The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-12-17
FATHER YOUNAN
 ON FREEMASONRY
Explains Attitude of the Church
 Toward Secret Orders
REPLIES TO QUESTIONS
Protestant and Catholic Countries and How Comparisons Do Not Always Make Truth clear-U. S. Not
 a Protestant Nation.

Father Younan, the Paulist, had large audience at St. Paurs church last night to hear his answers to questions pro- pounded by non-Cathollcs. Last week and the week before there were sermons, hymns and religious ceremonies at the night services, but this week Father Younan talks and explains but does not preach, and music and ceremonies are omitted. The priest occupies a rostrum in front of the sanctuary rail- as usual, but he sits in a chair while he talks.
 The questions considered were: Why does the Catholic church oppose masonry, and does being a member of any secret society prevent man from receiving the sacraments of the church?
 Why is 1t that those nations that ac- cepted the reformation take first place, and those nations that remained Catholic do not?
 Did not the Catholic church fall into error?
 The Spanish InqulNtion?
 Predestination and free will?
 In answering the question about secret societies, Father Younan said: There are secret societies and secret societies. The church condemns masonry because, in the first place 1t teaches or sanctions the teaching of natural religion and takes no account of revealed religion. Jew, a Christian, a Mohamedam or Bud- dhist, might be a mason. The church condemns masonry in the second place because it's members take obligations of blind obedience. He admitted there was a wide difference between the masonry of Italy, Spain and France and the ma sorry of Great Britain and the United States. In Italy, Spain and France ma sorry, he said, was recruited from the ranks of infidels and renegade Catholics. It was very different in this country, but the church, he said, could not lift the ban from masonry anywhere.
 Catholic and Protestant.
 In discussing Catholic and Protestant countries, Father Younan took issue with those Protestant historians who made it appear that Professionalism had been the making of those nations that were in the ascendency today. He insisted on calm judgment in approaching this question. He pointed out the necessity of bringing to bear the sense of relations as well as act ual data.
 What is the gauge or the standard? Is it money? If 1t be money and material prosperity, Father Younan said that some of the so-called Protestant countries were ahead of countries that were not classed as Protestant.
 "But how about the United States?" Father Younan asked. Tt was a Protes- tant colony under Protestant England, but it has been an independent not a Protestant nation for a hundred and twenty-five years"
 Father Younan said that the census before the last gave 100000 people who were not classed with any religion. And a conservative statement of the Catho- lie population was, he said, 100000. In view of these facts the United States could not be called in any reasonable way a Protestant nation. It was a mighty nation, grand nation, but its greatness was not due to the~reformation.
 Father Younan then took up the ques- tion of intellectual activities-philosoph and theology He said that in philosophy, Spain and Italy ranked 1rst; Germany second, and Scotland third. In the realm of philosophy the United States, he said, had no rank at all. Father Younan asked his hearers to remember that these tests of national rank were not solid tests, be- cause no nation lived more than a few centuries. History taught nothing more clearly than that. Where is Greece? Where is Constantinople? The United States will reach It's zenith, as all nations have done and then fall as all nation0 have done.
 Father Younan maintained that peace and content were best tests of the moral ity of a nation and some of the coun- tries that were not in the first rank were conspicuous because of the contentment of their people.
 Truth and Error.
 If the Catholic church fell into error 1t must once have had the truth, said Father Younan. Then if 1t had the truth, who gave it the truth? Christ was It's founder. Then if the church was Christs and 1t fell into error, Christ said what was not true and as Christ was God he was not untrue. It was impossible for Him to have been false. Reasoning on that line. Father Younan, by easy syl- logisms, reache dthe conclusion that the church did not could not, fall into error. He said branches did fall into error did become rotten but the church was all i