A Catholic Appeal to Publicans.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 757, 20 July 1894, Page 6

A Catholic Appeal to Publicans.

The Catholic Total Abstinence Union of the diocese of Pittsburg issued a strong appeal to all Catholics applying for a saloon license in Allegheny County, Penn. It is as follows :

‘For the following reasons we appeal to you to got out of the saloon business : Because the signs of the times are that it is un-American to sell liquor ; because your family suffers most keenly on account of your business, and respectable people look with pity upon your grown up eons and daughters; because as the law imposes a license it shows that it regards your business as a dangerous one. Why does not your grocer or butcher need a license ? Because no matter how carefully you think you handle the business, drunkenness, misery, and crime are the outcome of it; because public opinion is now on the side of Temperance, and coming to regard saloon keeping as an unsavory business; because if you are a Catholic, your Church has declared against saloon keeping, has called it a dangerous business, and advises all Catholics to get out of it; because the greatest minds in the Church today declare that your business is doing more to injure the Church than all other evils, and that until intemperance is wiped out, religion can make but slow progress in America ; because the late Catholic Congress held in Chicago, composed of representative laymen from all over the country, declared : We urge Catholics everywhere to get out and keep out of the saloon business, because health, family, society, life, and the soul itself are endangered through you ; because you would be loth to see your son the patron of a bar room. Then heed well how many sons you ruin. In God’s name, turn to some other business. What if your income is less ? It will be free from the curses of widows and orphans, mothers and wives. Think before you enter upon another year of this desolate work. Make the effort to get out of it, and God will bless you.’