The Irish standard., 1897-11-06
ri. REV. JOHN STANLEY, D. D.
The bishop of North Dakota MT the
immaculate Conception.

Last Sunday Bishop Stanley, of Fargo,
opened mission for men only at the
Church of the Immaculate Conception.
At high mass he preached an eloQuena
sermon of forty minutes duration, taking
his text from the gospel Of the day. In
the evening he took the Catholic church
for his theme and defended it ably
against the attacks of Its enemies. In
opening his address he declared there
were two incontrovertible facts: first.
that the Catholic church now existed;
and, second, that 1t had existed for 1900
years, during which time, he declared,
1t had been teaching Gods word as re-
vealed In the truth He dweIt upon the
large number in the fold Of the church.
Those who had abandoned the faith, he
asserted, did so from motives other than
intellectual convictions, more through
sordid motives and thoughts of personal
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. He said the church
mad been misunderstood, and then traced
the origin OF the misunderstanding back
three hundred years. During the six
teenth century English literature assum-
ed an anti-Catholic aspect. Then there
arose calumnies affecting the church
which existed today. He denounced Mac
aulay's history of England as one I'M
broken series of calumnies against the
Catholic church; the same, he asserted,
was true of Hume; Swlnton's works
stated the church gave permission to
commit sin. Fiction was guilty of the
same misrepresentation. He did not
speak of the cheap catch-penny writer's,
but the great English masters. Scott in
"Ivanhoe," slandered the church; Thack-
cray in Henry Esmonde" went out of
his way to present an odious Catholic
priest In the form of Jesuit. In poet
ry, Tennyson showed himself bigot in
speaking of things Catholic, as instancea
In his Queen Mary" Whittier in his
poem on Pious TX. was guilty of in
famous bigotry and Misrepresentation.
Proceeding. Bishop Stanley said he
was filled with amazement when he
found Catholics not informed on the
teachings of the church and the reasons
on which they rested One of the objects
OF the mission he proposed to organ
ize was to give enlightenment on some
OF the more important principles of the
church He defended the divinity of the
Bible. The charge heard that Catholics
paid the priests of the church to have
sins forgiven was denounced as the VIII
est kind of lie. The confessional was
defended. AS priests acted in the ca
pacity of the apostles to forgive the sins
OF men, and those confessors were
of men, and those confessions were
bound In conscience to make repara-
tion for the harm done.
within the past week." continued the
bishop, I'VE have learned of infamous
proceedings in neighboring city A
Catholic institution was invaded by a
sensational public and the holy sisters
IN their efforts to reform a fallen wo-
man have been made a laughing stock
by the lecherous fellows who haunt
the courtrooms of that city. Several
catholics were summoned as Jurors who
chanced to know their catechism. If
they had only half acquaintance with
Its teachings the whole church would
have been disgraced by their probable
answers to questions asked them con-
corning the authority Of the Pope"
In speaking of the offices of the Pope
Bishop Stanley said the head of tho
church was a man the same as others.
Dut OF pre-eminent sanctity. The Pope
was the supreme teacher because the
head of the church and the figure of
Christ, and his Interpretation of divine
law was correct, which represented the
1nfallibility of the church.
Monday evening the bishop preached a
powerful discourse on the "Mercy of
Cod and proved convincingly that the
Creator of mankind was not the horrible
monster who was pictured by agnostic
lecturers like Ingersoll, who had made
Tor themselves, he said, terrible Coo
who was continually laying pitfalls in
which to catch His creatures and to
punish them: a God who delighted in
preying upon the weakness of human
nature, the weakness that after all was
His work. Their religion was a religion
of fear and they had become afraid of
God.
"The God preach" he continued, as
not God of fear. He is, above all,
God of mercy. I wish you to under
stand this, for l desire to have YOU
serve Him, not out of fear, not in trcn-
bling, with bottomless pit yawning at
your feet, but out of love. Let Inc show
you the loving God. He made u.s. He
gave us right through baptism to His
Kingdom above, He called lis together to-
night to encourage us and to urge us
on. Take the manifestation Of the Cod
head made in Christ. See the infinite
love descending to be born in a manger
and in rags. Trace His life on earth.
In His teachings and in His work he is
only love. He tells man of God who
SO loved the world that He gave his on1v