The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-01-26
FOURTH INTERESTING LETT Err.
Continued from Page

with infamv as the enemies Of God and man, for
religion and society, Of truth and justice. of sci
ence am, civilization" The writings of these men,
however. can only reach the masses by filtration
through magazines and newspapers Their Ian
guage style and technical phrases lift them into a
higher plane than that occupied By the literature
of the people The French intidel and porno-
graphic or lascvious writers have descended to the
level of the Intelligence of the masses. and III Ian
guage as blasphemous as it is indecent have en-
feebled the faith and excited the nerves Of the
youth of their own land. By abominable calumnles
on the priesthood, by sophisms against religion, as
plausible as they are dangerous, by the glamour
of fascination which they throw over the sexual
sin and the classification of faith with hypocrlts,
old women and feeble minds, they break down all
the living forces of the soul and leave 1t inert.
trembling and submissive. To seductive argument
they add the charm of an attractive style. and
once he victim permits himself TO travel across
the first and second chapters of OF their books
he continues to the end and often to his ruin. oil
taire, the two Rousseaus. Dderot, De Holbach,
Tame and the Encyclopedias have blaZed the path
for the army of freethinkers, atheists and ration
alistS who for one hundred years have been cor
rupting the faith of Frenchmen. From the writings
of these vandals Thomas Paine got his material for
his Rights of Man" and Age of Reason" and
Robert Ingersol his objections to the Pentateuch
objections which he modernzed for his audi
ences in his lectures, and condensed for his readers
in his mistakes of Noses" While these intel
lectual sappers were undermining the foundations
of faith less able but literary and polished
army of writers led By George Sands, Paul lie Coo,
Eugene Sue and the Count de Saint Priest,
making war on the chastity of young men and the
inviolate purity of French maidens. The shelves Of
the circulating libraries of France are literally
l,xl a4fo
with vile books reeking with suggestveness and
lasciviousness. Would any father in America who
values his daughters chastity, his wifes purity or
the honor of his household tolerate in his home the
triloogy of lola, his Rome Paris Lourdes; the
"Gad-fly" Of Paul Moreau who glorifies with an
aureole of intense admiration the unlawful indul-
gence of the sexual sense or the writings of The
ophilus Gautier, who, turning from what he calls
the cold charity of the Blessed Virgin, throws him
self into the arms Of Venus Anadyomene, the god
dess of impure love: MARY" he exclaims, with
her transparent chastity, her cheeks shaded with
sober virginia. colour is deal too naughty for
| love Venus better, better thousand times Venus
as goddess we love should, quite naked and quite
alone The Christ has enveloped the whole world
in winding-sheet. oh, purity, plant of
bitterness. born on Il blood-soaked soil and whose
degenerate and sickly blossom expands in the dark
shade of coisterS under chill baptismal rain.
Purity, mysticism. melancholy. three maladies
brought into our life by Christ For me- I look on
woman IN the old world manner. like fair slave,
made only for our pleasure.
have eliminated from this extract erotic ref
erences and whole sentences disgracefu to liter
allure as they are offensive TO Christian morals.
Ten thousand copies of the book from which |
quote were sold in Paris alone in one week And
yet we wonder why Paris is so corrupt. There is
public library in all France whose fiction de-
partment is not filled with books of this kind. and
of literary polish scarcely inferior. On the shelves
of these libraries are the works of native and for
eign authors rocking with arguments and basphe-
mics against the Christian religion, and from
which magazine and newspaper writer's draw their
ammunition for their Christianity. Five
and ten-cent editions of these shameful produc-
tons. with flaring paper covers, are for sale in
all cheap bookstores of the workingmens quarters
in Paris.
When. few years ago, ] passed couple of
weeks in the city revisiting dear familiar scenes