Chapter 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 antechamber of the secret society for men, and ruin both of men and women. On this point permit me to be plain with you, my Catholic fellow-countrymen, as I may call you—for I 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 entirely, of Irish birth or Irish blood, the children of Irish parents. It is, the world knows, from you that the faith has come to Great Britain, by 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. I believe the proportion in England, notwithstanding the conversion 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 families 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 which I myself belong, when it deserves to be praised; but you will allow me the liberty of a friend to blame a portion of it when it deserves blame. God, Who knows all 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 faithful 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 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 commenced 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 Religious 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, there 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 of 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 from inquiries I made, that a large proportion was. These were the degraded, abominable parents who reduced their own little ones to the sad condition in which the whole 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 and 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 works 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 responsibility of the present and the future of the numerous family it is generally their lot to have, can afford 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 independence 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 employment, 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 drinks the shoes off his children’s feet, the clothes off their 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 girls 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 undertaken a life and death crusade against this devil that preys upon the vitals of their most choice and devoted people. It is therefore that Cardinal MacCabe and others have made so many personal 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 carry 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.

FOOTNOTES

[1] L’Eglise Romaine en face de la Révolution Par J. Crétineau-Joly, ouvrage composé sur des documents inédits et orné des portraits de Leurs Saintetés Les Papes Pie VII. Et Pie IX dessinés par Stall. Paris: Henri Plon, Libraire-éditeur, Rue Garancière, 8.—1861.

[2] To show how early the confederates of Voltaire had determined upon the gradual impoverishment of the Church and the suppression of the Religious orders, the following letters from Frederick II., will be of use. In the first dated 13th August, 1775, the Monarch writes to the then very aged “Patriarch of Ferney,” who had demanded the secularization of the Rhine ecclesiastical electorates and other episcopal benefices in Germany, as follows:—

“All you say concerning our German bishops is but too true; they grow fat upon the tithes of Sion. But you know, also, that in the Holy Roman Empire the ancient usage, the Bull of Gold, and other antique follies, cause abuses established to be respected. If we wish to diminish fanaticism we must not touch the bishops. But, if we manage to diminish the monks, especially the mendicant orders, the people will grow cold and less superstitious, they will permit the powers that be, to dispose of the bishops in the manner best suited to the good of each State. This is the only course to follow. To undermine silently and without noise the edifice of infatuation is to oblige it to fall of itself. The Pope, seeing the situation in which he finds himself, is obliged to give briefs and bulls as his dear sons demand of him. The power founded upon the ideal credit of the faith loses in proportion as the latter diminishes. If there were now found at the head of nations some ministers above vulgar prejudices, the Holy Father would become bankrupt. Without doubt posterity will enjoy the advantage of being able to think freely.”

Again, this curious compound of warrior, despot, Protestant free-thinker, poet, and mocker, writes to Voltaire, on the 8th September, 1775:—

“It is to Bayle, your predecessor, and to you, without doubt, that the glory is due of that revolution which has taken place in minds, but, to say the truth, it is not complete. The devotees have their party, and never will that be crushed except by a greater force. It is from the Governments that the sentence must go forth.... Without doubt this will be done in time, but neither you nor I will be spectators of an event so much desired.”

“I have remarked,” he says, also, “and others with me, that the places where there are most convents and monks are those wherein the people are most given to superstition. It is not doubtful that if we could succeed in destroying these asylums of fanaticism, the people would shortly grow indifferent and lukewarm regarding the things which form at present the objects of their veneration. It would be necessary then to destroy the cloisters, or at least to commence to diminish their number. The moment is arrived because the French Government and that of Austria are so indebted that they have exhausted the resources of industry without being able to pay their debts. The list of rich abbeys and of convents, with a good rent-roll, is seducing. In representing to them the evil which the cenobites do the population of their States, as well as the abuse of the great number of religious who fill their provinces, and, in the meantime, the facility of paying a part of their debts, by applying to that purpose the treasures of communities which have no natural succession, I think they could be brought to determine upon commencing that reform. It is to be presumed that after having enjoyed the secularization of some benefices their avidity would soon swallow up the rest. Every Government, which determines upon that operation, will desire the spread of philosophers and be a partisan of all the books which attack popular superstitions and the false zeal of hypocrites, who wish to oppose them. Behold a little project which I wish to submit for the examination of the Patriarch of Ferney. It is for him, as the Father of the Faithful, to rectify and to execute it. The Patriarch may demand of me, perhaps, what is to be done with the bishops. I answer that it is not yet the time to touch them, that it is necessary to commence by destroying those who inflame with fanaticism the hearts of the people. When the people shall have grown cold the bishops will become little boys, whom the Sovereigns will dispose of in the course of time at their good pleasure.”

