Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1922-10-25
THE BLASPHEMER"
A Catholic Art Association Produc-
ton.

The Catholic Art Association will
present under the auspices of the
Catholic Order of Foresters, a film
play entitled, "The Blasphemer," at
the Gem theatre Monday evening, Oc-
tober 80. Admission 20 and 80 cents,
tax paid.
The general outline of the play is
as follows:
John Harden has risen from obscur-
lty to position of power in the finan-
cial world and stands on the very
pinnacle of success. His name is
headlined in the newspapers and his
fame has become national. He has
just accomplished a great coup in
Wall street and is giving dinner to
his intimate friends to celebrate that
achievement. But his soul has be-
come obdurate with pride, and his
heart hardened with worldliness. The
holy teachings of his childhood are
forgotten and the voice of conscience
stifed with his worldly successes.
AS he dimes and wines, himself the
center of adulation and fiattery of his
boon companions, his wife sits for
lorn and disconsolate at home with
her children neglected and forgotten
by the husband and father. They
can only. weep and pray for him, while
his old mother, who had brought him
up in the fear and love of God is
telling her beads over and over again
for the son, of whose success she is
proud but for whose salvation she is
fearful. Harden toasts the successful
man amid the applause of his init
mates at the table. He boasts that
he is master of his fate, the captain
of his soul, and acknowledges neither
God nor devil. Heated with wine and
infamed with pride, he even chal-
langes God-if there be a God-to
strike him dead. Little did he rec
kon that at the very moment of his
blasphemy the pit into which he was
to fall, yawned at his feet, dug by
the false friends whose f1attery had
ensnared his blinded SOUL In a few
short days he is flung headlong into
this sin has found him out. He
becomes an outcast among men and
disappears as if from the face of the
earth. He is soon forgotten by the
world which had witnessed his tri-
umphs and shrugged his shoulders
contemptuously at his fall. His aban-
doned family is reduced to poverty.
His wife struggles valiantly and
hopefully through the long years and
rears her son and daughter to man.
hood and womanhood, while the old
mother storms heaven with her con-
slant prayers and only lives on in the
firm belief that some day her lost
John will be given back to her arms.
Prayer is the might of God in the
hands of man, and John Harden's
family never ceased praying and in
voking the Holy Name against which
he had so terribly sinned. Gods
ways are not mans ways and the Di-
vine Mercy is patient. John Harden's
was long night and his was a ter
rible ordeal, for his sin had truly
found him out. But in him was the
root of good implanted there in his
childhood, and, though shrivelled up
| by pride and sin, it had not altogeth-
er perished. There was but one way
to save that proud and calloused
soul, and that was to bruise and lac
crate it in the filth and mire of the
world, and there he wandered for Is
long and bitter years, fugitive and
an outcast. Divine Providence leads
him back at last to the old scenes a
broken and changed man. How all
this comes about is told in the super
| photo-play, "The Blasphemer," pro
duced and distributed by the Catholic
Art Association and presented to the
public by the National Headquarters
of the Holy Name Society.
Master, George Dewey, grand
nephew of the great admiral of the
same name, Junior Holy Name boy,
will take the part of Little Johnny
Harden in the Holy Name film. adv