VI. taken prisoner to France in the white heat of its Revolution,

156 WAR OF ANTICriRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
and dying abandoned and forsaken in the dungeons by the Rhone ? The Temporal Power after an uninterrupted peace of nearly four centuries, during which the disturbances common to it in the middle ages, had absolutely ceased, passed at a blow and apparently for ever. Eome's treasures of art and religion were carried in triumph to grace the capital of Infidelity, or scattered throughout the earth. The Cross and Keys were without a defender, and the tricolour floated in triumph over the palace of the Popes. The crisis had arrived when God's promise should be realized. In the twinkling of an eye, a strange force, under a strange commander, Suwarrow, descends like lightning upon Italy. The power of the Revolution passes like an uneasy morning's dream. Rome belongs to the Pope^ and Pius VII. sits calmly, as if nothing happened, upon the throne of his banished, I may add, martyred predecessor. Another event more strange occurs. The temporal power falls again, and the legions of the strongest potentate Europe had seen since the days of the Ctesars holds it as the heritage of his only son. The Pope is once more a prisoner — for years a persecuted circumvented prisoner. Napoleon mocks at his feebleness, and laughs at his predictions. The temporal power of the Popes was, he says, but never will be. The condition of the world is changed — the Empire returned. Is it so ? The crisis has come for the hundredth time. The very cardinals are taken from the side of the Pontiff. He is alone in the power of his base tormentor as much as St. Peter on Montorio was in the power of Nero. Things cannot be darker. The light must dawn ; and it does. In a month, God's elements blast the power of the tyrant ; and while millions applaud the return of the Pontiff to the Chair of St. Peter and to his power at Rome, Napoleon passes to his solitary dungeon in the midst of the waters, to ruminate on the verification which in his case, as in the case of every persecutor of the Church, attends the predictions of Peter. In our day, the Atheistic Conspiracy is as determined as ever to destroy, but it is wiser. Slowly it has surrounded God's Vicar. It has taken care so to master the
CATHOLIC ORGANIZATION. 157
councils of every European country that help, to him, when it assails, may be impossible. Under pretence of guaranteeing his independence, it has stolen from him everything. His trustiest servants are torn from his side, stripped, despoiled^ degraded, scattered. His resources have been astutely lessened to the lowest possible point. A prisoner of the Infidels, as much as Pius VI. or Pius VII. in the strongholds of France, under the appearance of being free, he is really bound hand and foot and rendered completely impotent. His power is cancelled under pretext that his city is necessary to the uniiication of Italy. No other city will suit Italian jealousies as the capital of the new nation. And who will sacrifice the welfare of the new nation to the wants of the Pope ? Astuteness is now the characteristic of the Eevolution, determined and callous as ever. But hope again appears. To the persecutions of Pius IX., many and grievous as they were, God opposed a Pontiff simple as a dove in the snares of the spoiler. He took away from the ruffian hands of Masonry its only real argument. But now when all is gone, help appears in the person of another Pontiff, whose greatest characteristic is wisdom, and whose wisdom, slowly but surely, is telling upon the nations. No Pontiff has been more firm in maintaining the rights of the Holy See, violently wrested as he found them, by the force and upon the pretexts used by Freemasonry. Despoiled of everything, he has, nevertheless, drawn together the scattered strength of the Church. Commencing with the foundation of all Christianity, its teaching, he has caused philosophy to be so purified, and so based on sound principles, as to be in reality a true handmaid to theology and a deadly foe to rationalistic, Atheistic, and infidel theories of whatever kind. He has caused the teachings of St. Thomas to assume more than at any past period, their supremacy in Cluistian schools. He has mastered the difficult, tangled web of European diplomacy. He has found out the true wants of Christian peoples. He has satisfied them : and then, finally, by his immortal Bull, Humanum Genus, he has dealt a death blow to the
158 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
progress of Freemasonry, and elevated into a system the means by which the guides of God's people are for the future, to save these people from the evils of our days.
