Studs Lonigan (71 page)

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!”

He paused pregnantly, and dramatically. In a calm modulated voice, he exclaimed:

“My text for tonight's sermon is: ‘Stand, therefore, having your loins girt in truth, and having on the breast-plate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.' Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, sixth chapter, sixteenth verse.

“In the words, then, of the stern and austere Saint, Paul himself, I come and say unto you boys and girls tonight: ‘Stand, therefore, having your loins girt in truth, and having on the breast-plate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace'.”

His voice lowered almost imperceptibly:

“This evening, I shall have serious things to say, words of more serious import than those which have been, or will be contained in any other sermon or talk of this mission.”

He smiled.

“Hence, I am constrained to ask that those of you who have the habit of sleeping through sermons, will kindly refrain from snoring. You know, there is a commandment of Jesus Christ, our Lord, which dictates that we must all love our neighbor as ourselves. Snoring, when your neighbor may be trying to hear what I say, or, God bless the mark, when he himself may be trying to sleep, is not what I call loving your neighbor.”

He leaned on his arms, chest forwards, and smiled, while there were ripples of laughter.

“I stated that I have serious things to tell you. But don't, in the name of God, think that because I have said that, that I am coming here like a black-faced (he frowned dourly and hunched his shoulders) old man of gloom with crepe hanging from my shoulders. Because I am not (he smiled). I was young once myself, even though many of you may doubt that because of this billiard ball I have.”

He touched his bald head; he waited until the self-conscientious, restrained laughter subsided.

“I know what it means to be young. I know that Satan rides about through the night, like a witch in Sleepy Hollow, planning traps and temptations with which to beset the young. I know that when you are eighteen, nineteen, twenty-one, even twenty-five, you cannot be expected to live the kind of a life that a crabby, old maid aunt would desire you to live. I know that you want good times. I believe, uncategorically, that you should have good times. (His pitch rose.). . . . But I do say that they should be clean good times, clean fun, decent pleasures that will not rob you of your soul, your mind, even your body and your health. Thus, I want you to realize that I am coming here as your friend, attempting to understand you, and to be sympathetic with you in the problems you must face, and the temptations which you must resist.”

He paused, permitting his eyes to rove about the church.

“I fail to see any sleepers. That, I take, as a good augury.”

He waited again, while there was a quiet outburst of laughing.

“My young friends, modern youth (his voice became explosive) in that quest for joy and amusement and fun, which is the perennial quest of youth, has drunk deeply from the muddy fountains of sham sophistication. Modern youth, therefore—and I do not exclude many Catholic boys and girls of this nation—must, under the pain of serious and eternal consequences, eject this soiled, germ-ridden, sin-ridden sham sophistication from its minds and its souls. And the sooner young people realize that the only lasting purgatives to perform this task of spiritual catharsis are the Sacraments and teachings of Holy Mother Church, the better off they will be, the better off this great nation will be, the better off this world will be.

“Today, we live in a world (he sneered and his voice sharpened) that is debauched with paganism of the vilest kind. For in pagan Greece, and even in pagan Rome, there was a measure of spiritual and intellectual accomplishment that is lacking in our own times. We live in an age of growing laxity, of sin (his face and voice intensified), ugly sin that is the cancer destroying immortal souls that have been made in the image and likeness of God Almighty. Our modern jazz age of freedom and untrammelled unconventionality is characterized by immorality, vice, disease . . . spiritual cowardice. Today, there are afoot movements started by vicious men and women who philander with the souls of youth in order that they will receive their paltry profit, and their cheap, ephemeral notoriety. I refer to such movements as jazz, atheism, free-love, companionate marriage, birth-control. These, and similarly miscalled tendencies, are murdering the souls of youth (he slapped his hand on the pulpit).”

(His voice broke into lamentation.) “Oh, how closely, how closely, my young friends, does not hell yawn to the youth of America!

“‘Weep, oh, weep for Adonais!' if I might quote that misguided poet, Shelley.”

