Explanation of Catholic Morals Part 21

The civil law which seeks to eliminate the social evil of prost.i.tution by enactment and process, gives rise, by enactment and process, to another evil almost as widespread. Divorce is a creature of the law, and divorce opens the door to concubinage, legalized if you will, but concubinage just the same. The marriage tie is intact after as well as before the decree of divorce; no human power can break that bond. The permission therefore to re-marry is permission to live in adultery, and that permission is, of its very nature, null and void. They who avail themselves of such a permission and live in sin, may count on the protection of the law, but the law will not protect them against the wrath of the Almighty who condemns their immoral living.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

WHEREIN NATURE IS OPPOSED.

CERTAIN excesses, such as we have already alluded to, however base and abominable in themselves and their effects, have nevertheless this to their credit that, while violating the positive law of G.o.d, they respect at least the fundamental laws of nature, according to which the universe is constructed and ordered. To satisfy one's depraved appet.i.tes along forbidden but natural lines, is certainly criminal; but an unnatural and beastly instinct is sometimes not-satisfied with such abuse and excess; the pa.s.sion becomes so blinded as to ignore the difference of s.e.x, runs even lower, to the inferior order of brutes.

This is the very acme of unG.o.dliness.

There are laws on the statute books against abominations of this sort; and be it said to the shame of a Christian community, said laws find an only too frequent application. Severe as are the penalties, they are less an adequate punishment than a public expression of the common horror inspired by the very mention of crimes they are destined to chastise. To attain this depth of infamy is at one and the same time to sin and to receive the penalty of sin. Here culminates repeated violence to the moral law. When one is sated with ordinary l.u.s.ts and is bent on sweeping the whole gamut of mundane experiences and excitations, that one invariably descends to the unnatural and extraordinary, and lives a life of protest against nature.

St. Paul confirms this. According to him, G.o.d, in punishment for sin delivers over people to shameful affections, to a reprobate sense; he suffers them to be a h.e.l.l unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the verge of the grave, often to the yawning pit of h.e.l.l.

People shudder at the very thought of such unmentionable things: but there are circles in society in which such sanctimonious shuddering is a mighty thin veil of hypocrisy. Infinitely more common, and little, if any, less unnatural and abominable are the crimes that are killing off the old stock that once possessed the land and making the country dependent for increase of population on the floods of immigration. The old Puritan families are almost extinct; Boston is more Irish than Dublin. The phenomenon is so striking here that it is called New Englandism. Why are there so few large families outside the Irish and Canadian elements? Why are there seen so few children in the fas.h.i.+onable districts of our large cities? Why this blast of sterility with which the land is cursed? Look behind the phenomenon, and you will find the cause; and the finding will make you shudder. And if only those shudder who are free from stain, the shuddering will be scarcely audible. Onan and Malthus as household G.o.ds are worse than the G.o.ds of Rome.

Meanwhile, the unit deteriorates alongside the family, being given over to a reprobate sense that is centered in self, that furnishes, against all law, its own satisfactions, and reaps, in all justice, its inevitable harvest of woe. To what extent this vice is common it would serve no purpose to examine; students of criminology have more than once made known their views on the matter. The character of its malice, both moral and physical, needs no comment; nature is outraged. But it has this among its several features; the thralldom to which it subjects its victim has nothing outside itself to which it may be compared.

Man's self is his own greatest tyrant; there are no tortures so exquisite as those we provide for ourselves. While therefore we reprove the culprit, we commiserate with the unfortunate victim, and esteem that there is none more worthy of sympathy, conditioned, of course, on a state of mind and soul on his part that seeks relief and freedom; otherwise, it were pity wasted.

We have done with this infernal category of sin and filth. Yet we would remark right here that for the most part, as far as they are general and common, these excesses are the result of one cause; and that cause is everyday systematic G.o.dlessness such as our public schools are largely responsible for. This system is responsible for a want of vital Christianity, of a lack of faith and religion that penetrates the human fibre and makes G.o.d and morality a factor in every deed. Deprived of this, youth has nothing to fall back on when the hour of temptation comes; and when he falls, nothing to keep him from the bottom of the pit.

It is impossible to put this argument in detail before the Christian and Catholic parent. If the parent docs not see it, it is because that parent is deficient in the most essential quality of a parent. Nothing but the atmosphere of a religious school can save our youth from being victims of that maelstrom of impurity that sweeps the land. And that alone, with the rigid principles of morality there inculcated, can save the parents of to-morrow from the blight and curse of New Englandism.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

HEARTS.

