of the happiness of families and individuals, of civil society, and of man. Surely upon such a movement the benediction of Heaven will descend. The means to obtain that divine blessing are also pointed out by the Holy Father. He says to those whom it concerns, “unite the Catholic people in good societies and pious confraternities.” He indicates, specially, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the confraternity which practices the recital of the Holy Rosary. Father Anderledy, the newly appointed General of the Society of Jesus, who plainly says he speaks as he does with the knowledge and desire of the Holy Father, asks the Fathers of his Society to renew the holy habit of uniting those committed to their care in societies formed to honour Our Lady. Behold, then, the true remedy for the ills that fall upon the world. That world is rushing wildly, madly, away from religion and true happiness. Who, under God, can be conceived more powerful to restore it to reason than Mary the Virgin Mother of God, who amongst many other holy titles, is honoured by the Church as the special dispenser of the invaluable gift of Good Counsel, a gift She so wonderfully displayed in Her holy life, and which She obtains for God’s people by Her powerful intercession. She too is called upon in the liturgy of the Church, to be glad and to rejoice, for that She alone has destroyed all heresies throughout the whole world. Her power destroyed them singly in the past, and doubtless will also destroy their united force and malignity, as exhibited in Freemasonry and its kindred secret societies, in the future. Societies in honour of God’s Mother cannot be too widely established. All should be under Her benign protection, as is the Catholic Young Men’s Society of Edinburgh. But there is one branch society of this Catholic Institute which I cannot help singling out for special praise. It is the—

