The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-08-06
INDECENT PLAYS AND A DEGENERATE
STAGE.

a campaign for decency on the stage and for
moral cleanliness in the theatre was entered upon
recently by Mayor Gaynor of New York City and
Mr. John +. Fitzgerald, mayor of Boston. On our
first page will be found Mr.. Fitzgerald's circular
letter to the managers of the Boston theatres and
vaudevilles. 1t has Catholic ring to it, and in
vites us all to pause and do some thinking
Mr.. Fitzgerald wrote to the mayors of New
York and Springfield inviting them to cooperate
with him in an effort to induce the municipal au-
thorties of the cities and towns of the United
States to take action against the presentation of
indecent, vulgar and suggestive plays.
In our own city there were staged, last winter,
laclvlous productions that are a disgrace to our
Christian civilization A foul play adapted from
Paul Cibour's Tres Semaines," and filled with
suggestiveness, held the boards of one of our the
aires for three nights and matinee.
Are decadent people? The papers told of
crowded houses and people turned away" We
were Informed by those in position to know that
the audiences were made up largely of young girls
from 10 or 16 up to seasoned old hays and cam
paigners Why should so-called respectable fe-
males crowd to see such plays, reeking with sug-
gestlveness and lecherous insinuation9 Is it, as
the Bard of Avon assures u.s. that "every woman is
at heart rake" or, as Byron has it:
Nothing so true what you once let fall;
Most women have character at all"
The very name of the play is disgusting The
book from which the play was dramatized is foul
sensual, abominabe. The play should never have
been allowed, and would not if our mayor or his
deputy did his duty The crowded houses speak
badly for us all.
We are like the heathens of old; we delight in
indeeency. 1t looks if we were drifting to the
plunge into the whrlpool appears like the closing
of things if the end were not far off Cardinal
Gibbons Theodore Roosevelt Archbishop Ireland
tell US are better than our fathers. They must
mean our forbears, fathers two thousand years
ago, who were semi-savages. But we! We grow
in indecency in revolt, in brutality and our courts.
our daily record of crime our multiplying jails
aud houses of detention prove it. 1t is sad out
ook; it is not pleasant to have to call attention to
it, for the bearer of unpleasant news is never
welcome guest.
When Rome tottering to its fall, the ele-
mental and primeval sexual passion found express
SIGN in multtudnous forms in the plays daily
enacted in the theatres and at the floral festivals
The indecencies of the rites and the immoraities
# the stage drove from the youthful mind the
nborn thoughts of their responsibility to one great
ord and Maker, and blurred or effaced the belief
# mans future destiny, and the necessity of a
irtuous life. The plays presented on the stage of
he theatres perfect and finished illustra-
ions of the things the young boys and girls might
earn to do that they might repose in and refresh
themselves with the beasts life.
The cheap shows corrupted the children; the
lectures, the statues, the shameful Conversations
diluted the youth and the theatres, and dens of
ice rpcned them into men of shameless lives.
here can be no doubt of this, for we have it on
he authority of the Romans themselves of Tao
tus, Lactantius, Minutius Felix, of Seutonius
Ed Quintus Curtius.
The mayors of New York and Boston are men
education, even of classical education; they are
udents of history from tue lnexpurg atct, classic
Lucian they have learned that: "Thc luxury
nd the sexual excuses of the people will bring de-
ructon to the (Roman) empire" From history.
zen sacred history, they have learned this truth
For the Kingdom and people that will not serve
= d shall perish, and they shall be wasted with
soation.'-Isaias, TX, u.