REMARKABLE STATEMENT BY A CATHOLIC PRIEST.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 21 September 1901, Page 3

REMARKABLE STATEMENT BY A CATHOLIC PRIEST.

The Lesson of a Crime.

(per press association.)

Preaching here yesterday morning (telegraphs the Christchurch Truth’s Wellington correspondent,) Father O'Shea made a rather remarkable statement in regard to McKinley’s assassination. He said Catholics had a special reason for feeling with the American people their sorrow, as the States had received and given a home to millions of their fellow Catholics from Ireland when the circumstances of Government in their own country forced them to emigrate. He contended that the existence of diabolical organisations which put a weapon into the hand of the assassin was the natural consequence of irreligion and infidelity. When a people came to believe that there was ho God, no hereafter, and no punishment for sin or reward for virtue, it was useless to endeavour to make them rospeot human law or authority. Unfortunately many of the Governments of the older countries of the earth had given occasion for the rise of the spirit of anarchy by opposition to religion by laws which they made to humilate and render difficult the working of religion, which was the only means on earth by which men could be brought to respect authority. The present dastardly crime was a lesson to them all, for if men would not respect law and order they would not respect human life. It was a crime against society and against God, and it would be well for them to recognise that religion alone was the only means of preventing a repitition of such an outrage.