He copiously quoted the advertisements, the Cyclorama page, the Motor
Notes page, the Stageland, the Woman's Letter, and the Leaders, of
the one, in order to show that the socialistic outcry by no means
was the bitter groan of oppressed poverty, but rather the grumbling
vituperation of envious discontented mediocrity anxious to affect an
appearance, which was sham and not its own, and to wallow in luxurious
conditions which it had not earned. Especially He noted the Socialistic
Programme, "_We suggest that the nation should own ALL the ships ALL
the railways ALL the factories ALL the buildings ALL the land and ALL
the requisites of national life and defence_," as a plain declaration
that robbery of private property created by individual industry
and genius--robbery, pure and unadulterated, was the basis of the
socialistic scheme. He denounced the paper as being written for amateur
agnostics by dilettante atheists. He pungently derided attempts made,
by pseudoscientists of the obsolete school of Haeckel, to popularize
among mistaken but serious secularists the science of yesterday and the
destructive criticism of the day before that. As for the other paper,
He likened it to a _cloaca_ wherein filth of all kinds is committed and
collected. The news of the day was reported only in so far as it was
susceptible of filthy presentation. Pages were devoted to diffusing
refuse from police-courts; and, (under the head of Secret History) to
calumnious inventions or distortions of fact connected with any and
every man or woman who was not of the dregs of humanity. As a method of
earning a living by journalism, this pandering to the basest passions
was disgraceful, and damnable in the full sense of the word. Not by
such means were the bodies and souls of men to be improved or profited.
Not by such means could happiness, here or hereafter, be attained.
"Let men raise themselves if they will; and let each man help himself
by helping his brother to the utmost: there shall be no limit to your
resurrection, well-beloved sons, if ye rise, not on other men but, upon
your own dead selves," the Pope concluded.
In accordance with instructions, the Cardinal-Prefect of the
Congregation of Sacred Rites presented to the Pontiff certain completed
processes and petitions for the beatification of the Venerable Servants
of God, Alfred the Great, King and Confessor,--Henry VI. of Lancaster,
King and Confessor,--Mary Stewart of England, France, and Scotland,
Queen and Martyr. Assent was deigned to these petitions; and pictures,
each with a golden nimbus, were unveiled in the Vatican Basilica. The
bull of beatification decreed the addition of the following words to
the Roman Martyrology, the official roll of sanctity:--
This day, in England, is kept the festival of the Blessed Alfred,
King and Confessor, who by the acclamation of his own people is
named Great: memorable as a father of his fatherland, a lover of his
brother, a true servant of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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