Your ShelfYour Projects

Are Roman Catholics Happy?

10%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 43.

Read the full edition

Are Roman Catholics Happy?

By John N. Quinn

JOHN N. QUINN
Father D. S. Phelan, editor of the St. Louis Western Watchman, a leading Roman Catholic religious weekly, thus preaches to his people in his paper of April 9, 1908, under the topical head, “Christianity Is a Religion of Joy:” —
“Why are not Catholics all happy? No, you are not happy. You do what you do for God and your souls through compulsion. You go to church on Sunday because you must. You go to confession because you must. You go down on your knees in the morning and again at night to say your prayers because you must. You abstain from meat on Friday because you must. But I don’t see that you are very happy in all that. You come to the confessional with sour faces, and you go away with faces sometimes a little sourer. And you come to the holy table sometimes as slaves driven thither. I don’t see happiness depicted in your faces. You are very much like people going to pay their taxes. Go down to the collector’s office on days when taxes are due; you see people pressing up to pay their taxes. There are no particularly happy people there. They come because they must. They are like people standing around in a dentist’s office, who come to have teeth extracted. You come here on Sunday, and look like people who are going to have their teeth pulled out. You don’t find any particular happiness in your religion.”

Christians Are Happy

“Whom [Jesus Christ] having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8, 9.
“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Rom. 5:1, 2.
“And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Acts 13:48.
“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” John 13:17.
Takoma Park, D. C.