The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-11-30
OPEN ADDRESS TO THE CATHOLIC
FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF THE
DIOCESE OF SALT LAKE.

To you, who know how jealousy your church
guards the chastity of your wives and daughters
and the care she takes in teaching and explaining
the law and will Of God; how that unalterable and
imperishable church Of Christ-your church and
mine-insists on the sanctity of the human soul
created to the image of God and the dignity of the
human body consecrated by Jesus Christ when he
assumed our flesh and blood. we address ourselves
in this epistle.
To you Catholic fathers and mothers intrusted
to spiritual care who know how the life of the
infant in the womb is defended in Its helpessness
by the threat of eternal damnaton to the abortion
ist; how, over the head of the faithful wife that
lustful and brutal husband would throw aside for
another, she holds the shield of her supreme au-
tbority, and draws around the unhappy woman
circle of communication which man crosses at lis
peril-to you appeal
We live in an age and in land that attribute
very little to the grace of God, that question His
right to interfere with human affairs, and which
scarce dream of admitting hereafter. We live N
a country where the Catholic church and its insti-
buttons have been long and so Systematically cal
animated that the unthinking masses now look up
on her the incarnation of superstition despotism
and tyranny. Now, in the time of our Divine
Lord, the evil forces destroying society ,protest
against the interference of Jesus Christ with its
purposes and pleasures saying now as they did when
Christ was upon earth: Jesus of Nazareth, art
thou come to destroy US? We know thee, who thou
art the holy one of God" duke, 434) "Jesus,
thou son of the Most High God, we adiure thee by
God that thou torment us not.n mark. $40 So
cety sinking into irreligion and immortality pro-
fNl-
ing upon its domain, and demands to be let alone
crying out with the demoniacs of Judea: 'Why
contest thou to torment US
Material civilization, culture and naturalism
are now so pre-eminenty valued, that men are for
getting their own souls, and are overlooking the /
horrors and denominations Of domestic and social
life revealed in almost daily trials for murder, Sc
duction, alienation and divorce. This alarming con
dition of society which is now looked upon as a
matter Of course Is habitual constant and threat
ening.
Numerically our country is Protestant Though
discovered, explored and charted by Catholics, it
was settled and peopled by Protestants Why. then,
are rerogradng in all that makes for the honor.
the morality, the nobility of our people, Has here
sy become akin to pagansm or is every departure
from the Catholic church step backward to heath
en- materialisml
lnfdelity is fast driving all sense of shame all
idea of individual and family purity from among
men and women, boys and girls, and the degreda-
ton into which of wealth. education and
outward responsibility falling marks the decay
of Christian life in Protestanism The shocking
debasement Of female chastity and the loathsome
depths of an educated mans foulness revealed by
the woman now on her trial for murder in Wash
ington, the story told by her IS so obscene and
morally revolving, that we gasp for breath while
reading it. These degenerates sounded the depths
of the sea Of heather denominations All history re-
cords no fouler tale of beastly lust of vulgar adul