CATHOLIC TOLERANCE

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 9, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 47.

CATHOLIC TOLERANCE.

FROM Point Pleasant, West Va., comes this interesting story of the barriers which the Catholic Church puts up between its children and their free affections: "Miss Minnie Offenheimer, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Catholic citizen of Mason City, fell in love with Mr. Ed Shoemaker, a young Protestant business man. They became engaged. Miss Offenheimer's parents objected to Shoemaker's religion. She refused to give him up, and her parents locked her in her room, where she was half starved and cruelly beaten every day for weeks. Neighbors heard her cries and finally interfered, only to find that the girl's sufferings had driven her insane." We suppose the mother church will console the parents of Miss Offenheimer with the assurance that it is better that their daughter should have been driven insane through their harsh treatment than that she should be the honored wife of a Protestant. And yet Catholics complain of the intolerant spirit of the Protestant majority in the United States.—America.