According to my humble ability, I have endeavoured as best
I could, this evening, to carry out the first part of the instruction
of Our Sovereign Lord, Leo XIIL, who is for me and for over
two hundred millions like me, as much 'a Monarch, as if he reigned
in the Quirinal instead of Humbert IL That is, I have
endeavoured to show you what Secret Association was, and is, and
ever will be, till the end. I am persuaded, that if the evils of
secret society plotting have succeeded so far, it is mainly, because
from one reason or another, the mask was permitted to be worn
by Freemasonry. Voices were raised, I know here and there, now
and again, against it, and against Secret Societies of every kind ;
but they were either not heard at all, or, if heard, were very
soon forgotten. The utmost efforts of Freemasonry of every
kind were exerted to keep itself hidden, and that it had power
to remain hidden is looked upon by Monsignor Segur, and Mon-
signor Ketteler, and others, as one of the most remarkable
evidences of its real power. It had and still has means to silence
all who may proceed against it. It murdered, as we have seen,
in this very century, a free citizen of America, who attempted to
write a book in which only the least part of its secrets — its
absurd ceremonial, its grips, pass-words and oaths, were
revealed to •■' the profane." It threatened and used the dagger,
or calumny, or bribery, or whatever suited against those
who attempted to expose it. Exposure is its death — the
death at least of its influence over its intended dupes amongst
Catholics. Therefore, comes the word of command to us all,
from the great Vicar of Christ — " Tear the mask from off
Freemasonry;" and consequently, it becomes a plain duty, a duty
not to be performed in any desultory manner, but in season and
out of season, to expose Freemasonry. The Supreme Pontiff,
despoiled though he be, will find in the generous devotion of the
children of the Church who fear no power of man or demon in
CATHOLIC ORGANIZATION. 159
the discharge of duty, not one but ten liundred thousand voices ready for the task. Thank God ! the hibours of devoted, Christian men — bisliops, priests, and learned hiymen — have resulted in enabling us to know the real character of Masonry, and enabling us to ^'tear the mask " off the horrible thing with ease. Nor is this confined to the Continent or to ecclesiastics. The work has been nobly inaugurated already in our midst by Mr. O'Donnell, M.Y., and I trust will be continued by him and by many more. The religious orders Avill, in the solitude of tlieir cells, make a special study of the machinations of the terrible sects, the secular clergy in their Colleges and home retreats, and above all, the Catholic press Avill not cease to expose the malig- nant hydra in constantly recurriLg references and discoveries. The whole host of God is needed to march and to act against the foe in the manner indicated by our Ploly Father ; for the question is one of the salvation of the world, of the spread of the Gospel, of the happiness of families and individuals, of civil society, and of man. Surely upon such a movement the bene- diction of Heaven will descend. The means to obtain that divine blessing are also pointed out by the Holy Father. He says to those whom it concerns, " unite the Catholic people in good societies and pious confraternities." He indicates, specially, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the confi'aternity which practices the recital of the Holy Kosary. Father Anderledy, the newly appointed General of the Society of Jesus, who plainly says he speaks as he does with the knowledge and desire of the Holy Father, asks the Fathers of his Society to renew the holy habit of uniting those committed to their care in societies formed to honour Our Lady. Behold, then, the true remedy for the ills that fall upon the world. That world is rushing wildly, madly, away from religion and true happiness. Who, under God, can be conceived more powerful to restore it to reason than Mary the Virgin Mother of God, who amongst many other holy titles, is honoured by the Church as the special dispenser of the invaluable gift of Good Counsel, agift She so wonderfully displayed
160 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
ill Her holy life, and which She obtains for God's people by Her powerful intercession. She too is called upon in the liturgy of the Church, to be glad and to rejoice, for that She alone has destroyed all heresies throughout the whole world. Her power destroyed them singly in the past, and doubtless will also destroy their united force and malignity, as exhibited in Free- masonry and its kindred secret societies, in the future. Societies in honour of God's Mother cannot be too widely established. All should be under Her benign protection, as is the Catholic Young Men's Society of Edinburgh. But there is one branch society of this Catholic Institute which I cannot help singling out for special praise. It is the —
XXVI.
