If celibacy, therefore, means untrammeled vice, and marriage degenerates into New Englandism, the world will get along better with less of both.  Vows, if they have no other merit, respect at least the law of God, and this world is run according to that law.

CHAPTER XLV.  BLASPHEMY.

To blaspheme is to speak ill of God; blasphemy is an utterance derogatory to the respect and honor due to God.  Primarily, it is a sin of the tongue; but, like all other sins, it draws its malice from the heart.  Thus, a thought may be blasphemous, even though the blasphemy remain unexpressed; and a gesture, oftentimes more expressive than a word, may contain all the malice of blasphemy.  This impiety therefore may be committed in thought, in word and in deed.

Blasphemy addresses itself directly to God, to His attributes and perfections which are denied, or ridiculed; to Jesus Christ and the Blessed Sacrament; indirectly, through His Mother and His saints, through Holy Scripture and religion, through the Church and her ministers in their quality of ministers,—­all of which, being intimately and inseparably connected with the idea of God, cannot be vilified without the honor of God being affected; and, consequently, all contempt and irreverence addressed to them, takes on the nature of blasphemy.  An indirect sin of blasphemy is less enormous than a direct offense, but the difference is in degree, not in kind.

All error that affects God directly, or indirectly through sacred things, is blasphemy whether the error consist in a denial of what is true, or an attribution of what is false.  Contempt, ridicule, scoffing and sneering, where are concerned the Holy and things holy, are blasphemous.  He also blasphemes who attributes to a creature what belongs to God alone, or can be said only of holy things, who drags down the sacred to the level of the profane.

Revilings against God are happily rare; when met with, they are invariably the mouthings of self-styled atheists or infidels whose sanity is not always a patent fact.  Heretics are usually blasphemous when they treat of anything outside Jesus Christ and the Bible; and not even Christ and Scripture escape, for often their ideas and utterances concerning both are as injurious to God as they are false and erroneous.  Finally, despair and anger not infrequently find satisfaction in abusing God and all that pertains to Him.

Nothing more abominable can be conceived than this evil, since it attacks, and is in opposition to, God Himself.  And nothing shows up its malice so much as the fact that blasphemy is the natural product and offspring of hate; it goes to the limit of human power in revolt against the Maker.  It is, however, a consolation to know that, in the majority of cases, blasphemy is found where faith is wanting or responsibility absent, for it may charitably be taken for granted that if the blasphemer really knew what he was saying, he would rather cut out his tongue than repeat it.  So true is it that the salvation of many depends almost as much on their own ignorance as on the grace of God.