THE heart, the seat of the affections, is, after the mind whose authority and direction it is made to obey, man's n.o.blest faculty; but it may, in the event of its contemning reason's dictates, become the source and fountain-head of inordinate l.u.s.t and an instrument of much moral disaster and ruin. When the intelligence becomes powerless to command and to say what and when and how the affections shall disport themselves, then man becomes a slave to his heart and is led like an a.s.s by the nose hither and thither; and when nature thus runs unrestrained and wild, it makes for the mudholes of l.u.s.t wherein to wallow and besot itself.

The heart is made to love what is good; now, good is real or apparent.

Love is blind, and needs reason to discern for it what is good and what is not, reason to direct its affections into their legitimate channels.

But the heart may refuse to be thus controlled, swayed by the whisperings of ignorant pride and conceit; or it may be unable to receive the impulse of the reason on account of the unhealthy fumes that arise from a too exuberant animal nature unchastened by self-denial. Then it is that, free to act as it lists, it accepts indiscriminately everything with an appearance of good, in which gets mixed up much of that which appeals to the inferior appet.i.tes. And in the end it gets lost.

Again, the heart is a power for good or evil; it may be likened to a magazine, holding within its throbbing sides an explosive deposit of untold energy and puissance, capable of all things within the range of the human. While it may lift man to the very pinnacle of goodness, it may also sink him to the lowest level of infamy. Only, in one case, it is spiritualized love, in the other, it is carnal; in one case it obeys the spirit, in the other, the flesh; in one case its true name is charity, in the other, it is animal, s.e.xual instinct, and it is only improperly called love. For G.o.d is love. Love therefore is pure. That which is not pure is not love.

People who trifle with the affections usually come to woe sooner or later, sooner rather than later; affairs of the heart are always morally malodorous affairs. Frequently there is evil on one side at least, in intention, from the start. The devil's game is to play on the chaste attachment, and in an unguarded moment, to swing it around to his point. If the victim does not balk at the first shock and surprise, the game is won; for long experience has made him confident of being able to make the counterfeit look like the real; and it requires, as a general rule, little argument to make us look at our faults in their best light.

Many a pure love has degenerated and many a virtue fallen, why? because people forget who and what they are, forget they are human, forget they are creatures of flesh and blood, predisposed to sin, saturated with concupiscence and naturally frail as a reed against the seductions of the wily one. They forget this, and act as though theirs were art angelic, instead of a human, nature. They imagine themselves proof against that which counts such victims as David and Solomon, which would cause the fall of a Father of the desert, or even of an angel from heaven enc.u.mbered with the burden we carry, if he despised the claims of ordinary common sense.

And this forgetfulness on their part, let it be remembered, is wholly voluntary and culpable, at least in its cause. They may not have been attentive at the precise moment that the flames of pa.s.sion reached the mine of their affections; but they were well aware that things would come inevitably to such a pa.s.s. And when the mine went up, as it was natural, what wonder if disaster followed! Who is to blame but themselves? People do not play with matches around a powder magazine; and if they do, very little consolation comes with the knowledge of their folly when they are being picked up in sections from out of the ruins.

Of course there are easier victims than these, such as would not recognize true inter-s.e.xual love if they saw it through a magnifying gla.s.s; everything of the nature of a fancy or whim, of a sensation or emotion with them is love. Love-sick maidens are usually soft-brained, and their languorous swains, lascivious. The latter pose as "killers;"

the former wear their heart on their sleeve, and are convinced that every second man they meet who treats them gallantly is smitten with their charms and is pa.s.sionately in love with them.

Some go in for excitement and novelty, to break the monotony of virtuous restraint. They are anxious for a little adventure and romance. A good thing, too, to have these exploits to narrate to their friends. But they do not tell all to their friends; they would be ashamed to. If said friends are wise they can supply the deficiencies.

And when it is all over, it is the same old story of the man that did not know the gun was loaded.

They therefore who would remain pure must of all necessity keep custody over their heart's affections, make right reason and faith their guide and make the will force obedience thereto. If wrong attachments are formed, then there is nothing to do but to eradicate them, to cut, tear and crush; they must be destroyed at any cost. A pennyweight of prudence might have prevented the evil; it will now take mortification in large and repeated doses to undo it. In this alone is there salvation.

CHAPTER Lx.x.x.

OCCASIONS.