[3] In 1768 Voltaire wrote as follows to the Marquis de Villevielle:—“No, my dear Marquis, no, the modern Socrates will not drink the hemlock. The Socrates of Athens was, between you and me, a pitiless caviller, who made himself a thousand enemies and who braved his judges very foolishly.

“Our modern philosophers are more adroit. They have not the foolish and dangerous vanity to put their names to their works. Theirs are the invisible hands which pierce fanaticism from one end of Europe to the other with the arrows of truth. Damilaville recently died. He was the author of ‘Christianism unveiled,’ and many other writings. No one ever knew him. His friends preserved the secret of his name as long as he lived with a fidelity worthy of philosophy. No one yet knows who is the author of the work given under the name of Pieret. In Holland, during the last two years, they have printed more than sixty volumes against superstition. The authors of them are absolutely unknown, although they could boldly proclaim themselves. The Italian who has written the ‘Reform of Italy,’ has not cared to present his work to the Pope, but his book has a prodigious effect. A thousand pens write and a hundred thousand voices arise against abuses and in favour of tolerance. Be assured that the revolution which has taken place in minds during the past twelve years has served, and not a little, to drive the Jesuits from so many States, and to strongly encourage princes to strike at the idol of Rome which caused them all to tremble at another epoch. The people are very stupid and, nevertheless, the light has penetrated even to them. Be very sure, for example, that there are not twenty persons in Geneva who do not abjure Calvin as well as the Pope, and that there are philosophers even in the shops of Paris.

“I shall die consoled in seeing the true religion, that of the heart, established on the ruins of affectations. I have never preached but the adoration of one God, beneficence and indulgence. With these sentiments I brave the devil who does not exist and the true devils who exist only too much.”

[4] _See Le Secret de la Franc-Maçonnerie, par Monsigneur Amand Joseph Fava, Eveque de Grenoble. Lille_, 1883, p. 38.

[5] _Opus Cit._ p. 8.

[6] M. Gougenot-Demousseaux, in his work on the Jew, Judaism, and the Judaization of Christian people (Paris 1869), has brought together a great number of indications on the relations of the high chiefs of Masonry with Judaism. He thus concludes:—“Masonry, that immense association, the rare initiates of which, that is to say, the real chiefs of which, whom we must be careful not to confound with the nominal chiefs, live in a strict and intimate alliance with the militant members of Judaism, princes and imitators of the high cabal. For that _élite_ of the order—these real chiefs whom so few of the initiated know, or whom they only know for the most part under a _nom de guerre_, are employed in the profitable and secret dependence of the cabalistic Israelites. And this phenomenon is accomplished, thanks to the habits of rigorous discretion to which they subject themselves by oaths and terrible menaces; thanks also to the majority of Jewish members which the mysterious constitution of Masonry seats in its sovereign counsel.”

M. Cretineau Joly gives a very interesting account of the correspondence between Nubius and an opulent German Jew who supplied him with money for the purposes of his dark intrigues against the Papacy. The Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by Masonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers. It is easy to conceive how such a society could be thought necessary to protect them from Christianity in power. It is easy also to understand how the one darling object of their lives is the rebuilding of the Temple. Who knows but behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on Christians to persecute the Church and to destroy it, there lies a hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and as the darkest depths of secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks to a return to the land of Juda and to the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. One of the works which Antichrist will do, it is said, is to reunite the Jews, and to proclaim himself as their long looked-for Messias. As it is now generally believed, he is to come from Masonry and to be of it, this is not improbable, for in it he will find the Jews the most inveterate haters of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the fittest to establish his reign.

[7] See section xxi. “Freemasonry with Ourselves,” page 121.

