The Church and Her Enemies

Three enemies are considered, Heathenism, Heresy and Freemasonry. Then Father Muller goes on to detail the unfortunate death of an enemy of the Church: IT may seem to some a useless task to speak here of the miserable end which generally overtakes the persecutors of the Church. Those who are guilty of persecuting Christ in his members, or by trying to destroy his religion, are, as a rule, deaf to all warnings. "Children of darkness, " as St. Peter would say, "they are the blind and the leaders of the blind. " "We should abandon them to themselves," says our Holy Father, Pius IX. "Preach not to those who will not hear you." It is, indeed, not easy to teach the world, it has so little discernment, and its memory is so feeble. Like the foolish Egyptians of old, it neither understands its present calamities, nor remembers those which are past. "Whilst they were yet morning," we are told, "and lamenting at the graves of the dead, they took up another foolish device, and pursued them as fugitives whom they had pressed to be gone." (Wisd. Xix, 3.) It was impossible to do anything for such people, except to make an end of them. They were simply not to be taught. Nothing remained for them but the Red Sea. They lost the remembrance of those things which had happened, that their punishment might fill up what was wanting to their torments. " It was not a cheerful destiny, but, as Egypt was incorrigible, it could expect no other. The world has had many lessons since then, but has always made, and continues to make, little use of them! Egypt is a type of the world, as Israel was of the Church. It was not till darkness covered the whole earth, and the veil of the temple was rent in twain, that even the spectators on Mount Calvary began to suspect that something unusual had happend. Lifeless nature groaned, but not they. They chattered and wagged their heads at the foot of the cross, just as if they had been infidels of the nineteenth century; and though they were frightened for a moment, they. soon forgot their alarm, and most of them lived in the future exactly as they had lived in the past. Even the most extraordinary miracles had not much instruction for them.