The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1921-05-14
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY VERY
REVEREND JAMES c. BYRNE,
PASTOR OF ST. LUkE'S CHURCH,
ST. PAUL, AT THE RECENT
MEETING OF THE GUILD OF.
CATHOLIC WOMEN.

Ladies of the Guild of Catholic
Women: 1t would i'll become me in
undertaking to speak of charity to
talk to you on concrete cases and
methods of handling them. Your ac-
tiyities are so many, your service so
long, and your experience so rich in
the everyday field of charity and So
Cial welfare, that it is rather |, who
should sit at your feet and learn. But
all concrete activity receives light
and is kept within proper bounds by
principles of charity-work on which
venture briefly to touch.
There is a charity that is scientific
and a charity that is Christian, and
there is charity that is both scien-
tific and Christian.
The charity that is purely scientific
is naturally redolent with the science
of the day. This popular science of
the salaried professor is wanting in
the religious reverence of the great
scientists of all times. In oul uni
versities there is more and more
tendency to teach that man has not
a soul, or if God and soul are by cour-
tesy admitted they are so shorn of
their proper attributes and reduced to
figmentS of the imagination that a
right-minded student out of reverence
for God and respect for himself could
scarcely be blamed were he to deny
both such products. In such an at
mosphere all those studies which
make for altruism and social welfare
take on a materialistic tinge.
The statistics furnished by reports
from agents of philanthropic societies,
wardens, jailors and secretaries of re-
lief boards, give true enough ac-
count of the existing state of depend
ents, needy, criminals, detectives and
fsfnh like. these materials arr put
into the crucible of the theorist, whose
object is to present civilization
without spot or wrinkle, by improve
ment if possible, by elimination if
necessary.
Light is sought from current the
ories of criminology, psychology,
eugenics, biology and economics, and
sometimes without more ado, applied
Lecturers. have aggressively main
tanned the need of restricting the fam
lily, of sterilizing the criminal, or de-
nying the marriage license to defec-
tives, of removing all criminal in
stincts by surgery, of chloroforming
incurables, etc. One line of reasoning
proceeds on the theory that hun
dred or a thousand years ago men
We're responsible, but now they are no
longer. Another line proceeds on the
idea that humanity, evolution, prog
ress are acknowledged deities, at
whose command all must give way.
If these deities fail there is the great
Jupiter-supreme god of all-the
State, at whose command even inva-
sion of inalienable rights is made
lawful.
The State, according 20 modern
theories, precnds FROM God and His
positive laws, precinds from Jesus
Christ and His enactments: in word,
is a law to itself Prussia was the
first among moderns to declare this
doctrine. 1t sowed the wind and
reaped the whirlwind. AS the State
is, so are State Institutions, in theory
at least Consequently theories of
charity which issue from such insti
tutions are like the modern State
atheistic, soulless, materialistic. This
does not mean that these theorists dc
not advocate such popular reforms as
Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens
fought for On the contrary, they &C
to extremes in this direction also
They would make prisons and reform
atories palaces, and houses of deten
tion they would make High School:
and Universities. IL learning hereto
fore has not accomplished great re