[8] Before the celebrated “Convent” of Wilhelmsbad there was a thorough understanding between the Freemasons of the various Catholic countries of Continental Europe. This was manifested in the horrible intrigues which led to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Naples; and which finally compelled Clement XIV. to dissolve the great body by ecclesiastical authority. No doubt the Jesuits had very potent enemies in the Jansenists, the Gallicans, and in others whose party spirit and jealousy were stronger than their sense of the real good of religion. But without the unscrupulous intrigues of the Infidels of Voltaire’s school banded into a compact active league by the newly-developed Freemasonry, the influence of the sects of Christians hostile to the Order could never effect an effacement so complete and so general. Anglican lodges, we must remember, appeared in Spain and Portugal as soon as in France. One was opened in Gibraltar in 1726, and one in Madrid in 1727. This latter broke with the mother lodge of London in 1779, and founded lodges in Barcelona, Cadiz, Vallidolid, and other cities. There were several lodges at work in Lisbon as early as 1735. The Duke de Choiseul, a Freemason, with the aid of the abominable de Pompadour, the harlot of the still more abominable Louis XV., succeeded in driving the Jesuits from France. He then set about influencing his brother Masons, the Count De Aranda, Prime Minister of Charles III. of Spain, and the infamous Carvalho-Pombal, the _alter ego_ of the weak King of Portugal, to do the same work in the Catholic States of their respective sovereigns. The Marquis de L’Angle, a French Freemasonic Atheist, and friend of Choiseul, thus writes of De Aranda—“He is the only man of which Spain can be proud of at this moment. He is the sole Spaniard of our days whom posterity will place on its tablets. It is he whom it will love to place on the front of all its temples, and whose name it will engrave on its escutcheon together with the names of Luther, of Calvin, of Mahomet, of William Penn, and of Jesus Christ! It is he who desired to sell the wardrobe of the saints, the property of virgins, and to convert the cross, the chandeliers, the patens, &c., into bridges and inns and main roads.” We cannot be surprised at what De Aranda attempted after this testimony. He conspired with Choiseul to forge a letter as if from the General of the Jesuits, Ricci, which purported to prove that the King’s mother was an adulteress, and that the King had no claim to the Spanish throne. Secretly, therefore, an order was obtained from the weak Monarch, and on a given day and hour the Jesuits in all parts of the Spanish dominions were dragged from their homes, placed on board ships, and cast on the shores of the Pontifical States in a condition of utter destitution. A calumny as atrocious and unfounded enabled Pombal to inflict a worse fate on the Jesuits of Portugal and its dependencies. Charles III. ordered Panucci, another Masonic enemy of the Jesuits, to banish the members of the society from Naples, where his son reigned. Geiser writes to Voltaire that the half-fool Joseph II. was initiated in the mysteries of Masonry and accordingly the Jesuits, notwithstanding the sympathies of the Empress Mary Theresa, fell in Austria. The world was left thus free for the Masonic philosophers to compass the destruction which they planned at Wilhelmsbad and effected in the Revolution eight years afterwards.

[9] It is commonly believed that the encyclopædists and philosophers were the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne at the time of the Revolution. But, apart from the facts that these writers were to a man Freemasons, and the most daring and plotting of Freemasons, we have abundant authority to prove that other Freemasons were everywhere even more practically engaged in the same work. Louis Blanc, who will be accepted as an authority on this point thus writes:—“It is of consequence to introduce the reader into the mine which at that time was being dug beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very much more profound and active than the encyclopædists: an association composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound together by symbolic bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve the secret of their interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific proofs while occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but otherwise practised beneficence and looked upon themselves as equals though divided in three classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Freemasonry consists in that. Now, on the eve of the French Revolution, Freemasonry was found to have received an immense development. Spread throughout the entire of Europe, it seconded the meditative genius of Germany, agitated France silently, and presented everywhere the image of a society founded on principles contrary to those of civil society.” Monsignor Segur writes on this—“See to what a point the reign of Jesus Christ was menaced at the hour the Revolution broke out. It was not France alone that it agitated, but the entire of Europe. What do I say? The world was in the power of Masonry. All the lodges of the world came in 1781 to Wilhelmsbad by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; from the most distant coasts discovered by navigators, they came, zealous apostles of Masonry.... They all returned penetrated with the Illuminism of Weishaupt, that is Atheism, and animated with the poison of incredulity with which the orators of the Convent had inspired them. Europe and the Masonic world were then in arms against Catholicity. Therefore, when the signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible especially in France, in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations which they wished to separate from the Pope and cast into schism, until the time came when they could completely de-Christianize them. This accounts well for the captivities of Pius VI. and Pius VII. The Cardinals were dispersed, the Bishops torn from their Sees, the pastors separated from their flocks, the religious orders destroyed, the goods of the Church confiscated, the churches overturned, the convents turned into barracks, the sacred vessels stolen and melted down by sacrilegious avidity, the bells turned into money and cannons, scaffolds erected everywhere, and victims in thousands, in hecatombs, especially from amongst the clergy; in one word, all the horrors summed up in the ‘Revolution,’ and the end, which was the great unerring power of all its actions, namely, to see Christ cast down from His altars to make way for the goddess called Reason.”

[10] Alexander Dumas in his _Memoires de Garibaldi_, first series, p. 34, tells us:—

“Illuminism and Freemasonry, these two great enemies of royalty, and the adopted device of both of which was L. P. D., _lilia pedibus destrue_, had a grand part in the French Revolution.