XXVI. Catholic Total Abstinence Society.

No society can be conceived better adapted to keep working men from those bad associations which we have been considering, or more calculated to bring every blessing to individuals, and above all to homes. The public house, the drinking saloon, the music hall, the obscure “shebeen,” wherever, in one word, drink is sold, is the antechamber of the secret society for men, and ruin both of men and women. On this point permit me to be plain with you, my Catholic fellow-countrymen, as I may call you—for I find that the majority, indeed the mass of the Catholic congregations in Edinburgh, as well as in Glasgow, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Birmingham, and in all the large towns of England and Scotland, are, men and women, mainly, if not entirely, of Irish birth or Irish blood, the children of Irish parents. It is, the world knows, from you that the faith has come to Great Britain, by the providence of God in this nineteenth century. In the Highlands, I am told, there are some twelve thousand genuine Scotch Catholics. In the Lowlands it is doubtful whether so many genuine Scotch Catholics can be found; but the number of Catholics in Scotland is a quarter of a million, and the excess comes from the Irish, whose migration has made the Church. I believe the proportion in England, notwithstanding the conversion of so many by reason and grace, and the holding out of several old families, is still greater in favour of the Irish element. From the converts and the good old Catholic families come many blest with vocations for the Priesthood, who devote their lives with great zeal to the service of the race which forms the majority—the mass of the Church. Now I praise that mass, to which I myself belong, when it deserves to be praised; but you will allow me the liberty of a friend to blame a portion of it when it deserves blame. God, Who knows all hearts, knows that I desire to do the blaming as a friend. I praise you for what I see you do. The Churches, the Cathedrals—magnificent in many cases as both are—the Schools, the Houses of the Teaching Orders, are mainly the work of your hands. The Priesthood that has been brought to minister everywhere, and the active Orders of men and women who teach, are kept in the very largest measure, by you. Notwithstanding all your burdens, your poverty, and your local wants—great everywhere—you give with a willingness unequalled by any other race, to every good work. Of you, at home and abroad, generous, faithful people, it may be said, that you realize to the very letter the truth that it is better to give than to receive. And what a blessing do you not in return receive in this land, when you remain faithful to the teachings of that religion for which God has enabled you to do so much! There is not a city I have visited that I do not find some amongst you, who came to this country as poor as the rest, already risen to affluence and ease, sometimes to public and honourable position amongst their fellow-citizens differing from them more widely in religion than in race. There is no place where I have not been consoled with the signs of substantial prosperity amongst you. Pleasant it is for me, when visiting the many educational establishments now, thank God, so plentifully diffused over the face of the country, to find your sons in the Colleges, your daughters in the Convents, and to know that not a few of them dedicate themselves to the highest service of God. These prove the happy, holy homes which blessed them with true parental love and care, and cast round their childhood the influences of religion. I have at this moment before my mind’s-eye the death of an Irish mother who passed to eternity, since I commenced my present journey, consoled by having her death-bed surrounded by children every one of whom were holy, and several of whom had the happiness of being either Religious or Priests. This valiant Catholic mother came to one of the great cities of England the wife of an Irish working man. She had her reward surely in this life as well as in the next. In your own midst, there are instances of the honest prosperity which blesses the sober, well-conducted, though poor man, who comes to this country to make an honest livelihood. If he be but faithful to his religion, his life is always happy. His end is always holy. His children “rise up and call him blessed.” He is a blessing to the Church and to this country. I could easily prolong this picture; but I must speak plainly upon another. I have seen even in this city hundreds of little children, as I passed yesterday, Sunday, through your streets; many of them were Catholics, certainly. Poor children! they saluted me reverently. They were, I found, sent—for the law happily forces that—to the Catholic School. That was the reason why the light of Faith was in their little eyes, which brightened at the sight of a Priest; but alas! the sign of hunger was upon the cheeks and upon the almost naked limbs of many of them, without shoes, without stockings, and in rags. I have seen children too, many of whom I know to be Catholic and Irish, selling newspapers in the streets on weekdays, and preparing, boys and girls, for careers I shudder to contemplate, after a very few years. On yesterday I had evidence of the cause of their sad state. I saw men and women, the fathers and mothers of these children, crowding round public-houses, openly intoxicated, and in consequent wretchedness upon the streets. I know of course that a large proportion of these were not Irish, but I know also from inquiries I made, that a large proportion was. These were the degraded, abominable parents who reduced their own little ones to the sad condition in which the whole world could see them. I do not suppose that in a respectable gathering like this such drunkards are found, but I allude to the matter in the hope that my words and opinions may, through you who are here, come to them; that they may know, that while I praise my beloved fellow country people for what they have done so nobly and so well for the works of religion, I have no words strong enough to reprobate the conduct of those who give themselves to drink in this country, at all. I say, at all. For to commence with—where, I ask, is the working man to be found, or the working man’s wife, who, having undertaken the care and responsibility of the present and the future of the numerous family it is generally their lot to have, can afford to spend earnings which belong to their children, on the pernicious and expensive luxury of drink? A working man needs every fraction he can earn by his labour for the education and maintenance of his children, for the rainy day, for the season of sickness, for an honest independence in his old age. He cannot be honest to his children, or to himself; he cannot advance religion, education, or the cause of God, if he drinks. When a working man loses his employment, when he sickens, when he gets into trouble, we invariably find drink at the bottom of it. There is nothing that one can praise in the man who practises this vice. He is mean, and he is cruelly dishonest always. He drinks the shoes off his children’s feet, the clothes off their backs, the bit from out their mouths, the bed from under them, the home from over them, and sends them upon society, boys degraded, and girls so lost that I cannot contemplate the picture. It is therefore that good Pastors like Cardinal Manning, who (because of his numerous Irish flock, regards himself in London as an Irish Bishop) have undertaken a life and death crusade against this devil that preys upon the vitals of their most choice and devoted people. It is therefore that Cardinal MacCabe and others have made so many personal efforts to uproot this vice. My own Archbishop, for many years, while Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland, practised total abstinence, in order to give his people an example. He is determined to make the same sacrifice in the new and vastly more extended field of labour which the Vicar of Christ has committed to his care at the Antipodes. I have great faith in such acts of self-denial coming from such quarters. When those of the flock who need restraint see the pastors placed over them by God make such sacrifices for their salvation, there cannot, it seems to me, be much doubt about the issue. What they can do, what such men as the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan and others have done, without any constraining necessity, others, who owe such restraint to themselves and their families, can do. For the mere temporal well-being of every working man, and every working man’s family, I would be glad to see every such man a total abstainer. But when I consider the evils to which the eternal salvation of the Irish working man, in these countries especially, is exposed by the habit of drinking, I can find no words strong enough to express my anxiety to see him give up intoxicating drinks absolutely and for ever. The sacrifice is small, the gain enormous. God grant that all whom my words may reach—all Irish Catholics—may think with me on this point. Should that be so, the consequences would be indeed consoling. The Church of God might well rejoice. The days of secret societies would for the Irish end for ever, and for a certainty they would carry out to its fulness the glorious destiny given them of planting the Faith all the world over, and resisting to the bitter end the wiles, the deceits, and finally the last and most terrible onset of Antichrist against God, His Church, and Christian civilization throughout the world.

FOOTNOTES