Catholic Total Abstinence Society.
No society can be conceived better adapted to keep working men from those bad associations which we have been considering, or more calculated to bring every blessing to individuals, and above all to homes. The public house, the drinking saloon, the music hall, the obscure "shebeen," wherever, in one word, drink is sold, is the ante-chamber of the secret society for men, and ruin both of men and w^omen. On this point permit me to be plain with you, my Catholic fellow-countrymen, as 1 may call you — for 1 find that the majority, indeed the mass of the Catholic congregations in Edinburgh, as well as in Glasgow, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Birmingham, and in all the large towns of England and Scotland, are, men and women, mainly, if not entu'ely,of Irish l)irth or Irish blood, the children of Irish parents. It is, the world knows, from you that the faith has come to Great Britain, l)y the providence of God in this nineteenth century. In the Highlands, I am told, there are some twelve thousand genuine Scotch Catholics. In the Lowlands it is doubtful whether so many genuine Scotch Catholics can be found ; but the number of Catholics in Scotland is a quarter of a million, and the excess comes from the Irish, whose migration has made the Church.
CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE SOCIETY. 161
I believe the proportion in England, notwithstanding the con- version of so many by reason and grace, and the holding out of several old families, is still greater in favour of the Irish element. From the converts and the good old Catholic fxmilies come many blest with vocations for the Priesthood, who devote their lives with great zeal to the service of the race which forms the majority — the mass of the Church. Now I praise that mass, to w^hich I myself belong, when it deserves to be praised ; but you Avill allow me the liberty of a friend to blame a portion of it when it deserves blame, God, Who knows nW hearts, knows that I desire to do the blaming as a friend. I praise you for what I see you do. The Churches, the Cathedrals — magnificent in many cases as both are — the Schools, the Houses of the Teaching Orders^ are mainly the work of your hands. The Priesthood that has been brought to minister everywhere, and the active Orders of men and women who teach, are kept in the very largest measure, by you. Notwithstanding all your burdens, your poverty, and your local wants — great everywhere — you give with a willingness unequalled by any other race, to every good work. Of you, at home and abroad, generous, faithful people, it may be said, that you realize to the very letter the truth that it is better to give than to receive. And what a blessing do you not in return receive in this land, when you remain ftiithful to the teachings of that religion for which God has enabled you to do so much ! There is not a city I have visited that I do not find some amongst you, who came to this country as poor as the rest, already risen to affluence and ease, sometimes to public and honourable position amongst their fellow-citizens differing from them more widely in religion than in race. There is no place where I have not been consoled with the signs of substantial prosperity amongst you. Pleasant it is for me, when visiting the many educational establishments now, thank God, so plentifully diffused over the face of the country, to find your sons in the Colleges, your daughters in the Convents, and to know that not a few of them dedicate
M
162 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
themselves to the highest service of God. These prove the happy, holy homes which blessed them with true parental love and care, and cast round their childhood the influences of religion. I have at this moment before my mind's-eye the death of an Irish mother who passed to eternity, since I com- menced my present journey, consoled by having her death-bed surrounded by children every one of whom were holy, and several of whom had the happiness of being either Eeligious or Priests. This valiant Catholic mother came to one of the great cities of England the wife of an Irish working-man. She had her reward surely in this life as well as in the next. In your own midst, thgre are instances of the honest prosperity which blesses the sober, well-conducted, though poor man, who comes to this country to make an honest livelihood. If he be but faithful to his religion, his life is always happy. His end is always holy. His children " rise up and call him blessed." He is a blessing to the Church and to this country. I could easily prolong this picture ; but I must speak plainly upon another. I have seen even in this city hundreds of little children, as I passed yesterday, Sunday, through your streets ; many of them were Catholics, certainly. Poor children ! they saluted me reverently. They were, I found, sent — for the law happily forces that — to the Catholic School. That was the reason why the light of Faith was in their little eyes, which brightened at the sight ol a Priest ; but alas ! the sign of hunger was upon the cheeks and upon the almost naked limbs of many of them, without shoes, without stockings, and in rags. I have seen children too, many of whom I know to be Catholic and Irish, selling newspapers in the streets on weekdays, and preparing, boys and girls, for careers I shudder to contemplate, after a very few years. On yesterday I- had evidence of the cause of their sad state. I saw men and women, the fathers and mothers of these children, crowding round public-houses, openly intoxicated, and in consequent wretchedness upon the streets. I know of course that a large proportion of these were not Irish, but I know also
CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE SOCIETY. 16
9
from inquiries I made, that a large proportion was. These were the degraded, abominable parents Avho reduced their own little ones to the sad condition in which the Avhole world could see them. I do not suppose that in a respectable gathering like this such drunkards are found, but I allude to the matter in the hope that my words r.nd opinions may, through you who are here, come to them ; that they may know, that while I praise my beloved fellow country people for what they have done so nobly and so well for the ^vorks of religion, I have no words strong enough to reprobate the conduct of those who give themselves to drink in this country, at all. I say, at all. For to commence with — where, I ask, is the working man to be found, or the working man's wife, who, having undertaken the care and respon- sibility (>f the present and the future of the numerous family it is generally their lot to have, can afibrd to spend earnings which belong to their children, on the pernicious and expensive luxury of drink? A working man needs every fraction he can earn by his labour for the education and maintenance of his children, for the rainy day, for the season of sickness, for an honest inde- pendence in his old age. He cannot be honest to his children, or to himself; he cannot advance religion, education, or the cause of God, if he drinks. When' a working man loses his employiuent, when he sickens, when he gets into trouble, we invariably find drink at the bottom of it. There is nothing that one can praise in the man who practises this vice. He is mean, and he is cruelly dishonest always. He driirks the shoes off his children's feet, the clothes off theu* backs, the bit from out their mouths, the bed from under them, the home from over them, and sends them upon society, boys degraded, and guis so lost that I cannot contemplate the picture. It is therefore that good Pastors like Cardinal Manning, who (because of his numerous Irish flock, regards himself in London as an Irish Bishop) have under- taken a life and death crusade against this devil that preys upon the vitals of their most choice and devoted people. It is therelore that Cardinal MacCabe and others have made so many personal
1 64 WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH.
efforts to uproot this vice. My own Archbishop, for many years, while Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland, practised total abstinence, in order to give his people an example. He is determined to make the same sacrifice in the new and vastly more extended field of labour which the Vicar of Christ has committed to his care at the Antipodes. I have great faith in such acts of self- denial coming from such quarters. When those of the flock who need restraint see the pastors placed over them by God make such sacrifices for their salvation, there cannot, it seems to me, be much doubt about the issue. What they can do, what such men as the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan and others have done, without any constraining necessity, others, who owe such restraint to themselves and their families, can do. For the mere temporal well-being of every working man, and every working man's family, I would be glad to see every such man a total abstainer. But when I consider the evils to which the eternal salvation of the Irish working man, in these countries especially, is exposed by the habit of drinking, I can find no words strong enough to express my anxiety to see him give up intoxicating drinks absolutely and for ever. The sacrifice is small, the gain enormous. God grant that all whom my words may reach — all Irish Catholics — may think with me on this point. Should that be so the consequences would be indeed consoling. The Church of God might well rejoice. The days of secret societies would for the Irish end for ever, and for a certainty they would carrv out to its fulness the glorious destiny given them of planting the Faith all the world over, and resisting to the bitter end the wiles, the deceits, and finally the last and most terrible onset of Antichrist against God, His Church, and Christian civilization throughout the world.
THE
SPOLIATION OF THE PROPAGANDA
^ %tctxivt
DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH
BY
MONSIGNOR GHOKGE F. DILLON, D.D.
MISSIONARY APOSTOLIC, SYDNEY'.
DUBLIN