“Napoleon took Masonry under his protection. Joseph Napoleon was Grand Master of the Order. Joachim Murat second Master adjoint. The Empress Josephine being at Strasburg, in 1805, presided over the fete for the adoption of the lodge of True Chevaliers of Paris. At the same time Eugene de Beauharnais was Venerable of the lodge of St. Eugene in Paris. Having come to Italy with the title of Viceroy, the Grand Orient of Milan, named him Master and Sovereign Commander of the Supreme Council of the thirty-second grade, that is to say, accorded him the greatest honour which could be given him according to the Statutes of the Order. Bernadotte was a Mason. His son Oscar was Grand Master of the Swedish lodge. In the different lodges of Paris were successively initiated, Alexander, Duke of Wurtemburg; the Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimer; even the Persian Ambassador, Askeri Khan. The President of the Senate, Count de Lacipede, presided over the Grand Orient of France, which had for officers of honour the Generals Kellerman, Messina, and Soult. Princes, Ministers, Marshals, Officers, Magistrates, all the men, in fine, remarkable for their glory or considerable by their position, ambitioned to be made Masons. The women even wished to have their lodges, into which entered Mesdames de Vaudemont, de Carignan, de Gerardin, de Narbonne, and many other ladies.”

Frere Clavel, in his picturesque history of Freemasonry, says that, “Of all these high personages the Prince Cambaceres was the one who most occupied himself with Masonry. He made it his duty to rally to Masonry all the men in France who were influential by their official position, by their talent, or by their fortune. The personal services which he rendered to many of the brethren; the _eclat_ which he caused to be given to the lodges in bringing to their sittings by his example and invitations all those illustrious amongst the military and judicial professions and others, contributed powerfully to the fusion of parties and to the consolidation of the imperial throne. In effect under his brilliant and active administration the lodges multiplied _ad infinitum_. They were composed of the elect of French society. They became a point of reunion for the partisans of the existing and of passed regimes. They celebrated in them the feasts of the Emperor. They read in them the bulletins of his victories before they were made public by the press, and able men organized the enthusiasm which gradually took hold of all minds.”

[11] Deschamps says that it was at this period that the order of the Templars (for Masonry is divided into any amount of rites which exercise one over the other a kind of influence in proportion to the members of the inner grades which they contain) was resuscitated in France. It publicly interred one of its members from the Church of St. Antoine. The funeral oration of Jacques Molay was publicly pronounced. Napoleon permitted this. The danger his permission created was foreseen, and M. de Maistre writes:—“A very remarkable phenomenon is that of the resuscitation of Freemasonry in France, so far, that a brother has been interred solemnly in Paris with all the attributes and ceremonies of the order. The Master who reigns in France does not leave it to be even suspected that such a thing can exist in France without his leave. Judging from his known character and from his ideas upon secret societies, how then can the thing be explained? Is he the Chief, or dupe, or perhaps the one and the other of a society which he thinks he knows, and which mocks him.” Illustrating these remarks we have the comments of M. Bagot in his _Codes des Franc-Maçons_, p. 183:—“The Imperial Government took advantage of its omnipotence, to which so many men, so many institutions, yielded so complacently, in order to dominate over Masonry. The latter became neither afraid nor revolted. What did it desire in effect? To extend its empire—It permitted itself to become subject to despotism in order to become sovereign.” This gives us the whole reason why Masonry first permitted Napoleon to rule, then to reign, then to conquer, and finally to fall.

[12] At the Council of Verona, held by the European sovereigns in 1822, to guard their thrones and peoples from the revolutionary excesses which threatened Spain, Naples, and Piedmont, the Count Haugwitz, Minister of the King of Prussia, who then accompanied his master, made the following speech:—

“Arrived at the end of my career, I believe it to be my duty to cast a glance upon the secret societies whose power menaces humanity to-day more than ever. Their history is so bound up with that of my life that I cannot refrain from publishing it once more and from giving some details regarding it.

“My natural disposition, and my education, having excited in me so great a desire for information, that I could not content myself with ordinary knowledge, I wished to penetrate into the very essence of things. But shadow follows light, thus an insatiable curiosity develops itself in proportion to the efforts which one makes to penetrate further into the sanctuary of science. These two sentiments impelled me to enter into the society of Freemasons.

“It is well known that the first step which one makes in the order is little calculated to satisfy the mind. That is precisely the danger to be dreaded for the inflammable imagination of youth. Scarcely had I attained my majority, when, not only did I find myself at the head of Masonry, but what is more, I occupied a distinguished place in the chapter of high grades. Before I had the power of knowing myself, before I could comprehend the situation in which I had rashly engaged myself, I found myself charged with the superior direction of the Masonic reunions of a part of Prussia, of Poland, and of Russia. Masonry was, at that time, divided into two parts, in its secret labours. The first place in its emblems, the explanation of the philosopher’s stone: Deism and non-Atheism was the religion of these sectaries. The central seat of their labours was at Berlin, under the direction of the Doctor Zumdorf. It was not the same with the other part of which the Duke of Brunswick was the apparent Chief. In open conflict between themselves, the two parties gave each other the hand in order to obtain the dominion of the world, to conquer thrones, to serve themselves with Kings as an order, such was their aim. It would be superfluous to explain to you in what manner, in my ardent curiosity, I came to know the secrets of the one party and of the other. The truth is the secret of the two sects is no longer a mystery for me. That secret is revolting.

