“And now in the middle of the nineteenth century, these facts are published for the edification of believers, and his Holiness has set his seal to their authenticity.  Four miracles performed by this saint after her death are attested by the bull of beatification, and also by Latin inscriptions in great letters displayed at St. Peter’s on the day of this great celebration.  The monks of the monastery at Bourges, in France, prayed her to intercede on one occasion, that their store of bread might be multiplied; on another their store of meal; on both occasions their prayer was granted. The other two miracles were cures of desperate maladies, the diseased persons having been brought to pray over her tomb.

“On the splendid scarlet hangings, bearing the arms of Pius IX. and suspended at the corners of the nave and transept, were two Latin inscriptions, of similar purport, of one of which I give a translation:  ’O Germana, raised to-day to celestial honors by Pius IX.  Pontifex Maximus, since thou knowest that Pius has wept over thy nation wandering from God, and has exultingly rejoiced at its reconciling itself with God little by little, he prays thee intimately united with God, do thou, for thou canst do it, make known his wishes to God, and strengthen them, for thou art able, with the virtue of thy prayers.’

“I have been thus minute in my account of this Beatification, deeming the facts I state of no little importance and interest, as casting light upon the character of the Catholicism of the present day, and showing with what matters the Spiritual and Temporal ruler of Rome is busying himself in this year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-four.”

Many other examples similar to the above might be given from the history of Catholicism as it exists at the present time in the old world.  But let us turn to our own country.  We need not look to France or Rome for examples of priestly intrigue of the basest kind; and absurdities that almost surpass belief.  The following account which we copy from The American and Foreign Christian Union of August, 1852, will serve to show that the priests in these United States are quite as willing to impose upon the ignorant and credulous as, their brethren in other countries.  The article is from the pen of an Irish Missionary in the employ of The American and Foreign Christian Union and is entitled,

   “A lying wonder.”

“It would seem almost incredible,” says the editor of this valuable Magazine, “that any men could be found in this country who are capable of practising such wretched deceptions.  But the account given in the subjoined statement is too well authenticated to permit us to reject the story as untrue, however improbable it may, at first sight, seem to be.  Here it is:—?