The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1908-12-11
RELIGION THE NATIONAL AND
SOCIAL NECESSITY

success or defeat, is an evil out of
which has come the good of President
Roosevelt's notable letter, which His
Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, as al
ready has been said, afirms as well
worth reading and bordering over"
That a candidates religious belief
as the president states, is matter
between him and his Maker, and for
his own conscience Only-is a prOpo-
sition so rational, so inseparable
from the intelligent and just mental
grasp of men and affairs, which is
taken for granted as characteristic
of the great American people, that
any idea to the contrary, as an es-
teemed contemporary recommends,
should be ignored as mOribund since
TO dignity the exceptional bigot by
holding up a picture of his inferior
and distorted mentality is an honor
beyond his due. Leave the narrow
minded to stew in their own narrow
mindedness."
Nevertheless, although theoretical
IL a dead issue in America, religious
bigotry still survives practically, as
the Blaine, Bland and Herman cases,
previously cited, testify. Yet, though
ignorance, prejudice, and malice seem
always with us, and We dare not hope
that even the crushing attack of the
Rooseveltan big stick" will cause
invincible bigots TO see the national
stars of Justice and liberty in the
pristine purity and grandeur of their
mission of light for the world,-still,
religious bigotry is but the secondary,
and not the primary national and so
cial danger of the day. Religious
indifference, sower of irreligion, and
reaper of unprincipled, lawless, soul
less, licentious paganism, is the real
anachorOnism, the glaTing incOngruity,
the paradoxical evil of the "enlight-
ened and progressive twentieth cen
tury'' in Columbias professedly
Christian country!
To re-quOte President Roosevelt,
but in the briefest part:
In my Cabinet at the present mo-
ment there sit side by side Catholic
and Protestant, Christian and Jew,
each man chose because, in my be-
lief, he is peculiarly fit to exercise on
behalf of all our people the duties of
the office to which / have appointed
him. In no case does the mans re-
ligious belief in any way influence his
discharge of his duties, save as it
makes him more eager to act Justly
and uprightly in his relations to all
men,"
In these closing words are the gist
and main passage of the noble letter
which goes on record to a great and
good rulers immortal honor. Relig-
ion primarily affects the relations of
man to God; but secondly and assO-
ciatively. the relations of man to man,
and to his own individual life are in
volved, and We may follow Cardinal
Gibbons counsel, and ponder on the
influence of religious faith and prac-
tice upon human justice and right
eousness, in their national and social
application.
The godly society and moral, pa
cific. fraternal people once represen-
tatiye OF America, now are discount
ed by the classes whose material
standards, based on self-indulgence,
tend 10 riotousness; and by the mass
es misled TO social vice and individual
crime. sheerly by the lack of the spir-
( o. of practical godliness in modern
American life. OF education has come
intellectual pride,-the proverbial
danger of a little knowledge; of cul-
( ture. affection. artificiality, and false
ideals: OF wealth. not only the luxury
o. sense that is the individual seed
of social and national immortality and
license. but likewise and even more
eyilly. of the sOrdid ambition and
treuzied envy rife with dishonOr and
with all grades of dishonesty. from
private graft TO reckless public rob-
berry and political fraud.-even with
murderous blOodshed, and the des-
pcrate last resource Of the goddess
suicide,
President Roosevelt and Cardinal
Gibbons unite in warning the nation
To question the why and wherefore of
present conditions. and TO profit bv
the lesson of the answer WHY
does our daily press reek with the
blood Of reported crimes of violence?
Why is the modern Anarchy ever
more. instead of less, treacherous and
violent pitiless and terrible? Why
is Anarchy tanning human hatred and
strife in America, instead of feeding