"THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 70, 29 August 1874, Page 12

"THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS."

Fob long yaars the Prote«tant press has been in the habit of attributing to the Jesuits the axiom that " the end justifies the means," and they have based thereon many of the charges which they have brought against the Church in general and the Jesuits in particular. But the fanatics who lead the intemperate crusade against intemperance, have far overstepped the wildest charges that were ever brought against the Jesuits in the insane and illegal crusade which they are perpetrating at present. They not only trample under foot the divine law ia which the Apostles says, " Let your moderation be known to all men," but they moreover bring disrepute upon the sanctity of prayer, weaken its potency, destroy its influence, and then they overthrow the legal enactments of the land in their illegal spirit of fanaticism.

Professor Tyndall, when he made his virulent attack on the potency of, prayer, and tried to root out from the human heart its holy spirit, did not accomplish in all his anti-Uhristian essays one tithe the evil which these fanatics are likely to hurl upon the divinely instituted appeal to the throne of Grace. They make of prayer a delusion and a snare. They disgrace the sanctity of prayer by introducing it into atmospheres that reek wi'h the fumes of the infernal regions, and wicked indeed must they be who offer these prayers, when we ace how little they avail for the cause for which they are offered.

This whole movement is nothing but the outcroppings of that spirit of faaatictsm which is as likely to be levelled at the Catholic Church as at any other " evil " in our midst. These deluded people look upon us Catholics as benighted, ignorant and misguided mortals whose situation is deplorable, and upon whom these modern Pharisees will make a crusade at no distant day similar in all respects to the present abomination. Ab long as fanatics confine their operations to their several churches, none can complain, but the moment they enter any man's dwelling or store, for the purpose of forcing their fanaticism upon him, that moment they become trespassers, and are liable to the laws of the land.

This crusade is nothing more than an extended field of operation for fanatical zealots, some of whom have entered the houses of Catholic families in this city, and " prayed " therein for the " h-o-l-y l«-i-g-h-t" of the "h-o-l-y g-o-s-p-e-l" to pierce tha scales of Papal darkness which covered their Catholic eyes. And having become accustomed to that kind of illegal trespassing upon the rights of private citizens, they take temperance for a cloak to extend their operations. Let the tide of fanaticism but lead in the direction of the Catholic Church, and — if we permitted it — we would find a band of howling Dervishes around the portal of every Catholic Church in the land, " praying " (save the mark !) for the conversion of " the Catholic people" to the light of the Gospel; and those shams would imagine they were doing their whole ducy to their country, the community and themselves, in thus disturbing the peace, and indirectly casting odium upon the Church of Q-od. Intemperance, bad as it is, is not the only curse that Jesters in the i body politic. We have other sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance far more loudly than drunkenness. We have other places that contain more iniquity than the public bar-room, and if the crusaders want to see vice in its most hideous form, they must defer their visits until darkness Bhrouds the city, when they can behold enough to make them think the task of cleaning the Augean stable was child's play compared with the work they have undertaken. The present movement is wrong. Its illegality alone condemns it, and for the bad precedent which it sets, it deserves the condemnation of every Christian in the land. JSooe of the tacts have ever accomplished for temperance one tithe of the good which has been secured for the holy causo by .the Catholic Church. Yet whilst they have tried Maine law, prohibition, oath-bound societies, crusades, and sensational schemes of all sorts, without accomplishing anything, the Catholic Church has directed her efforts through the pure spirit of religion, and through her holy teachings, her example, and her precepts she has won thousands of pure souls to temperance and religion which could never bo rescued fiom the vortex of inteaaperance by all the crusades that ever emanated from the addled brains of fanaticism uuder the cloak of religion and reform.— ' Catholic Sentinel,'