Chapter 6

"Preach," says Dr. Ireland, "in a manner that the people will understand, and that goes straight to their hearts, and not in the stilted phraseology of the seventeenth century sermon." Sage advice! The comic stage has set the world laughing at the grotesque inflections of the parson preacher; but is his counterpart never found amongst ourselves. Is the Catholic pulpit free from speakers whose ridiculous cadences at once class them amongst the disciples of the Rev. Mr. Spalding?

[Side note: Artificiality means failure]

We have met priests, typical of a considerably large class, who, in ordinary conversation, could speak in a manner both natural and pleasing; who, when roused, could be even eloquently convincing; who, at the dinner-table and even on the platform, are listened to with pleasure, yet let one of them go into a pulpit, and fifteen minutes exhausts the patience of the most charitable congregation. Should he exceed this limit there are suppressed sighs and ominous consulting of watches. Why? Because in the pulpit he adopts an artificial tone of voice. In some instances it takes the shape of a pious whine, in others of a drone. But in whatever shape it finds expression the hollow ring of the unreal is there to damn it.

[Side note: How he came to acquire it]

A hoary tradition made it venerable in his eyes. As a boy he heard it from a pastor to whom he was accustomed to look with reverence.

He came to persuade himself that, like a "judge's gravity" or a "soldier's step," a priest too should bear a professional hallmark, and this should be a "preacher's voice," so he acquired it. Fatal acquisition!

The peculiarity of it is that this tone is reserved exclusively for the pulpit. Not a whisper of it heard during the week. It is his "preaching voice," and like his "preaching stole" or "preaching surplice" it is laid aside till Sunday brings him again before the congregation.

[Side note: The result of the artificial tone]

What madness! Adopting this tone is like drawing the lead from the pistol or putting a foil on the rapier: it defeats his purpose, it renders his weapon ineffective. So far from setting his congregation on fire he sets them asleep; instead of sending them away with clenched convictions they leave the church tittering, or perhaps in bad temper.

[Side note: Priests never use in moments of serious issues]

I would like to ask such a man--If you were pleading in a court for your character or before an angry mob for your life is it on this antiquated weapon you would rely? Would not nature's unerring instinct tell you to fling it to the winds and stake your fortunes on the untrammeled outpouring of head and heart? Every tone would ring with earnestness: every sentence thrill with passion.

The thoughts, how clear! How convincing the arguments! Nature's unfettered strength would then, like a tidal wave, sweep you triumphantly onward to the goal.

Yet when you stand in the pulpit to plead a brief for Christ the simple, unaffected earnestness that everywhere else carries conviction is abandoned for such a musty instrument as an unctuous whine or a holy drone. The young priest should avoid it: it spells ruin.

[Side note: Voice dropping]

It is wonderful how few the speakers are who sustain the same pitch and energy of voice from the beginning of a sentence to its closing syllable.

[Side note: Cause of the defect]

The temptation to exhaust the air in the lungs, and therefore permit the final words to drop, is so strong that unless a student watch it and assiduously guard against it he will discover that he has fallen victim to this weak point before he is twelve months a priest.

[Side note: It destroys a sermon]

Whenever you hear the last words of each sentence of a sermon growing faint, like Marathon runners staggering feebly towards the goal, and the final word dropping completely under, that sermon, no matter how beautiful its conception or eloquent its composition, is doomed to failure.

The entire meaning of many a sentence is completely lost if the last words fail to reach the listeners' ears. Very often the last word is the important member of a sentence, the others being merely ancillary to it. In oratory, especially, many a sentence has to depend for its driving force on the energy with which the final words are sent home.

Now, when people give a preacher attentive interest, the least they are entitled to expect is that he should let them hear every word. But finding themselves invariably baffled by the last word becoming inaudible, it is small wonder if, tantalised and disgusted, they abandon all effort to follow him.

[Side note: The cure]

It is therefore of great importance that this defect, so fatal yet so common, should be provided against in time. But how?

Since it comes from exhaustion, consequent on the mismanagement of the voice, the remedy is obvious.

Let the student daily practise reading aloud in the open air, preferably sermons or speeches by the best authors.

Let him nervously guard against allowing his voice to show the slightest trace of fatigue in the final words of each sentence. This can be accomplished by inhaling fully, going slowly, and not only giving full value to the punctuation stops, but resting at the rhetorical and logical pauses.

[Side note: Advantages of the remedy]

By this excellent practice he strengthens his lungs and vocal organs, cultivates his ear, and acquires a control over his voice so perfect that he can husband his reserve fund of breath and strength to impart at will freshness to the final syllable.

This practice should be continued till it becomes a rooted habit, till it has grown to be his normal method of speaking.

When he goes into the pulpit I would give him an advice, the value of which time and experience can alone enable him to appreciate.

