p. 8 | Awful Immorality

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 8, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 49.

Awful Immorality.

The Catholic Mirror of November 5, with a good deal of gusto, quotes the following from Benjamin F. De Costa, D.D., rector of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, New York:—

“It is the sectarian squabbles of modern Protestantism which are making a failure of our efforts for the church. I am not in despair. I look for a revival of the true Christian spirit, which is above all such littleness. But I say the immorality of the present day is something awful, and what are we doing to check it? The Roman Catholics are doing much more. The more intensely Protestant a people are, the less religion is brought to bear with united efficiency against vice.”

Yes, the sectarian squabbles are deplorable, due not to true and intense Protestantism, but to sectarianism. But the immorality for which religion is primarily responsible lies at the door of the Roman Catholic Church. The rule of morality is God’s law. The transgression of that law, the change which the Roman Catholic Church has attempted in it, are the primary educational bases for the “awful immorality” prevalent. No human being can check it. It must be done, if done at all, by the power of the Gospel of Christ.