Such being the case, is it not a question of first importance for the priest to examine its bearing on his own life, and on the lives of those committed to his care?
[Side note: A general principle]
That we may do so in a scientific manner, let us take a simple general principle. Reading is the food of the mind. Now, the body is marvellously influenced by the food it a.s.similates; give a man wholesome nutriment and mark the bounding vigour of his blood, the activity and healthy development of every organ; feed him on innutritious food and the most robust must fade; on poisonous food and the strongest languishes unto death.
The substance of the body is so influenced by what it a.s.similates that scientists a.s.sure us, young animals fed on madder will reproduce the purple dye of the plant in the very texture of the bone.
[Side note: The principle ill.u.s.trated]
With far greater thoroughness and completeness does thought act upon the mind: thought blends with thought with a force and subtleness unknown in matter. Watch the principle in action. Let any man habitually read good books--and by good books I mean the production of any person whose mind is illumined by faith and whose heart is fed by the sacraments--it matters little in what shape such books reach us, let it be a novel or a book of poems or essays. No man can invariably read such works without growing imperceptibly better. His Catholic principles grow more robust; he becomes more fearless in expressing them; each volume leaves an aroma behind and imparts a new flavour to his life. Fresh oil is poured into the lamp of his piety, its flame burns brighter, he feels an unction in his prayers; he has a holy relish for the sacraments. His very interests in life change: he looks on everything with supernatural eyes, he becomes touchy about the interests of the Church, anxious about the foreign missions, and feels an insult to the Holy See as a wound.
The food his brain is living on is leavening his whole life, giving colour, tone and trend to his existence.
[Side note: Brownson]
This literature, on which he nourishes himself, has been admirably described by the mastermind of Catholic America--Dr.
Brownson:--"Catholic literature is robust and healthy of a ruddy complexion, and full of life. It knows no sadness but the sadness of sin, and it rejoices for evermore. It eschews melancholy as the devil"s best friend on earth, abhors the morbid sentimentality which feeds upon itself and grows by what it feeds upon. . . . It washes its face, anoints its head, puts on its festive robe, goes forth into the fresh air, the bright sunshine; and, when occasion requires, rings out the merry laugh that does one"s heart good to hear. It is on principle that the Catholic approves such gladsome and smiling literature."[1]
[1] Vol. xix., p. 155.
Now look at the converse picture. Let the mind of the most devout Catholic feed on the writings of the Protestant or sensualist and mark the transformation. See how his soul becomes enervated, his judgment warped and his heart invaded by every temptation. His Catholic principles insensibly vanish, and the standards of paganism replace them. The light of the supernatural dies in his eyes, a film of clay overspreads his vision; he looks on the Church through coloured lenses, and the rankness of earth is upon his life.
Thus our thoughts, views and actions are marvellously coloured and influenced by the books we read.
[Side note: The English press operating on the Irish mind]
Let us now turn to examine how this bears on our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Thick as snowflakes, but without their whiteness, the sensuous and infidel Press of England is discharging its messengers of evil on this land. It is speaking by a mult.i.tude of tongues into the hearts of our people. The sensational novel, the suggestive picture paper, the trashy magazine are breathing a deadly blight over the soul of Ireland: they whisper thoughts that fall like corrosive poison into the sanctuary of young hearts, destroying the only jewels that are worthy of being there enshrined--bright faith and pure morals.
[Side note: What the Londoner saw]
An Irishman residing in London, after visiting his native country in 1900, records his impressions:--
"I have been amazed during recent visits to Ireland at the display of London weekly publications, while Dublin publications of a similar kind were difficult to obtain. I have seen the counters of newsagents in such towns as Waterford, Limerick, Kilkenny and Galway piled as thickly, and with as varied a selection of these London weekly journals as in Lambeth or Islington. . . . I was so impressed with the phenomenon that I endeavoured when in Dublin to obtain some accurate information in regard to its extent. At Messrs. Eason"s I was told that within the past ten years the circulation of these journals in Ireland had almost quadrupled, although the population had diminished within the same period by one-eighth."[2]
[2] Mr. MacDonagh in "Nineteenth Century," July, 1900.
This is the offal the national mind is feeding on, and yet people express surprise that we are becoming West-British and losing Catholic thought and character.
It is estimated that, without counting the book or parcel post, every week there are three tons of this literature discharged on the quays of Dublin alone. If this is even approximately true it reveals a startling condition of things.
It may well be questioned whether the bayonets of Cromwell or the plantations of James threatened more destruction to all we hold dear. I believe they were as toy armies compared with the silent foe now encamped upon the soil.
Out of these three tons it would be easy to count, not the volumes, but the pages, devoted to a defence of the Ten Commandments. Works of open or professed a.s.sault on faith or morals are as yet few, the time is not ripe just yet, their forerunners are here, however, the ground is being prepared. The advance guards have come, and it is only a question of time till the heavy ordnance is planted in our midst.
[Side note: Cardinal Logue]
Our present danger has been admirably described by an eminent prelate:--"A ma.s.s of literature which professes to be innocent, and ostensibly aims at being interesting, but seeks to create that interest and engross attention by fostering thoughts that appeal to the pa.s.sions with no uncertain voice. Even when such works do not openly attack faith or the sanct.i.ty of morals, they seek to convey the subtle poison of unbelief or corruption by covert insinuation, by ridicule, by ignoring religious truth and supernatural motives as unworthy of consideration, more effectually and fatally, than they would have done by open and undisguised a.s.sault."[3]
[3] Cardinal Logue, Lenten Pastoral.
