THE SPIRIT OF REVERENCE TO-DAY

New Zealand Tablet, 11 July 1918, Page 13

THE SPIRIT OF REVERENCE TO-DAY

Writing in the Holy Name Advocate, of Philadelphia, Maurice Francis Egan, the noted author and statesman, says For nearly eleven years I have been exiled, to a very pleasant country, ’tis true, from my native land, and coming back I notice enormous changes ; and one of the most marked is the growing spirit of reverence for higher things. A sign of this, which I am happy to record, is the disappearance of what in older days might have been called the fine art of swearing. There was a time when many Americans rippled out oaths almost unconsciously but one seldom hears in any society of men, or even in the streets, the blasphemy that used to make a reverent Christian shudder. Among Catholics not of the Latin races (in whose language certain oaths seemed to be imbedded) the practice of swearing by the Sacred Name seems almost to have disappeared. In Europe, among people who really count, one never hears an oath ; and as a corol!ary the risque story, which formerly occupied much attention among men after a dinner party, is looked on an in bad taste. I have always admired the phrase put up very visibly at the Gridiron Club dinners; “The Ladies are Always With Us.” A more useless, a more offensive habit leaving out the question of morality than that of swearing by the Holy Name probably eve existed. For the non-Christian it means a gratuitous insult to the conviction of nearly every man around him, and even a direct and insulting challenge to his Unknown God. For the Christian, who is conscious of what he says, it is inexplicable. It is worse than the insulting of one’s father with a blow. Of him, forgive them, Father, for they know riot what they do, cannot be said. A man capable of voluntarily 7 using the Holy Name in blasphemy shows to the world that he is almost willing to commit the crime of Judas. Bad taste and bad morals have a certain connection. It is bad taste, as we all know, to shock the sympathies or the faith of those about us. When Cardinal Newman said that the first quality of a gentleman, whether Christian or pagan, was not to give pain, he laid down a principle which is thoroughly consistent with the practice of Christianity, when no great principle is involved : but when oaths are spoken and blasphemy uttered, sometimes very lightly, in the presence of little children the human being who does this falls immeasurably below even the pagan standard of Gentlemanhood : and wo know what Christ Himself has said to those who give scandal to the little ones. It seems to me, speaking with all due deference to the superior knowledge of those who know present American conditions better than I, that this great changethis remarkable improvement in our reverential attitude, is due to the more frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist. In Denmark, in Copenhagen, where there was scarcely a Catholic left after the Reformation, the aspect of the Church of St. Ansgar, where the diplomats of nearly all nations meet, during these terrible days, to receive Holy Communion frequently—more frequently than before the sword of horror hung over them—one sees how quickly the spirit of reverence is growing. The experience of a long life shows me that the two keys to the problem of this life are reverence for the Holy Name, inwardly and outwardly, and the frequent reception of the Sacrament of the Altar.