“It was in the year 1777, that I became charged with the direction of one part of the Prussian lodges, three or four years before the Convent of Wilhelmsbad and the invasion of the lodges by Illuminism. My action extended even over the brothers dispersed throughout Poland and Russia. If I did not myself see it, I could not give myself even a plausible explanation of the carelessness with which Governments have been able to shut their eyes to such a disorder, a veritable state within a State. Not only were the chiefs in constant correspondence, and employed particular cyphers, but even they reciprocally sent emissaries one to another. To exercise a dominating influence over thrones, such was our aim, as it had been of the Knight Templars.

“I thus acquired the firm conviction that the drama commenced in 1788 and 1789, the French Revolution, the regicide with all its horrors, not only was then resolved upon, but was even the result of these associations and oaths, &c.

“Of all my contemporaries of that epoch there is not one left.... My first care was to communicate to William III. all my discoveries. We came to the conclusion that all the Masonic associations, from the most humble even to the very highest degrees, could not do otherwise than employ religious sentiments in order to execute plans the most criminal, and make use of the first in order to cover the second. This conviction, which His Highness Prince William held in common with me, caused me to take the firm resolution of renouncing Masonry.”

[13] Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the higher classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in united Italy, and is meant to result in republican Italy as a prelude to republican Europe, says, “Associate, associate. All is contained in that word. The secret societies can give an irresistible force to the party who are able to invoke them. Do not fear to see them divided. The more they are divided the better it will be. All of them advance to the same end by different paths. The secret will be often unveiled. So much the better. The secret is necessary to give security to members, but a certain transparency is necessary to strike fear into those wishing to remain stationary. When a great number of associates who receive the word of command to scatter an idea abroad and make it public opinion, can concert even for a moment they will find the old edifice pierced in all its parts, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least breath of progress. They will themselves be astonished to see kings, lords, men of capital, priests, and all those who form the carcass of the old social edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion. Courage, then, and perseverance.”

[14] The following extracts from the rules of the Carbonari of Italy, “Young Italy,” will give an idea of the spirit and intent of the order as improved by the warlike and organizing genius of Mazzini:—

ART. I.—The society is formed for the indispensable destruction of all the Governments of the Peninsula and to form of Italy one sole State under a Republican Government.

ART. II.—Having experienced the horrible evils of absolute power and those yet greater of constitutional monarchies, we ought to work to found a Republic one and indivisible.

ART. XXX.—Those who do not obey the orders of the secret society, or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission. The same chastisement for traitors.

ART. XXXI.—The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence and shall design one or two affiliated members for its immediate execution.

ART. XXXII.—Whoever shall refuse to execute the sentence shall be considered a perjurer, and as such shall be killed on the spot.

ART. XXXIII.—If the culpable individual escape he shall be pursued without intermission in every place, and he ought be struck by an invisible hand, even should he take refuge in the bosom of his mother or in the tabernacles of Christ.

ART. XXXIV.—Every secret tribunal shall be competent not only to judge the culpable adepts, but also to cause to be put to death every person whom it shall have stricken with anathema.

ART. XXXIX.—The officers shall carry a dagger of antique form, the sub-officers and soldiers shall have guns and bayonets, together with a poniard a foot long attached to their cincture, and upon which they will take oath, &c.

A large number of inspectors of police, generals, and statesmen, were assassinated by order of these tribunals. The lodges assisted in that work. Eckert says, _La Franc-Maçonnerie_, t. ii., p. 218, 219—“Mazzini was the head of that Young Europe and of the warlike power of Freemasonry, and we find in the _Latomia_ that the minister Nothorub, who had retired from it, say to M. Vesbugem, even in the national palace in presence of six deputies, that the actual Freemasonry in Belgium had become a powerful and dangerous arm in the hands of certain men, that the Swiss insurrection had its resting place in the machinations of the Belgian lodges, and that Brother Defacqz, Grand Master of these lodges, had undertaken, in 1844, a voyage to Switzerland, only in order to prepare that agitation.”

[15] Nubius, who, in conjunction with the Templars of France, and the secret friends of the Revolution in England, had caused all the troubles endured by the Church and the Holy Father during the celebrated Congress of Rome and during the entire reign of Louis Philippe, and had so ably planned the revolutions afterwards carried out by Palmerston and Napoleon III., was written to before his death by one of his fellow-conspirators in the following strain:—“We have pushed most things to extremes. We have taken away from the people all the gods of heaven and earth that they had in homage. We have taken away their religious faith, their monarchical faith, their virtue, their probity, their family virtue; and, meantime, what do we hear in the distance but low bellowing; we tremble, for the monster may devour us. We have little by little deprived the people of all honourable sentiment. They will be without pity. The more I think on it the more I am convinced that we must seek delay of payment.”

[16] Opus, cit. ii. 23.

