The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-10-26
SIN OF MEN IN HIGH PLACES

In letter addressed to us by some one, sign
ing himself or herself, "a Friend of the Pastor Of
the First Congregational Church." exception is
taken to the Severity of our structures on the rev
erend gentleman" Let US, once for all, make our
position unalterabe and ineligible. The Inter
mountain Catholic has not and will not stoop to
the level of personalities and it dscaims any sym
pathy with that school of moral analysts whose OPP
Grating room is devoted to the dissection of CON
crete character and private opinion. If the letter
writer intended to draw attention to the sever
ity of our structures on the public expression of
destructive criticism of the established and tradi
tional faith delivered to US by our Divine Lord
through his church and inspired writer's he or she
would be in the right. The Congregational preach
er whose sermon or lecture invited our censure, Is
but type of hundreds of Protestant ministers in
the United States who are making void the prom
Uses of God and turning the grace of God into las
civiousness and denying our only Master and Lord,
Jesus Christ
We hold that men, who occupy public offices or
positions in the sacred ministry which assimilate
to themselves influences controlling or directing,
Individual or collective opinion, must be held to an
accountability for their public utterances. The
pastor of the First Congregational church may be.
for all we know to the contrary domesticaly and
socially charming and most pleasing personality,
but his platform addresses, as accredited min
lister of professedy Christian church, have
touched the low water mark of current religious
opinion in this city.
1t is one of the peculiar anomalies of pervert-
ed public opinion that the clergyman who would
dare to preach promiscuous indulgence in immor-
atty would be pillored as contemplate scoundrel
and an enemy of society while the same man may,
Sunday after Sunday, mercilessly attack supernat-
ural faith the foundation of all morality, and be
hailed good fellow" and the minister of
popular and "broad gauge religion" He who at
tacks the Notifications attacks the CASTLE and be
who undermines the faith of a community makes
war on the defenses of the chastity and purity Of
that community for without faith in God, in the
Immortality of the soul and its accountability for
actions done in the flesh, there be morality.
The thirty boys and girls who, the 9th of Sep
TENDER, were arraigned, before the juvenile court
of this city for grossly immoral conduct and
shameful indecencies, were the sons and daughters
of husbands and wives who had no faith in Jesus
Christ or his divine teachings. Face to face with
this appalling degradation of youth we may ask in
the words of our Divine Lord, when confronted
with the degeneracy of the youth of his day: off
they DO these things in the green wood, what will
they not do in the dry?" Now what does this i'm
patience of divine law and what will it lead
to? 1t means, in plain terms, that when religion
interferes with my freedom of thought and my
freedom of action in the moral order religion must
go down, | will have none of it. 1t is the principal
characterized in Scripture as that of: every man
doing that which is right in his own eyes," regard
less of external right and authority and law 1t
means in the language of the pastor of the First
Congregational church of Salt Lake City every
man making his own creed"
It is in sacred things especially that this un-
ruly spirit is, today and in this city, most eonspic
uous. Liberty of thought" "Free inquiry
Freedom of religious opinion" are its shibboeths
or passwords supercilious Indifference, or daring
denial of doctrine impotence of creed and dogma:
scorn of scientific theology, utterly incompatible
with modern thought" the practical exclusion of
God from the providential, if not also the moral,
government of the world; the reputation of the
insult to modern science; the
bold reckless criticisms of the most sacred and
venerated truths of revelation; the Haunting re-