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]