(His voice became calm and normal.) “I travel through this great, wide-flung country extensively. In the course of every year, I go from coast to coast. I contact these tendencies. I see their evil effects, the young people they ruin, the homes they wreck, the sadness they cause in the hearts of God-fearing mothers and fathers. I see how (his pitch rose) those seats of the godless—the universities—those iniquitous incubators of vice, cheapness, and trash—the movies; (he sneered) those imitation Anti-Christs, modern authors whose books perfume the vilest of sins—how all these take their toll in lives, in souls. In short, my young friends, I can perceive clearly (with dolorousness) oh, how clearly, Satan is making a powerful offensive, with all his artillery and machinery of strategems, bribes, craftiness, seductive lies and promises, upon this so-called modern world of ours.

“And speaking of books, what do I mean? (His tone sharpened.) I have no fear of naming names and titles, and condemning where condemnation is due. And if I met the authors of the books I shall mention, I should tell them to their faces (his voice rose, almost to a shout): ‘Your books are vile. In order to make a sale for them, you fill them with spiritual poison, with all the resources of your filthy and putrid minds. For thirty pieces of silver, you sign your names to oozing immorality. You are worse than dogs! You are the vilest of the vile, the most vicious of the vicious, lower than snakes, you rats who write books to rob youth of its shining silvered innocence!' That's what I would say to them, if, God forbid, I were to meet them face to face. (He vigorously smashed his hand against the pulpit.)

“What books do I mean? For one, there is a scurrilous novel,
Elmer Gantry
, a book that belongs in no decent household, a book that no self-respecting Catholic can read under the pain of sin, a book that should be burned in a garbage heap. In that novel, what does the author do? He mocks the most sacred profession that man can enter . . . the cloth, the service of Almighty God. Do you think I am afraid to tell you what kind of a man the author of
Elmer Gantry
is? (His voice grew in fearlessness.) Well, I am not afraid! I shall tell you. . . . He is a liar. I say (bellowing), he is a liar, and I am prepared to tell him so to his face!”

He paused, and surveyed a church taut with silence and interest. His voice dropped and he continued evenly:

“And in Denver, there is a puny little man, whose mind would have to be seen through the lenses of a powerful microscope. A man who has sullied the sanctity and justice of the courts . . . one Judge Ben Lindsay. And what does he preach? (He sneered.) . . . Companionate Marriage! Companionate Marriage, another of those masked fads that rise from a cesspool of spiritual cravenness (sneering). Companionate Marriage! That is his sugar-coated, seductive term. This little man, this human atom, this intellectual midget, what does he preach—at a profit (with rising voice)? I'll tell you in straight language without any fake pretense of those abused words, liberality and tolerance. In simple words, this human rat, like the anarchistic, atheistic Bolshevists in unhappy Russia, says (his arms flung out in a gesture): ‘Away with the holy bonds of Matrimony!' Jesus Christ, (his head bowing), our Lord, said What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!' Mother Church, after nineteen hundred years of tested wisdom and experience, achieved with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Mother Church says that you must be married by one of God's anointed representatives, and that unless you are, you sin when you take unto yourself a man or woman as husband or wife. And Judge Ben Lindsay (with a sneer) says that this is all nonsense. It is not modern. It is old-fashioned. Away with it! (His cassocked arm again swung outward in a demonstrative gesture.) He tells the youth of America to go out, flirt, taste sin, ruin their souls, experiment, and that if it does not succeed, try again. He advises young men to take a girl, a pure, innocent, decent, perhaps even a Catholic, girl, and live with her in violation of one of God's Holy Commandments. Try her out! Ruin her! And if she doesn't powder her nose the right way, or bums the toast in the morning, or you stub your toe getting out of the wrong side of the bed, and think she is the cause, leave her. You are then incompatible. Leave her a ruined girl, unable to look her mother or her God in the eye, unable to find a decent young man who would want her! Incompatibility! Another of those masked, ambiguous, lying phrases used to clothe the intent of Satan who skulks in the bottom of low and depraved mentalities, like that of Judge Ben Lindsay.