OCCASIONS of sin are persons, places or things that may easily lead us into sin: this definition of the little catechism is simple and clear and requires no comment. It is not necessary that said places or things, or even said persons, be evil in themselves; it is sufficient that contact with, or proximity to, them induce one to commit an evil.

It may happen, and sometimes does, that a person without any evil design whatever become an occasion of sin for another. The blame therefore does not necessarily lie with objects, but rather with the subject.

Occasions are of two kinds: the remote or far and the proximate or near; they differ in the degree of facility with which they furnish temptation, and in the quality and nature of such temptation. In the former, the danger of falling is less, in the latter it is more, probable. In theory, it is impossible to draw the line and say just when an occasion ceases to be proximate and becomes remote; but in the concrete the thing is easy enough. If I have a well-grounded fear, a fear made prudent by experience, that in this or that conjuncture I shall sin, then it is a near occasion for me. If, however, I can feel with knowledge and conviction that I am strong enough to overcome the inevitable temptation arising from this other conjunction of circ.u.mstances, the occasion is only remote.

Thus, since danger in moral matters is nearly always relative; what is a remote occasion for one may be a proximate occasion for another.

p.r.o.neness to evil is not the same in us all, for we have not all the same temperament and the same virtue. Two individuals may a.s.sist at a ball or a dance or a play, the one secure from sin, immune against temptation, the other a manifold victim of his or her folly. The dance or spectacle may not be bad in itself, it is not bad in fact for one, it is positively evil for the other and a near occasion of sin.

Remote occasions cannot always be avoided, they are so numerous and frequent; besides the evil they contain is a purely imaginative, and therefore negligible, quant.i.ty. There may be guilt however, in seeking such occasions and without reason exposing ourselves to their possible dangers; temerity is culpable; he that loves danger shall perish.

With the other kind, it is different. The simple fact of embracing a proximate occasion of sin is a grievous fault, even in the event of our accidentally not succ.u.mbing to the temptation to which we are exposed.

There is an evil in such rashness independent of its consequences. He therefore who persists in visiting a place where there is every facility for sinning and where he has frequently sinned, does a deed of crime by going there; and whatever afterwards occurs, or does not occur, affects that crime not in the least. The same is true of reading certain books, novels and love-stories, for people of a certain spiritual complexion. The same is true of company-keeping, street-walking, familiarity and loose conversation. Nor can anything different be said of such liberties, consented to or merely tolerated, as embracing and kissing, amorous effusions and all perilous amus.e.m.e.nts of this nature. When experience shows these things to be fraught with danger, then they become sinful in themselves, and can be indulged in only in contempt of the law of G.o.d and to our own serious spiritual detriment.

But suppose I cannot avoid the occasion of sin, cannot remove it. What then?

If it is a clear case of proximate occasion of sin, and all means fail to change it, then the supposition of impossibility is a ridiculous one. It is paramount to a.s.serting that sin and offense of G.o.d is sometimes necessary; and to talk thus is to talk nonsense. Sin is a deliberate act of a free will; mention necessity in the same breath, and you destroy the notion of sin. There can never be an impossibility of avoiding sin; consequently, there can never be an impossibility of avoiding a near occasion of sin.

It may be hard, very difficult; but that is another thing. But, as we have already said, the difficulty is rather within than without us, it arises from a lack of will power. But hard or easy, these occasions must nevertheless be removed. Let the suffering entailed be what it may, the eye must be plucked out, the arm must be lopped off, to use the Saviour's figurative language, if in no other way the soul can be saved from sin. Better to leave your father's house, better to give up your very life, than to d.a.m.n your soul for all eternity. But extremes are rarely called for; small sacrifices often cost more than great ones. A good dose of ordinary, everyday mortification and penance goes a long way toward producing the necessary effect. An ounce of self-denial will work miracles in a sluggard, cowardly soul.

It would be well on occasion to remember this, especially when one in such a state is thinking seriously of going to confession: if he is not prepared to make the required effort, then he had better stay away until such a time as he is willing. For if he states his case correctly, he will not receive absolution; if his avowal is not according to fact, his confession is void, perhaps sacrilegious. Have done with sin before you can expect to have your sins forgiven.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xI.

SCANDAL.

