A Picture | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 35.

A Picture.

THERE is not a little movement here and there in the Roman Catholic Church in favor of total abstinence from intoxicating drinks; and with good reason, when a priest feels constrained to furnish such a picture of Catholic morals in England as the following. He writes of what he himself has seen in Catholic quarters in Liverpool:—

“Here, on Sabbath morning, are to be witnessed most heart-rending scenes—fathers and mothers till late in the day either drunk in bed or sleeping off the effects of the Sabbath night’s carousal; poor, destitute children in rags and filth, no breakfast, no church, no happy home. And what dwelling-places! The priest goes in; no fire, a stripped house, for the pawn-shop comes to the rescue of the gin-palace; a few wretched, hungry, ragged children. ‘Where is your mother?’ ‘Please, Father,’ from an intelligent little girl, ‘upstairs in bed, drunk.’ ‘Where is your father, my boy?’ ‘He is in bed, drunk, too, Father.’ ‘Do you ever go to mass or catechism?’ ‘No, Father.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because my father and mother are always drunk on Saturday night, and never get up till late on Sunday.’ ‘How old are you, my boy?’ ‘Ten.’ ‘And you, my girl?’ ‘Nine.’ ‘No breakfast this morning?’ ‘Nothing, Father, but a piece of dry bread, and had to dip it in water.’ Up-stairs the priest goes to see for himself. And the sight that greets his eyes shocks his sense of decency and propriety, and he comes down pitying in his heart the poor children who are the offspring of such a union. But this is not all. It would take the writer too long to describe scenes even worse than this which he has constantly witnessed now for many years,—houses in alleys and courts which are a disgrace to a civilized community; cellars where a merchant on Change would not house his dog; garrets to pass to which a man endangers his life on what was once stairs.”

The Liverpool Catholic Times adds that if this priest had gone further into details, he would have stated that these people for the most part were earning good wages, and that if they abstained from drink there would be no necessity for them to live in garrets or cellars. The squalor of Liverpool springs from drink, not from poverty.