Archbishop Ireland and Sunday Laws
ARCHBISHOP IRELAND (Roman Catholic) of Minnesota, who, it will be remembered, said at the Catholic Centenary of Columbus, Ohio, September, 1888, that "a violator of a Sunday law is the worst of criminals," has shown that those words were not a chance utterance. At the recent Roman Catholic mass-meeting in favor of high license, held in Baltimore Sunday, November 17, in urging the Baltimoreans to pass a high-license law, Archbishop Ireland said:— "In the law you will enact let there be a clause closing the saloons on Sunday—aye, closing them hermetically. The Sunday is the one totem of our civilization, and woe be unto the land where the Sunday shall be forgotten. A republic cannot stand unless it says its laws are sacred and must be obeyed by all; yet the saloon keeper opens his doors on the Sabbath, bids defiance to our laws, and tells our youth the laws are of no avail." These words must be pleasing to those reformers who are looking for a republico-theocracy. Like the savage tribes from which the idea sprung, the pagan Sunday is the totem or fetich of our would-be national reformers. It is fitting that that apostate church, nourished on the milk of paganism, should adopt "the wild, solar holiday of all pagan times" as their totem; it is their birthright. But for Protestants to do this is a ghastly travesty on Protestant principles. But Archbishop Ireland is one of those whom National Reformers and Sunday-temperance folks delight to honor. And when, through their misguided zeal, Sunday is clothed with the garb of civil power, woe to its violater. The worst of criminals will receive the worst of punishment, so far as the law will permit.