The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-02-09

rne. retained all its ancient religious customs and
+ ceremonies NJ. Laussan abolished the comInemora-
! ton OF Good Friday, observed by the sailors and
marines, and did away with navy claplans so that
today the French army and navy are about as pagan
"s Ilose OF the Chinese. In ike manner the per
hlSslen-formerly an obligation-to hear mass on
sundays has been refused to the Lycees military
ana naval colleges, hospitals charitable institutions
ana prisons Just think it over about the hospitals
state charitable institutions and prisons The
historic and picturesque Messe Rouge annually
celebrated at the opening of the assizes has been
done away with, not at the request of the Judges
and barrlsters, but by the will of the Radical ma
Jor1ty | cannot, within the permissible limit of a
weekly paper, enter into further details but let il
be understood. for all that party in mower
openly opposed to Christianity has . trcmendou,
leverage and especially when il has The sIppDort Of
the majority of the nation Saint Paul in MS great
letter encyclical to the Roman converts # MS
time. would take excuse from a nation that
closed It's eyes to the existence of God and his over
ruling providence. His denuncations cover the
French nation today. Apply the fitness yourself
here are his words: For the wrath of God is re-
vealed from heaven against all impiety and njus-
hce of these men that detan the truth of God Be
cause that which Is known OF God is nantes in
the invisible things of Him from the creation o.
the world are clearly seen being understood Ivy the
things that made; His eternal power also and
divinity; that they are inexcusahle
Wherefore God delivered them over to the desires
of their hearts, to uncleanness, to dishon1r their
own bodies among themselves who changed the
truth of God into a Ea and vorshipped and served
the rather than the Creator who Is blessed
forever" (Rom. 1.1S-2a) You ask me. what viii
be the end. The end2
why, truth must triumph at the last
Though round and round We run;
For the right at last comes uppelmost.
And ever is justice done"
For right is right and God Is God
And God the day must win.
To doubt would be disloyat-
To falter would be sin.
The historic church of God has survived the |
ruthless vengeance of prosecuting Jew and Pagan,
she has survived the detection Of England and
Scotland and nearly all northwestern Europe in
the sixteenth century, and the power and craft of
royal tyrants who sought to destroy or ensave her
and is today the only religion that advances by per-
sonal conviction and conversion. The church en-
tered the sphere of life at time of unparalleled
wickedness. It is extremely difficult to know to
what deeper depths of infamies it was possible for
cultured people to sink than that to which the
Roman people had fallen when the faith of Christ
and Him crucifed challenged world wallowing in
the slime of its own sins and satiated with the
nifty of its sensual indulgence. Ineed but make
says Farrar. passing alluson to its enormous
wealth. It's mbounded self-indugence; its greedy
avarice; It's apathy, debauehery and cruelty; its
fo+o1 kohl a,,l
WEAKNESS its strange extravagancies alike of inf
deity and superstition" Two phases sum up the
characteristics of Roman civilization in the days
Of the empire-heartless cruelty and unfathomable
corruption. 1t was before the once grave and pure
minded senators of Rome-the greatness of whose
state was founded on the sanctity of family rela-
tionship--that the Censor Meteus had been de-
clared that marriage could only be regarded as an
intolerable necessity. Before the same senate at
an earlier period, leading member had not scrup-
pied to assert that there was scarcely one among
them all who had not ordered one of his in
FAINT children to be exposed to death In the hear
ing of the same senate in A. D. 50, not long before
ST Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, Cassius !
Longnus had gravely argued that the only security
for the life of masters was to carry out the
culinary Silanian law, that if a master was muir e
dered by slave everyone OF MS slaves. however
torousy innocent, should be indiscTimnately mas !
sacred. 1t was the senator's of Rome who thronged
forth to meet with daring congratulations the
miserable youth-the newly proclaimed emperor I
who TO them with his hands reeking with the !
blood of his mother. They offered thanksgiving to
the gods for his shocking crueltes and immediate
ly offered divine honors to the dead infant, four i
months old. of his wife whom he afterwards killed
with brutal kick church that has grappled
with this monster of iniquity-the Roman empire II
in its own den and subdued and tanned it, must be
divine and has nothing to fear from any man or
aggregation Of men earth. And now, sir. let :
me bring to an end this series of letters with re- /
and in a sense prophetic utterance from L
Review of Ranke's History of the e