[17] _La Franc-Maçonnerie dans sa véritable signification_, par Eckert, avocat à Dresde, trad. par Gyr (Liège 1854), t. I., p. 287, appendice. See also _Les Sociétés Revolutionnaires. Introduction de l’action des Sociétés Sècrètes an xix. Siècle. Par M. Claude Janet, Deschamps, Opus cit._ xciii.

[18] M. Eckert (_opus cit._), was a Saxon lawyer of immense erudition, who devoted his life to unravel the mysteries of secret societies, and who published several documents of great value upon their action. He has been of opinion that “the interior order” not only now but always existed and governed the exterior mass of Masonry, and its cognate and subject secret societies. He says:—“Masonry being a universal association is governed by one only chief called a Patriarch. The title of Grand Master of the Order is not the exclusive privilege of a family or of a nation. Scotland, England, France, and Germany have in their time had the honour to give the order its supreme chief. It appears that Lord Palmerston is clothed to-day (Eckert wrote in Lord Palmerston’s time) with the dignity of Patriarch.

“At the side of the Patriarch are found two committees, the one legislative and the other executive. These committees, composed of delegates of the Grand Orients (mother national lodges), alone know the Patriarch, and are alone in relation with him.

“All the revolutions of modern times prove that the order is divided into two distinct parties—the one pacific the other warlike.

“The first employs only intellectual means—that is to say, speech and writing.

“It brings the authorities or the persons whose destruction it has resolved upon to succumb or to mutual destruction.

“It seeks for the profit of the order all the places in the State, in the Church (Protestant), and in the Universities; in one word, all the positions of influence.

“It seduces the masses and dominates over public opinion by means of the press and of associations.

“Its Directory bears the name of the Grand Orient and it closes its lodges (I will say why presently) the moment the warlike division causes the masses which they have won over to secret societies to descend into the street.

“At the moment when the pacific division has pushed its works sufficiently far that a violent attack has chances of success, then, at a time not far distant, when men’s passions are inflamed; when authority is sufficiently weakened; or when the important posts are occupied by traitors, the warlike division will receive orders to employ all its activity.

“The Directory of the belligerent division is called the Firmament.

“From the moment they come to armed attacks, and that the belligerent division has taken the reins, the lodges of the pacific division are closed. These tactics again denote all the _ruses_ of the order.

“In effect, they thus prevent the order being accused of co-operating in the revolt.

“Moreover, the members of the belligerent division, as high dignitaries, form part of the pacific division, but not reciprocally, as the existence of that division is unknown to the great part of the members of the other division—the first can fall back on the second in case of want of success. The brethren of the pacific division are eager to protect by all the means in their power the brethren of the belligerent division, representing them as patriots too ardent, who have permitted themselves to be carried away by the current in defiance of the prescriptions of order and prudence.”

[19] In page 340, of his work on Jews, &c., already quoted, M. G. Demousseaux reproduces an article from the Political Blueter, of Munich, in 1862, in which is pointed out the existence in Germany, in Italy, and in London, of directing-lodges unknown to the mass of Masons, and in which Jews are in the majority. “At London, where is found the home of the revolution under the Grand Master, Palmerston, there exists two Jewish lodges which never permit Christians to pass their threshold. It is there that all the threads and all the elements of the revolution are reunited which are hatched in the Christian lodges.” Further, M. Demousseaux cites the opinion (p. 368) of a Protestant statesman in the service of a great German Power, who wrote to him in December, 1865, “at the outbreak of the revolution of 1845 I found myself in relation with a Jew who by vanity betrayed the secret of the secret societies to which he was associated, and who informed me eight or ten days in advance, of all the revolutions which were to break out upon every point of Europe. I owe to him the immovable conviction that all these grand movements of ‘oppressed people’ &c., &c., are managed by a half-a-dozen individuals who give their advice to the secret societies of the entire of Europe.”

Henry Misley, a great authority also, wrote to Père Deschamps, “I know the world a little, and I know that in all that ‘grand future’ which is being prepared, there are not more than four or five persons who hold the cards. A great number think they hold them, but they deceive themselves.”

[20] Mr. F. Hugh O’Donnell, the able M.P. for Dungarvan, contributed to the pages of the Dublin _Freeman’s Journal_ a most useful and interesting paper which showed on his part a careful study of the works of Monsgr. Segur and other continental authorities on Freemasonry. In this, he says, regarding his own recollections of contemporary events:—“It is now many years since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the Rev. Sir Christopher Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive words. Speaking of the tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence of Lord Palmerston against the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir Christopher Bellew said:—

“Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He would never have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English Cabinet Minister. But he is a Freemason and one of the highest and greatest of Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal Voice through the lodges of Europe. And to obtain that rank he must have given the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred to the Catholic Church.”

