The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-01-25
IL

In every large community, be-
cause in every natural man,
there is always predisposi-
ton, more or less manifest. to
rebel against the existing order, and
to welcome and adhere to those who
are prepared to war against it. espec-
tally to credit whatever may be adj
vanced to its prejudice. They who at
tack the existing order, appealing to
this Dredisposition, and have the APP
pearance of attacking tyanny and OPP
preston. and of being champions of
freedom and justice. This fact rem
ders them respectable, almost SACRED,
in the eyes of the multitude. Their
position, moreover. permits them to
| assume a bold and daring tone, to
make broad and sweeping assertions.
and to foregO clear and exact state
ments, and close and rigid logic. They
can desclaim, denounce. be i'm
passioned, and affect all the eloquence
of virtuous Indignation. The eloquence
of denunciation is the easiest thing in
| the world to command; for IT appeals
! directly to those elements of our ma
ture which lie nearest the surface and
which are the most easily moved, and
I
But he who defends authority labors
| always under a disadvantage. He has
an unpopular cause. To the superficial
and they are always the great ma
| jority-he is the advocate of tyranny,
the enemy of liberty. warning against
! the best interest and true dignity and
glory of his race. He can appeal to
no popular passion, use no burning
words, and pour forth no strains of in
/ i
| to the multitude. He must speak to
sober sense, to prudent judgment, and
aim to convince the reason, instead of
| moving the sensibility, or intiaming
the passions. His words, to all but the
| few. are cold and spiritless, tame
and commonplace. For the foaming
| tankard or sparkling goblet with
which the popular declaimer regales his
auditors, he has only simple water
! from the spring. He must be subdued
| in his tone, measured in his speech.
exact in his statements, rigid in his
reasoning, and few only will listen to
him, and fewer still can appreciate him.
He who for years has been on the side
opposed to authority and by his bold
and daring defamation reused up Il
whole ocean of popular passion, and
at every word brought an echo from
the universal heart of humanity, no
than all his marvellous eloquence is
lost, and he is pronounced by the very
public which had hailed him as a sec
ond Cicero or Demosthenes, cold and
weak a Samson Shorn of his locks and
grinding in the mill of the Philistines.
No matter how true and just his
thought, how deep and searching his
wit, how wise and prudent his counsel
how lucid and exact his statements,
Il,
he can excite no passion, move no
sensibility, and bring no popular echo.
The spell is broken; his magic is over,
and his power to charm is gone for
ever. He is no Indian hound, fearing
not to attack the lion and the poodles
see nothing in him to admire.
Then, again, the poodles regard the
lion attacked as the lion vanquished.
They hold objections boldly and con-
fidently made to be true. till it is
proved to be false. In this fact. in the
tendency of the great majority to re-
gard every objection made to existing
authority as we'll founded till the con-
trary is shown, lies the secret of the
Protestant reformation. To this the
reformers owed their brilliant success.
They we'll understood that their OBJ
jections to the Church would be credit
ed by multitudes till refuted. 1t
a
so far as their success was concerned,
false. What theywanted was sim
ply objections easily made, but
not easily refuted-susceptible of
being proposed in a popular answer.
not susceptible of a popular answer.
Such objections they employed their
wit in inventing. and their skill and
activity in circulating. A lie, happily;
conceived, adroitly told, and well
stuck to, was in their case hardly, if
at all, inferior to the truth; and it
must be conceded that they had mar
velous facility in inventing lies, and
in adhering to them when they had
once told them. Whoever cody eX-
amines their objections to the Churon
will readily perceive that they are all
framed with respect, not to truth, but
to the difficulty of refutation and on
the principle that a lie is as good as
the truth till it is contradicted. Glor-
iously did they chucKle, we may fancy
when the father of lies helped them
to a popular objection, to which no
popular answer could oe returned.
Boldly. or with braZen impudence they
threw 1t out. sent it forth on it's err
rand of mischief. and then laughed AT
the heavy answer which, in process of
time, came numbering after it. The
objection was made in few words, on
a loose sheet. and waited by the wind
of controversy through every land
town. village and hamlet, to every
door, and became universally known:
the answer followed in a ponderous
quarto or folio, all bristling with schol- |
astic formulas and scholastic ois- |
tinctions. formidable even to tie pro-
feSsional reader. Its circulation was
necessarily limited; few only heard of
it; fewer read it, and still fewer were,
able to appreciate it, The au-
thors of the objection, safely ignored
it, or, if they could not, they misrep-
resented it, denied it's cOnclusivenesS,
and even made it the occasion of a
new triumph with their followers. Or. |
when they could neither conceal the
fact of the answer nor it's conclusive
ness. they could still count 'on all the
DOodles who insist that there must
have been something in the objection,
or else it would not have required so
elaborate and 50 learned retutatlon.
The lion had been attacked-and that
was something.
Where there is much smoke, there |
is some fire." says the popular prov
erb. Surely there must be something
wrong in the church or so much would |
not, and could not, be said against
her. Whether, therefore, the objec-
tons actually urged be precisely true
OF not, it is evident the church is not |
and if not unobjection-
able. we are justified in rejecting her. |
So reason the poodles-forgetting that !
our blessed Lord himself was every
whereS spoken against, was called a |
glutton, and a drunkard, the friend of |
nublicans and sinners a blaSphemer, a |