“And only recently, I conducted a mission in Baltimore. Baltimore, founded on principles of religious liberty and tolerance. Baltimore, that splendid city that was once the refuge of Catholics who risked death and exile for the sake of their faith. What books do you think the Catholic youth of Baltimore was reading? The books of that fake sage of Baltimore, that man who profits by telling youth to read Nietzsche. I refer to H. L. Mencken. Who is H. L. Mencken? He is a noisy, vociferous, and half-baked little man. What does he say? He says: ‘Read Nietzsche!' That was what the ill-fated Leopold and Loeb read in this city, almost in this neighborhood. That is what the Germans who started the last war read. That is what H. L. Mencken says to youth. And they read him, and think themselves (sneering) smart. So I said to them from the altar of God: ‘Do you think that smart? Do you think it smart to mock at all the things that are sacred to God and man? Do you think it is smart to blaspheme? Well, get it out of your heads! It is a cheap and easy sin! It is blasphemy! And woe unto him who is guilty of blasphemy! Woe!'

“The writers I have named are merely a few out of many. There are others, and amongst them, there is the biggest windbag of them all . . . H. G. Wells. That Englishman who preaches evolution, who says that man came from a monkey. And on what evidence do such false prophets preach evolution? On the evidence of science? That is a lie. I'll tell you the evidence. A slab of shin bone and a half a skull was found in China. These half-baked pseudo-scientists gave it a confounding and terrifying name—Pithecanthropus Erectus. Then they went to a zoo and saw a monkey eating with a fork. Because of that, and because of—pardon me if I mispronounce it-Pithecanthropus Erectus, they say that man came from a monkey and is only an animal. In their insane egotism, they think that all men are made unto their own image and likeness. (Snickers.)

“And the universities, miscalled seats of learning, temples of truth, are full of such men. Over here on the Midway, you have one such university. Recently, I conducted a mission in another part of the city, and a Catholic girl came to me and said: ‘Father, what am I going to do? I'm given these kinds of books to read in my courses, and if I don't read them, I'll be flunked. And they present fallacies contrary to my faith.' I told her what to do. I told her what every Catholic student should say in such circumstances. I told her to take the books back to her professor and say that Father said she should tell him this: ‘I am a Catholic. I will not read these books and endanger my holy faith. They are full of half-truths, paradoxes, lies, and the men who wrote them are either ignorant, or else they are liars. You must put a stop to this sort of thing. You must stick to what you know, to the limited field which you have studied, and stop talking about or recommending books on morals and theology, because you are ignorant and biased.' That is what every Catholic student in a godless university should do.

“Another class of people contributing to the sham sophistication which I have mentioned is a bunch of snivelling old maids who do not care how many souls they ruin, as long as it permits them to get their hatchet-faces plastered all over the newspapers as forward-looking women. And what do these snivelling old maids advocate to earn the dubious honor of being forward-looking? (A pause.) Birth control! The deliberate murder of human souls, in defiance of the laws of God and Nature. I'll tell what the birth control of these snivelling, hatchet-faced old maids means. It means this (he banged his right fist into his left palm): It means the legalization of sin, disease, promiscuity, the destruction of the Christian home; and the Christian Catholic home is the backbone of this, or of any civilized, nation. But what do such irresponsible old fools care? What do they care if they incite to the murder of innocent, unborn babes? What do they care if they turn this nation into a state of debauchery which would make pagan Rome look virtuous by sheer comparison? What do they care if all men live without even the decency of the beasts of the field? What do they care so long as their long, hatchet mugs are in the daily newspaper, with a description of forward-looking and modern, under the photographs?”

He paused, and slowly wiped his perspiring face with a large handkerchief. He coughed. He recommenced in an even voice:

“Ah, my friends, the mind of America is being ruined. For the youth of a nation is that nation's future. And our youth is being contaminated. And there is only one way, one method, of fighting this ruin and contamination. There is only one hope for America. That hope lies in the Catholic young men, the Catholic girls of this nation. They must be the leaders. They must offer the strongest resistance to sin and blasphemy. They must fight the untruths spread by these cheap little half-baked, second-rate anti-Christs. When they, when you, meet someone defending birth-control, this must be said in answer: ‘Birth control solves nothing. There is only one answer—that of the Catholic Church. It is not Birth-Control that we need but. . . . Self-Control!' When you meet someone advising you to read the latest book, you must say this: ‘I am unashamed to say that I will not expose my mind and my soul to such trash. I read only good books, decent books, and no books by windbags and publicity-seekers like Sinclair Lewis, and H. G. Wells. I read books like those of G. K. Chesterton, the foremost living writer of this century. No, I don't read psycho-analysis, either. I read psychology, the true psychology, the rational psychology by the foremost psychologist in the world today—Father Maher.