Direct your voice not to the end of the church, but to the side wall about three-quarters way down from the pulpit to the door. Fix your eye on some person there; to him address your sermon, but pitch your voice against the wall about two feet above his head.

By this plan you not only secure your voice against unnecessary fatigue, but you take the surest method of sending it into every ear, and the reverberations of your own voice will act electrically on you.

As ring after ring of your sentences comes back from the sounding spot against which you have discharged them you are filled with courageous confidence and an assurance that every word has found its mark.

A recent writer in the _Quarterly Review_ discloses in one luminous sentence the qualities that go to make an orator, and every priest should struggle with all his might to be an orator in the best sense of the word.

He says: "Nor is any man a great orator who has not many of the gifts of a great actor--his command of gesture, his variety and grace of elocution, his mobility of features, his instant sympathy with the ethical tone of this or that situation, his power of evoking that sympathy in every member of his audience; and this is surely what Demosthenes meant by making acting not action the secret of all oratory."

What a vista these words open up! What a variety of accomplishments demanded that can only be acquired, even by the most gifted, by long study and patient practice! And since learning to speak in public is like learning to swim, or to skate, or to ride a bicycle, in this sense at least, that no amount of previous theoretical instruction will enable one to realise the initial difficulties or find out how to overcome them without actual experiment, it would be arrant folly on the part of the future priest to neglect this subject during his student years.

These questions--Culture, English, and Preaching--should occupy a foremost place in the curricula of our colleges. It is only by training the student from the start, by fostering literary, dramatic and debating societies where not alone the practical art of speaking is developed, but the social amenities of good society are practised, that the young priest can be equipped to efficiently discharge the high office awaiting him, and so reflect a lasting credit on the Church of God at home and abroad.

CHAPTER SEVENTH

THE DANGER OF THE HOUR. HOW TO MEET IT

[Side note: Statement of the case]

The printing press is one of the greatest forces of the modern world. The multitude of publications sent forth on its wings each morning are messengers of light or darkness. Their influence for good or evil is more powerful than that of armies or parliaments: that influence we can no more escape than we can escape the sunlight or the air that surrounds us. It penetrates our homes; it colours our thoughts; it furnishes motives for our actions. The Press is indeed the lever that moves the world of our day, and we are but the puppets of its will.

Such being the case, is it not a question of first importance for the priest to examine its bearing on his own life, and on the lives of those committed to his care?

[Side note: A general principle]

That we may do so in a scientific manner, let us take a simple general principle. Reading is the food of the mind. Now, the body is marvellously influenced by the food it assimilates; give a man wholesome nutriment and mark the bounding vigour of his blood, the activity and healthy development of every organ; feed him on innutritious food and the most robust must fade; on poisonous food and the strongest languishes unto death.

The substance of the body is so influenced by what it assimilates that scientists assure us, young animals fed on madder will reproduce the purple dye of the plant in the very texture of the bone.

[Side note: The principle illustrated]

With far greater thoroughness and completeness does thought act upon the mind: thought blends with thought with a force and subtleness unknown in matter. Watch the principle in action. Let any man habitually read good books--and by good books I mean the production of any person whose mind is illumined by faith and whose heart is fed by the sacraments--it matters little in what shape such books reach us, let it be a novel or a book of poems or essays. No man can invariably read such works without growing imperceptibly better. His Catholic principles grow more robust; he becomes more fearless in expressing them; each volume leaves an aroma behind and imparts a new flavour to his life. Fresh oil is poured into the lamp of his piety, its flame burns brighter, he feels an unction in his prayers; he has a holy relish for the sacraments. His very interests in life change: he looks on everything with supernatural eyes, he becomes touchy about the interests of the Church, anxious about the foreign missions, and feels an insult to the Holy See as a wound.

The food his brain is living on is leavening his whole life, giving colour, tone and trend to his existence.

[Side note: Brownson]

This literature, on which he nourishes himself, has been admirably described by the mastermind of Catholic America--Dr. Brownson:--"Catholic literature is robust and healthy of a ruddy complexion, and full of life. It knows no sadness but the sadness of sin, and it rejoices for evermore. It eschews melancholy as the devil's best friend on earth, abhors the morbid sentimentality which feeds upon itself and grows by what it feeds upon. . . . It washes its face, anoints its head, puts on its festive robe, goes forth into the fresh air, the bright sunshine; and, when occasion requires, rings out the merry laugh that does one's heart good to hear. It is on principle that the Catholic approves such gladsome and smiling literature."[1]

[1] Vol. xix., p. 155.

Now look at the converse picture. Let the mind of the most devout Catholic feed on the writings of the Protestant or sensualist and mark the transformation. See how his soul becomes enervated, his judgment warped and his heart invaded by every temptation. His Catholic principles insensibly vanish, and the standards of paganism replace them. The light of the supernatural dies in his eyes, a film of clay overspreads his vision; he looks on the Church through coloured lenses, and the rankness of earth is upon his life.