ON only rare occasions do people who follow the bent of their unbridled pa.s.sions bethink themselves of the double guilt that frequently attaches to their sins. Seemingly satisfied with the evil they have wrought unto their own souls, they choose to ignore the wrong they may have done unto others as a consequence of their sinful doings. They believe in the principle that every soul is personally responsible for its own d.a.m.nation: which is true; but they forget that many elements may enter as causes into such a calamity. We are in nowise isolated beings in this world; our lives may, and do, affect the lives of others, and influence them sometimes to an extraordinary extent. We shall have, each of us, to answer one day for results of such influence; there is no man but is, in this sense, his brother's guardian.

There are, who deny this, like Cain. Yet we Icnow that Jesus Christ spoke clearly His mind in regard to scandal, and the emphasis He lays on His anathemas leaves no room to doubt of His judgment on the subject. Scandal, in fact, is murder; not corporal murder, which is a vengeance-crying abomination, but spiritual murder, heinous over the other in the same measure as the soul's value transcends that of the body. Kill the body, and the soul may live and be saved; kill the soul and it is lost eternally.

Properly speaking, scandal is any word or deed, evil or even with an appearance of evil, of a nature to furnish an occasion of spiritual downfall, to lead another info sin. It does not even matter whether the results be intended or merely suffered to occur; it does not even matter if no results follow at all. It is sufficient that the stumbling-block of scandal be placed in the way of another to his spiritual peril, and designed by nature to make him fall; on him who placed it, is the guilt of scandal.

The act of scandal consists in making sin easier to commit--as though it were not already easy enough to sin--for another. Natural grace, of which we are not totally bereft, raises certain barriers to protect and defend the weak and feeble. Conspicuous among these are ignorance and shame; evil sometimes offers difficulties, the ones physical, the others spiritual, such as innate delicacy, sense of dignity, timidity, instinctive repugnance for filth, human respect, dread of consequences, etc. These stand on guard before the soul to repel the first advances of the tempter which are the most dangerous; the Devil seldom unmasks his heavy batteries until the advance-posts of the soul are taken. It is the business of scandal to break down these barriers, and for scandal this work is as easy as it is nefarious. For curiosity is a hungering appet.i.te, virtue is often protected with a very thin veil, and vice can be made to lose its hideousness and a.s.sume charms, to untried virtue, irresistible. There is nothing doing for His Satanic Majesty while scandal is in the field; he looks on and smiles.

There may be some truth in the Darwinian theory after all, if we judge from the imitative propensities of the species, probably an inherited trait of our common ancestor, the monkey. At any rate, we are often more easily led by example than by conviction; example leads us against our convictions. Asked why we did this or that, knowing we should not have done it, we answer with simian honesty, "because such a one did it, or invited us to do it." We get over a good many old-fas.h.i.+oned notions concerning modesty and purity, after listening to the experiences of others; we forget to be ashamed in the presence of the brazen, the unabashed and the impudent. We feel partially justified in doing what we see done by One to whom we are accustomed to look up. "If he acts thus," we say, "how can it be so very wrong in me; and if everybody--and everybody sometimes means a very few--if everybody does so, it cannot be so bad as I first imagined." Thus may be seen the workings of scandal in the mind and soul of its victim. Remembering our natural p.r.o.neness to carnal indulgence, it is not surprising that the victims of scandal are so many. But this cannot be taken as an apology for the scandal-giver; rather the contrary, since the malice of his sin has possibilities so unbounded.

Scandal supposes an inducement to commit sin, which is not the case when the receiver is already all disposed to sin and is as bad as the giver. Nor can scandal be said properly to be given when those who receive it are in all probability immune against the evil. Some people say they are scandalized when they are only shocked; if what shocked them has nothing in it to induce them into sinning, then their received scandal is only imaginative, nor has any been given. Then, the number of persons scandalized must be considered as an aggravating circ.u.mstance. Finally, the guilt of scandal is greater or less according to the helplessness of the victim or intended victim, and to the sacredness of his or her right to immunity from temptation, children being most sacred in this respect.

Of course G.o.d is merciful and forgives us our offenses however great 'they may be. We may undo a deal of wrong committed by us in this life, and die in the state of grace, even after the most abominable crimes.

Theologically, therefore, the idea has little to commend itself, but it must have occurred to more than one: how does one feel in heaven, knowing that there is in h.e.l.l, at that moment, one or many through his or her agency! How mysterious is the justice of G.o.d to suffer such a state of affairs! And although theoretically possible, how can anyone count on such a contingency in his or her particular case! If the scandalous would reflect seriously on this, they would be less willing to take the chances offered by a possibility of this nature.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xII.

NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE.