National Reformers and Catholic Sunday Observance
WHEN the National Reformers, after “repeated advances,” shall have succeeded in inducing the Catholics to “join hands” with them, they will find their much coveted acquisition a very unwieldy element. Much as the Catholics adore Sunday, they have their own peculiar ideas of its observance, and sometimes those ideas are not averse to quite noisy demonstration. The following complaint is entered against them by the Christian Cynosure of May 23:— “Last Sabbath the Catholic Church gave another evidence of its power over Chicago. Under the charge of the Romish order known as the Christian Brothers, an institution has been organized, called De La Salle Institute. The corner-stone was laid last Sabbath, with all the pomp, ceremony, parade, and desecration of the day possible, either for the Catholic Church, the Orangemen, or the Knight Templar Masons. An immense procession of Catholic societies, flags, banners, and regalia, with twenty-two brass bands, paraded the streets and filled the whole south side of the city with tumult, noise, and confusion from one o’clock till six. The reporters counted the crowds by the hundred thousand.” When, under the anticipated millennium of National Reform rule, the nominally Protestant faction shall undertake to inaugurate “the ideal Sabbath of the Puritans,” there will undoubtedly be a conflict. Then the party that has been catered to all the way through will naturally expect that process to continue.