Another illustration of the manner in which European events are moved by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby, M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one of the most unobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was commissioned to obtain and preserve the names and addresses of all the Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters—“fearful scoundrels” General Burnaby called them—dispersed to their native provinces, but the clue to find them again was in General Burnaby’s hands, and when a couple of years later Cavour and Palmerston, in conjunction with the Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was communicated to the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldian Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several hundreds of “fearful scoundrels,” who had learned military skill and discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form the corps of his celebrated “Army of Emancipation” in the two Sicilies and the Roman States. While the British diplomatists at Turin and Naples carried on, under cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous portion of the Carbonarist conspiracy, the taxpayers of Great Britain contributed in this manner to raise and train an army destined to confiscate the possessions of the Religious Orders and the Church in Italy, and, in its remoter operation, to assail, and, if possible, destroy the world-wide mission of the Holy Propaganda itself.

[21] The late celebrated Monsignor Dupanloup published, in 1875, an invaluable little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of the most eminent Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions taken in principal lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary organs, proofs that what is here stated is correct. The following extracts regarding education will show what Masonry has been doing in regard to that most vital question. Monsignor Dupanloup says:—“In the great lodge called the ‘Rose of Perfect Silence,’ it was proposed at one time for the consideration of the brethren:—‘Ought religious education be suppressed?’ This was answered as follows:—‘Without any doubt the principle of supernatural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a man his dignity; is useless for the discipline of children, and there is also in it, the danger of the abandonment of all morality’.... ‘The respect, specially due to the child, prohibits the teaching to him of doctrines, which disturb his reason.’”

To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over, for the diffusion of irreligious education, it will be sufficient to quote the view of the the _Monde Maçonnique_ on the subject. It says, in its issue of May 1st, 1865, “An immense field is open to our activity. Ignorance and superstition weigh upon the world. Let us seek to create schools, professorial chairs, libraries.” Impelled by the general movement thus infused into the body, the Masonic (French) Convention of 1870, came unanimously to the following decision:— “The Masonry of France associates itself to the forces at work in the country to render education gratuitous, obligatory, and laic.”

We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these Masonic aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of the Belgian Freemasons a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst universal applause, “When ministers shall come to announce to the country that they intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud, ‘to me a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left; to me the teaching; to me the examination; to me the solution.’”

Monsgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having professional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the Australian colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking countries. At the time, the movement was but just being initiated in France, but it could not deceive him. In a pamphlet, to which all the Bishops of France adhered, and which was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate, he showed clearly that these schools had two faces:—on one of which was written “Professional Instruction for Girls,” and on the other, “Away with Christianity in life and death.” “Without woman,” said Brother Albert Leroy, at an International Congress of Masons, at Paris, in 1867, “all the men united can do nothing”—nothing to effectually de-Christianize the world.

The French “Education League” had the same object. At the time it was introduced, the lodges were busy with getting up a statue to Voltaire. And the _Monde Maçonnique_, speaking of both, said in April, 1867:—

“May the Education League and the statue of Brother Voltaire find in all the lodges the most lively sympathy. We could not have two subscriptions more in harmony: Voltaire, that is the destruction of prejudices and superstitions: the Education League, that is the building up of a new society founded solely upon science and upon instruction. All our brethren understand the matter in this manner.”

It is needless to remark here that by “superstition” the _Monde Maçonnique_ means religion, and, by “science and instruction,” these acquirements, not only without, but directly hostile to religion. This newspaper constantly teaches that all religions are so many darknesses, that Masonry is the light; that God, the soul, the life to come, are nothing but suppositions and fantasies, and that, as a consequence, a man ought to be reared up independent of every kind of Christianity. Therefore, it adds, “All masons ought to adhere in mass to _the league of instruction, and the lodges ought to study in the peace of their temples the best means to render it efficacious_.” In fact the Education League and Masonry are declared to be identical by Brother Mace, who, at a general banquet, drank:—“To the entrance of all Masons into the League. To the entrance into Masonry of all those who form part of the League.” “To the triumph of the light, the watchword common to the League and to Masonry.”

In fine, the author of a history of Freemasonry, and one evidently well up in its aims, Brother Goffin, writes as follows:—

“Whenever Masonry accords the entrance into its temple to a Hebrew, to a Mahometan, to a Catholic, or to a Protestant, that is done on the condition that he becomes a new man, that he abjures all his past errors, _that he rejects the superstitions in which he was cradled from his youth_. Without all this what has he to do in our Masonic assemblies?”

But as we have seen the great aim of the _Alta Vendita_, was to corrupt woman. “As we cannot suppress her,” said _Vindex_ to _Nubius_, “let us corrupt her with the Church.” The method best adapted for this was to alienate her from religion by an infidel education. The Freemasons, no doubt, obtained from the higher grades the word of command, and, accordingly, proceeded to force, everywhere, the establishment of superior schools for young girls where they might be surely deprived of their religion and their morality. In the “Lodge of Beneficence and Progress,” at Boulogne, on the 19th of July, 1867, “Massol” thus spoke: “By means of instruction, women will become able to shake off the clerical yoke, and to liberate themselves from the superstitions which impede them from occupying themselves with an education in harmony with the spirit of the age.” To give one proof only of this, where is the English, German, or American woman, who to the two religious questions which her own children can propose to her: “Who made the world?” “Do we continue to live after death?” would dare to answer that she knew nothing and that no one knew anything about it. Well, then, this boldness the instructed French woman will possess.