There are novels that const.i.tute an unbroken attack, from the first page to the last, against some divine truth, yet with such a delicate hand is the insidious poison distributed that you may be challenged to lay your finger on a single objectionable pa.s.sage. Satan has not been studying the human heart for six thousand years without knowing it well. He takes very good care not to label his drugs, or present his poison to timid minds in large doses; hence there is no alarm: but the treacherous danger of such books is well ill.u.s.trated by a tree to be found in tropical forests.
[Side note: The Tropical tree]
In early autumn it is ablaze with sheaves of fairest pink; it warns you off by no repellant odour; its umbrageous shelter is most inviting; yet so fatal is the subtle breath with which it charges the air around that should an incautious traveller rest his head for one night under its treacherous shade he would wake no more.
So, the flowery brilliancy of style, the charms and graces of diction of many a modern novel are fascinating, but the pages they adorn exhale a deadly breath.
[Side note: A sample novel]
Let us take a sample novel. The foundation of the State is the family; the corner-stone on which the family rests is the sacred marriage bond. Dissolve that and you convert social harmony into social chaos. Yet how many books are there which are covert attacks on the marriage tie.
The heroine is generally a married lady who discovers that her husband is not the man she should have married. From this centre-point the web of intrigue is woven. Mawkish sentiment and false pity are aroused. A glamour is thrown over the sins and the sinners. Tears are demanded for libertines and their crimes are gilded. Virtue becomes a tyranny; the marriage bond an intolerable yoke, and the divorce court--which is truly a vestibule of h.e.l.l--a haven of relief.
It is unnecessary to trace the effects of such degrading teaching on the lives of the young, whose minds are as wax to receive and marble to retain: how the high standards of virtue taught in the school and strengthened in the home vanish: how the touchy sensitiveness of the pure soul becomes deadened and a hunger for grosser excitements is awakened.
[Side note: The head leads the heart]
Now that we have a.n.a.lysed the intellectual food on which our people live let us advance the enquiry one step further and ask--Where must it all end? St. Thomas answers: "_Nihil volitum nisi cognitum_." That principle is axiomatic in its truth: the heart will ever follow the head. As you sow in thought you will reap in action. Corrupt a nation"s intellect, and as surely as darkness succeeds sunset, as effect follows cause, so surely corruption of that nation"s heart must ensue.
How clearly the devil understands this and what use has he not made of it!
For the past four hundred years the greatest evils that have afflicted the Church are traceable to a licentious Press.
Printing was scarcely invented till Satan seized it for his own purposes. By it the Humanists of the fifteenth century scattered broadcast pagan ideas. The disentombed paganism continued to ferment and rot the hearts of the people till in the next century it burst forth in the deluge of unbridled pa.s.sions that marked the Reformation.
[Side note: France]
Voltaire and his disciples did not openly cry "down with the Church," but they took the surest road to level it. They corroded the foundations of Christian belief. By encyclopedias and pamphlets they first attacked with sneer and jibe, the person of the priest, then the sacraments he administered became the b.u.t.t of their mockery, and they finally flouted the gospel he preached. And while the agents of evil were busy, the good cures of France sounded no trumpet of alarm, but dreamed themselves into the comforting delusion that all would blow over, till the ground under their feet began to rock and heave in the convulsive throes of the Revolution.
The disciples of Satan to-day are sleepless in their endeavours to undermine the faith of Ireland through the same agency; while it is to be feared that some of the guardians of that sacred treasure are inclined to imitate the dreamy lethargy that led to such disastrous results in France.
[Side note: Europe]
Look at Europe to-day seething with socialism and anarchy, its huge standing armies scarcely able to hold these worse than barbarian hordes in check. Out of what dark womb have these monsters crept? A corrupt Press. The devil found men whose lives were filled with pain and want; he came breathing through the Press telling them to distrust G.o.d, and to make war upon society.
The Reformation, the Revolution, the social anarchy of to-day are the direct offspring of a licentious Press. Permit a nation"s mind to be poisoned, and that nation"s heart must rot. _Nihil volitum nisi cognitum_.
[Side note: Fifty years ago]
In proof of this we need not look outside our own sh.o.r.es. Fifty years ago the priests of Ireland often had recourse to rough methods with the people. Even the aid of the "blackthorn" was occasionally invoked as an effective instrument for securing correction or impressing conviction. Yet, on the morrow, all was forgotten; and the people would die for the man who punished them. Let the priest of to-day but thwart the grand-children of that generation, even in a small matter, and mark their rancour.
How bitter! how relentless! The Catholic spirit of half a century ago was not operated on by the literature of a nation that is daily losing even the veneer of Christianity.
You may gash a man with healthy blood to the bone, and time will quickly heal the wound and scarcely leave a scar, but if the man"s blood be corrupt the scratch of a thorn may involve consequences demanding the surgeon"s knife.
The spirit that Catholic Ireland had fifty years ago is sadly changed to-day; and its tendency to fester on slight provocation is due to the poison distilled into it from an unwholesome, anti-Catholic literature. Only twenty years ago we had a painful ill.u.s.tration of the silent but terrible mischief that has been done by England"s Press upon the Catholic mind of this country.
[Side note: An evil crisis]