Thus our thoughts, views and actions are marvellously coloured and influenced by the books we read.

[Side note: The English press operating on the Irish mind]

Let us now turn to examine how this bears on our own lives and the lives of those around us.

Thick as snowflakes, but without their whiteness, the sensuous and infidel Press of England is discharging its messengers of evil on this land. It is speaking by a multitude of tongues into the hearts of our people. The sensational novel, the suggestive picture paper, the trashy magazine are breathing a deadly blight over the soul of Ireland: they whisper thoughts that fall like corrosive poison into the sanctuary of young hearts, destroying the only jewels that are worthy of being there enshrined--bright faith and pure morals.

[Side note: What the Londoner saw]

An Irishman residing in London, after visiting his native country in 1900, records his impressions:--

"I have been amazed during recent visits to Ireland at the display of London weekly publications, while Dublin publications of a similar kind were difficult to obtain. I have seen the counters of newsagents in such towns as Waterford, Limerick, Kilkenny and Galway piled as thickly, and with as varied a selection of these London weekly journals as in Lambeth or Islington. . . . I was so impressed with the phenomenon that I endeavoured when in Dublin to obtain some accurate information in regard to its extent. At Messrs. Eason's I was told that within the past ten years the circulation of these journals in Ireland had almost quadrupled, although the population had diminished within the same period by one-eighth."[2]

[2] Mr. MacDonagh in "Nineteenth Century," July, 1900.

This is the offal the national mind is feeding on, and yet people express surprise that we are becoming West-British and losing Catholic thought and character.

It is estimated that, without counting the book or parcel post, every week there are three tons of this literature discharged on the quays of Dublin alone. If this is even approximately true it reveals a startling condition of things.

It may well be questioned whether the bayonets of Cromwell or the plantations of James threatened more destruction to all we hold dear. I believe they were as toy armies compared with the silent foe now encamped upon the soil.

Out of these three tons it would be easy to count, not the volumes, but the pages, devoted to a defence of the Ten Commandments. Works of open or professed assault on faith or morals are as yet few, the time is not ripe just yet, their forerunners are here, however, the ground is being prepared. The advance guards have come, and it is only a question of time till the heavy ordnance is planted in our midst.

[Side note: Cardinal Logue]

Our present danger has been admirably described by an eminent prelate:--"A mass of literature which professes to be innocent, and ostensibly aims at being interesting, but seeks to create that interest and engross attention by fostering thoughts that appeal to the passions with no uncertain voice. Even when such works do not openly attack faith or the sanctity of morals, they seek to convey the subtle poison of unbelief or corruption by covert insinuation, by ridicule, by ignoring religious truth and supernatural motives as unworthy of consideration, more effectually and fatally, than they would have done by open and undisguised assault."[3]

[3] Cardinal Logue, Lenten Pastoral.

There are novels that constitute an unbroken attack, from the first page to the last, against some divine truth, yet with such a delicate hand is the insidious poison distributed that you may be challenged to lay your finger on a single objectionable passage. Satan has not been studying the human heart for six thousand years without knowing it well. He takes very good care not to label his drugs, or present his poison to timid minds in large doses; hence there is no alarm: but the treacherous danger of such books is well illustrated by a tree to be found in tropical forests.

[Side note: The Tropical tree]

In early autumn it is ablaze with sheaves of fairest pink; it warns you off by no repellant odour; its umbrageous shelter is most inviting; yet so fatal is the subtle breath with which it charges the air around that should an incautious traveller rest his head for one night under its treacherous shade he would wake no more.

So, the flowery brilliancy of style, the charms and graces of diction of many a modern novel are fascinating, but the pages they adorn exhale a deadly breath.

[Side note: A sample novel]

Let us take a sample novel. The foundation of the State is the family; the corner-stone on which the family rests is the sacred marriage bond. Dissolve that and you convert social harmony into social chaos. Yet how many books are there which are covert attacks on the marriage tie.

The heroine is generally a married lady who discovers that her husband is not the man she should have married. From this centre-point the web of intrigue is woven. Mawkish sentiment and false pity are aroused. A glamour is thrown over the sins and the sinners. Tears are demanded for libertines and their crimes are gilded. Virtue becomes a tyranny; the marriage bond an intolerable yoke, and the divorce court--which is truly a vestibule of hell--a haven of relief.

It is unnecessary to trace the effects of such degrading teaching on the lives of the young, whose minds are as wax to receive and marble to retain: how the high standards of virtue taught in the school and strengthened in the home vanish: how the touchy sensitiveness of the pure soul becomes deadened and a hunger for grosser excitements is awakened.

