Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1912-03-30
III DAKOTA. SATURDAY. MARCH 80, 1919.
THE INSTRUMENTS
OF CHRlST's PASSION
Continued from last week.
DIvoRcE-THE NEW PAGANIsM.

DIvoRcE-THE NEW PAGANIsM.
The Christian teaching on the subject
of marriage and the family is powerful
prop of National and human progress.
Divorce is an outrage against nature
Nature adorns that life committal fol
man or woman is of the essence of thu
marriage contract. Terminal unions
and lease-hold marriages consequently
destroy the nature of marriage.
Further, the love of one only-while
life shall last is the condition and ideal ol
human wedlock. This sublime ordeal
is outraged by divorce, which implies
that human love cannot be eternal and
that the love of one only and forever ia
vain conceit. It insults human we'd
lock by debasing;s 1t and lowering the
union of the sexes to the level of the
casual co-habitation of brutes.
Divorce also is crime against society.
1t commences its devastation in the
sacred social unit of the family and
thence scatters it's destruction over the
entire fabric of the social organization.
The family is a sacred institution, where
in are reciprocal duties Of honor, love
and devotion of parents to children, and
of children to parents; of husband to
wife, of wife to husband. Is it not evil
dent that the just fulfillment of these is
impossible under the shadow of di-
vorce?
The houses of the divorced are PAN
demoniums of domestic misery-infer.
nos of social corruption. These gather
quarrels, hatreds, envies, unhappiness,
jealousies, suicides and murders. But
they do not stop there. They 90 forth
and stalk through the land. The phan-
tom of divorce hovers like black blight
darkening hope, killing joy, and de,
stroying life wherever it appears. And,
as if this evil were not already suffic.
iently widespread the demand is being
raised for increased facilities in this re,
spect of the poor and women.
Shame! When the poor are starving,
and home life is already we'll nigh i'm.
possible for them; you offer them the
curse Of divorce to kill the last JOY that
fingers in the dingy garret and to put
out the Pickering light of love that still
glimmers in the lamp over the hearth.
Isn't it enough that this pagan degre
dation has entered the palaces of peers
and has debased our so-called aristoc
racy that it's house is tottering and fall
ing into ruin?
| Isn't it enough that the hell fiend has
entered into the houses of the wealthy
Of the middle. classes and is there demol
ishing homes Of which We were once
proud, as fortresses of purity and free
dom?
Cruel! Cruel! To drag the monster
into the novels of the poor!
Again, as to the suggestion for the in
creasing of facilities for divorce fol
women. This, also, is a cruel and {
senseless cry which silly women-to tn,
dishonor OF their sex, are known to join
To advocate divorce is to advocate tn,
degradation of women to the state il
which Christ found her, when in tn,
most cultured period Of Rome divorc'
was almost daily occurrence.
If women is ever to become degraded
again, it will be by the new paganisn
that ignores Christ and His teaching.
Pray that the world may yet return t,
itself-and in the Twentieth Centur!
recover its religious and social conscious
ness. Pray that the eyes of men ma!
be opened to the modern recrudescenc
of this ancient evil-and that they ma,
yet see and acknowledge the wisdom o
The Catholic Church, which deserves th'
gratitude of mankind for having refused
to indulge human passion and consist
emily in Christ's name repressed it.
Rev. JAS. A. MOONEY.