[22] A curious proof of this fact is preserved in the records of Dublin Castle, where, upon a return of the members and officers of Freemasonry, as it is with us, having been asked for by the Government, the names of the delegates from the Irish Lodges to various continental national Grand Lodges were given. I do not place much value upon the fact as a means to connect British Freemasonry with its kind on the Continent, because the REAL SECRET was, as a rule, kept from British and Irish Masons. But the intercourse had an immense effect in causing the vanguard cries of the Continental lodges to find a fatal support from British Masons in and out of Parliament. These delegates brought back high-sounding theories about “education” without “denominationalism,” etc., etc., but they were never trusted with the ultimate designs of the Continental directory to destroy the Throne, the Constitution, and lastly, the very property of British Masons. These designs are communicated only to reliable individuals, who know full well the REAL SECRET of the sect—and keep it.

[23] The _Alta Vendita_ and the intellectual party in Masonry have for a long time endeavoured to revive practices which Christianity did away with, and which were distinctly Pagan. Amongst others they have made every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and every respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief in the immortality of the soul. Death is with man, a powerful means to keep alive in him a wholesome fear of his Creator, and respect for religion. Spiritual writers, following the advice of the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures, “Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin,” always place before Christians the thought of death as the most wholesome lesson in the spiritual life. The demon from the beginning tried to do away with this salutary thought as the most opposed to his designs. When Eve feared to eat the forbidden fruit it was because of the terror with which death inspired her. The devil lied in telling her “No, ye shall not die the death.” She believed the liar and the murderer. His followers in the secret societies established by him, and which he keeps in such unity of aim and action, second his desire to the utmost by doing away with whatever may keep alive in man the thoughts of his last end and of a future resurrection, and, of course, of judgment. Weishaupt taught his disciples to look upon suicide as a praiseworthy means of flying the horrors of death and present inconvenience. Cremation, instantly destroying the terrors of corruption—the death’s head and cross bones—the worst features in mortality, as exhibited in a corpse, is therefore largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly devised sanitary, æsthetic, and economical grounds. But it is a pagan practice, opposed to that followed ever since the creation of the world by all that had the knowledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish, and Christian dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established at Rome, Milan, and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced Freemasons, like Garibaldi, have in their wills, directed that their bodies should be cremated. A little reflection, however, will show that neither for rich nor poor, for sanitary, for economical or any other reasons can cremation be advocated in preference to burial. For besides the fact that the earth which is always the best, safest, and readiest solvent for corruption, may be had everywhere in abundance, and at a safe enough distance from cities if so desired, there is the fact before us that the Roman poor and slaves, were thrown into pits to save expense; while cremation, where practised by the rich, led to most extravagant expenses and excesses. Christians, when they find plausibly given, interesting notices of cremation in journals of any kind, may be quite sure that the writer who writes them is influenced by the secret sect, and these scribes are found everywhere and find means to ventilate their ideas—unsuspected by the proprietors—sometimes into journals professedly Catholic. They are advocating, it is thought, a harmless sanitary arrangement not condemned by the Church; but they are doing all the while, consciously or unconsciously, the work of the secret Atheistic sect. As it is with cremation, so it is with the eating of horse-flesh and other apparently harmless practices advocated by the sectaries solely because in practice or in theory, discountenanced by, or not practised by, Christians. When in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advocated without any urgent reason, in the press, now almost entirely in the hands of members of the sect, and generally Jewish members, Christians may fear that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule, the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them of their purely Christian character, are other methods employed by the sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these, Christian people should carefully study to keep the joy of Christmas, the penitential fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendour of Easter, the feasts of God’s holy Mother and of the saints—to fill themselves, in one word, with the Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith.

THE
SPOLIATION OF THE PROPAGANDA

A Lecture
DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH

BY
MONSIGNOR GEORGE F. DILLON, D.D.
MISSIONARY APOSTOLIC, SYDNEY.

DUBLIN
M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE STREET.
LONDON AND NEW YORK: BURNS AND OATES.
1885.

Nihil Obstat:

W. FORTUNE,
_Censor Theologus Deputatus_.

COLL. OM. SANCTORUM,
_Die iii. Mensis Maii, 1885._

Imprimatur:

GU. CAN. J. WALSH, D.D.,
_Vic. Cap. Dubliniensis_.

_Die iv. Mensis Maii, 1885._