THAT ORDER OF SACRED BREWERS.
A Well-Known Catholic Editor Scores the “Holy Brewery” Run by the Benedictine Monks at Beatty, Pa.
LAST week we published some clippings from the Voice relative to the brewery owned, controlled, and operated by the Benedictine monks near Pittsburg, Pa. There are noble men in the Catholic Church, who war against such evils, but their battle seems in vain, and yet they are hopeful, hoping against hope. The following is a letter from Martin I. J. Griffin, editor of Griffin’s Journal, Catholic, to the editor of the Voice, printed with the above headings, in that paper of May 5:— “EDITOR OF THE ‘VOICE:’ Catholic lay sentiment, both of abstainers and of ‘drinking men,’ is strongly averse to the existence of a brewery under the control of a religious order. The O. S. B. (Order of Sacred Brewers) may do so in Europe without scandalizing the people, but in this country this can not be. It has been opposed from the beginning, even when public sentiment was not as pronounced and as aggressive against the liquor traffic as it is to-day among Catholics. Your account so testifies. There has been needed, I believe, an exposure from ‘the outside’—from beyond Catholic endeavors. This has, I am glad to know, come from the Voice. It will be a powerful force, I believe, against the continuance of this public scandal. Its defenders, in their insolence, have placed us Catholic hostiles among the contemners of church and of religion because we would not tolerate or be silent about the alliance of religion and rum. Instead of support coming to us to remove this stain from our dear mother, the church, we have met with little but rebuff, censure, and condemnation, as giving scandal, in exposing the existence of this ‘holy’ brewery. “We laity believe a bishop is the authority in his diocese, that he is responsible to God for all the souls within his jurisdiction, that nothing tending to lessening in public estimation the cause of religion or the welfare of the church is beyond his power to remove. Yet here we find the Pittsburg diocese having a public scandal maintained by a religious order; and the bishops, whether they drank the beer or not, have recognized the impropriety, to say the least, of this union of beer and religion, and so have made some endeavors to remove the scandal, yet are helpless because the reform must come from those who haven’t the least idea of the incongruity of the alliance of abbey and brewery, and are actually bewildered at the thought that these people are so fanatical, so irreligious, as to object to the continuance of the partnership. “It is a matter we do not comprehend, how it can be so or why the removal of this public scandal at Beatty can not be within the authority of the bishop of the diocese or a council of the church in this country to deal with. Well, it must be dealt with somewhere or somehow. We Catholic abstainers, blessed by pope, commended by council, and with a union 80,000 strong, must not be bound by this alliance of rum and religion. And we have the council’s advice to pastors to try and get Catholics out of the traffic—and then see a religious order making beer and selling it right in a diocese where there is a Total Abstinence Union battling bravely and more resolutely against intemperance and the saloon than any other in our land, right where this ‘holy’ beer is poured out in a stream devastating the fields they try to labor in. They have protested against this brewery, but our religious powers have not granted relief. It must come. That brewery must close. Our bishops must find a way, or rescind the action of the last council. The Voice is a powerful exponent of the views of Catholics, non-abstainers as well as those who are abstainers and prohibitionists. “Philadelphia, April 27.” Note the admission that these same monks may brew and sell beer in Europe, but not in this country. Then the country is better than the religion which they possess. Mr. Griffin admits that to overthrow the evil, help must come from the outside; then why not get outside, where the help is? If a mother will not intervene, when she may, to save her children from disgrace and death, can she be a “dear mother”? David said, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” Ps. 27:10. Is it not about time for Catholics who believe in temperance to look to the Lord, to seek Him?