p. 8 | The Outlook by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 50.

The Outlook

By Editor

“I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will look forth to see what He will speak with me.”

REVOLUTION PREDICTED BY A CATHOLIC.

IN a recent sermon preached by Rev. Thomas J. Ducey, rector of St. Leo’s Church, East Twenty-eighth Street, New York City, the following were among the strong utterances given to the public, as reported in the New York Journal:—

“The great mass of the people are in revolt the world over, and unless the church of Christ, directed by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, becomes the advocate of the people’s cause and rights, and forces into public life the truest and best men of the land, who can not and will not be purchased by trust kings and kings of monopoly—forces into public life men who will pass just laws, based on the Ten Commandments, the revolt of the people now before the world will swing into a most disastrous revolution.”

“As a priest of the Catholic Church I say to you from this pulpit that the present conditions of the poor in the United States can not go on. The Catholic Church in these United States must lead for the emancipation of the people from the present social and economic slavery; the church must lead as the emancipator of the working classes, and the States, and the United States, its Senate, and its Congress, must make laws to protect the people’s right and abrogate the laws that have been made by bribery in the interests of fraud.”

Of course, it will be readily seen that the righteous laws, and the interpretation of the Ten Commandments, will be those approved by the Roman Catholic Church. We are often told that the Catholic Church is out of politics, but Father Ducey tells us that church “must lead” out of present conditions, and the governments—State and national—“must make laws,” and that it is to that church we must look to “force into public life” the right men. In all these things which the Catholic Church aims to do and must do, it is not to be expected that she will do otherwise than follow her historic career, and do for this nation what she has done for others which she has led and forced. There is wrong and oppression everywhere, but it will not be met by a mere change in legislation. The form of the tyranny will be changed; the essence remains the same. The Ten Commandments can come into moral life only by faith.