nature. The soul is bowed beneath the weight of the body, and compelled to do its ignoble behests. The stress of life is transferred from reason and conscience to the senses. The voluptuary exults not in great thoughts and high purposes, but crawls crippled and bedraggled through the sloughs of animalism; and when he has sunk to the depths he becomes a contemner.
He who loves not God loves but himself, and the self without God is but a thing of flesh and blood, of sensation and passion. Virtue is love rightly ordered, and disorderly love is the mother of all depravity. In nothing is this seen in such lurid light as in the perversion of the instinct which, intended for the propagation of the race, is debased to a means of moral and physical degradation and death. More than war and pest and famine and drunkenness, this abject vice dishonors, blights and poisons the flower and fruit of human life. It murders love and makes hope a mockery and a curse. It defiles with its polluting touch the brow of childhood, the cheek of youth, the lips of maidenhood. It hangs like a mildew on the soul, rendering it incapable of faith or honor or truth,—of pure devotion to any worthy cause or being. Like the serpent's in paradise, its foul breath makes a waste in homes where all was joy and innocence. It is the accomplice of shame and disease, and injects into the blood of families and nations a mortal taint. It is the enemy of genius, of art, of freedom, of progress, of religion and, above all, of woman, who has been, and still is, its victim and symbol of dishonor. In a thousand cities to-day, as in ancient times, this abject vice has its temples innumerable, in which woman is the priestess.
O blessed be Christ, the virgin Son of a virgin Mother, who has taught us that chastity is the mother of all virtue, the bride of faith, hope and love; the sister of beauty, strength and goodness; the companion of meekness and peace! And blessed be the Catholic Church, who has never in any age or any land lowered the banner on which is inscribed, Humility, Poverty, Chastity, conquering through Love!
I think of her most gladly not when I recall her great history, her permanence in the world, the invincible courage with which she
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