[Side note: The head leads the heart]

Now that we have analysed the intellectual food on which our people live let us advance the enquiry one step further and ask--Where must it all end? St. Thomas answers: "_Nihil volitum nisi cognitum_." That principle is axiomatic in its truth: the heart will ever follow the head. As you sow in thought you will reap in action. Corrupt a nation's intellect, and as surely as darkness succeeds sunset, as effect follows cause, so surely corruption of that nation's heart must ensue.

How clearly the devil understands this and what use has he not made of it!

For the past four hundred years the greatest evils that have afflicted the Church are traceable to a licentious Press. Printing was scarcely invented till Satan seized it for his own purposes. By it the Humanists of the fifteenth century scattered broadcast pagan ideas. The disentombed paganism continued to ferment and rot the hearts of the people till in the next century it burst forth in the deluge of unbridled passions that marked the Reformation.

[Side note: France]

Voltaire and his disciples did not openly cry "down with the Church," but they took the surest road to level it. They corroded the foundations of Christian belief. By encyclopedias and pamphlets they first attacked with sneer and jibe, the person of the priest, then the sacraments he administered became the butt of their mockery, and they finally flouted the gospel he preached. And while the agents of evil were busy, the good cures of France sounded no trumpet of alarm, but dreamed themselves into the comforting delusion that all would blow over, till the ground under their feet began to rock and heave in the convulsive throes of the Revolution.

The disciples of Satan to-day are sleepless in their endeavours to undermine the faith of Ireland through the same agency; while it is to be feared that some of the guardians of that sacred treasure are inclined to imitate the dreamy lethargy that led to such disastrous results in France.

[Side note: Europe]

Look at Europe to-day seething with socialism and anarchy, its huge standing armies scarcely able to hold these worse than barbarian hordes in check. Out of what dark womb have these monsters crept? A corrupt Press. The devil found men whose lives were filled with pain and want; he came breathing through the Press telling them to distrust God, and to make war upon society. The Reformation, the Revolution, the social anarchy of to-day are the direct offspring of a licentious Press. Permit a nation's mind to be poisoned, and that nation's heart must rot. _Nihil volitum nisi cognitum_.

[Side note: Fifty years ago]

In proof of this we need not look outside our own shores. Fifty years ago the priests of Ireland often had recourse to rough methods with the people. Even the aid of the "blackthorn" was occasionally invoked as an effective instrument for securing correction or impressing conviction. Yet, on the morrow, all was forgotten; and the people would die for the man who punished them. Let the priest of to-day but thwart the grand-children of that generation, even in a small matter, and mark their rancour. How bitter! how relentless! The Catholic spirit of half a century ago was not operated on by the literature of a nation that is daily losing even the veneer of Christianity.

You may gash a man with healthy blood to the bone, and time will quickly heal the wound and scarcely leave a scar, but if the man's blood be corrupt the scratch of a thorn may involve consequences demanding the surgeon's knife.

The spirit that Catholic Ireland had fifty years ago is sadly changed to-day; and its tendency to fester on slight provocation is due to the poison distilled into it from an unwholesome, anti-Catholic literature. Only twenty years ago we had a painful illustration of the silent but terrible mischief that has been done by England's Press upon the Catholic mind of this country.

[Side note: An evil crisis]

Up to the time of the Parnell crisis the priests imagined their feet were planted upon a solid rock; they discovered they were standing on a pie-crust. What a startling revelation was in store for them. Small wonder they rubbed their eyes and asked in bewilderment, Are we in Catholic Ireland?

The ground broke; the fiery breath of hell belched forth. We saw the devil spitting hate through the lips of politicians, the columns of the Press, and the resolutions of the schoolmasters. Terrible as was this outward exhibition, it revealed but a fraction. The spirit of revolt and infidelity that raged within the breasts of young men and darkened their conversation was awful. The writings of avowed freethinkers and libertines were devoured, and if any young man had the heroic courage to remonstrate, his words would be drowned in derision.

God permitted that warning to come, but have we taken it as a warning? What efforts have we made since to secure the entrenchments? The danger passed, and we sank back into the old, dreamy lethargy, and left the field open to the devil to sow his tares anew. Our greatest danger to-day is our apparent safety. We wrap ourselves into a false security, while a dry rot is permitted to stealthily corrode the pillars of intellectual conviction that must uphold all. Unless this is fought, and fought effectively, the structure of our Catholic life will topple like a house of cards.

[Side note: Objections answered]

All looks calm now, but so long as the causes that produced the sad outburst of twenty years ago continue unchecked, worse inevitably awaits us. I may be told. Look at the union of priests and people to-day; look at our flourishing sodalities and our beautiful churches.

The union of priests and people was then tested by one strong wrench, and it snapped; and so long as the evil forces that caused the fissure continue to gnaw once more the bond that unites the hearts of priests and people, is it stronger you expect that bond to grow?