Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 8, 1894

THERE is another illustration strictly to the point, and which is fresh in the minds of all the people of the country. Everybody knows that for the greater part of the month of January, 1894, the whole executive authority of the State of Florida, from the governor down, was kept on the alert, and even the authorities of the adjoining State of Georgia—and all in vain, too—to prevent a prize fight, in which one of the principals and a majority of the trainers, etc., were “good” Catholics. And yet not a single official of the Catholic Church said a single word or did a single thing to prevent that fight, when, if any of these claims on behalf of “the church” are true, a single word from any of them could have stopped it. This is not saying that “the church” should

have come to the aid of the State of Florida. But it is to say that if she is of any kind of good to society and civil order, she ought to be able so to instruct and civilize “her children” that they would not want so much to fight that all the power of the State cannot keep them from it. It is also worth remarking in this connection that any one who will read the names in the “sporting” notes of the daily papers, or the “sporting” papers, will have no difficulty in seeing that a “fearfully large proportion” of the prize fighting element, as well as of the saloon element and the “hoodlum element” in general, are “children of the church.”