PETITION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC HOLY FATHER:-Your Holiness is aware that we were obliged to renounce matrimony, before we were admitted to the clerical order. The yoke which was imposed on us, is too heavy; heavier than a man of sound physical constitution can bear during his entire life: therefore we desire to be relieved of it. The Holy Bible is our advocate, in this serious matter; she reports: "When God created man, he said: "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helpmeet.' '"-Gen. 2, 18. And after having created both, man and wife, he blessed them and said unto them: 'Be ye fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." -Gen. 1, 28. His Apostle Paul, thus admonished his disciple Timothy: "The bishop must be the husband of one wife."-1 Ep. to Tim. 3, 12. The Apostle, therewith spoke words of wisdom. It is difficult for a bishop to behave without reproach, if no spouse is associated with him. The sexual instinct is, besides the love of life, the strongest of human nature. Holy Father, you know that Origen, one of the brightest luminaries of our Church, mutilated himself, because he could not resist the temptation of the flesh. How many husbands can withstand it, if they are absent from their wives, for a long time? Some priests grew insane by compul sory abstinence, and sometimes the monks threatened their superiors with poison and dagger, if they opposed the gratification of their lusts. Many clergymen indulge in a luxurious life, seduce the wives and daughters of their parishioners, or live in concubinage with their servants. Some abused even the confessional for satisfying their unchaste desires. When the priests procreate children, they often give them a bad education, and these children sometimes become criminals. In the neighborhood of a convent, a dry well was found in which the skeletons of many little ones were discovered who, after abortion, had been thrown in. Three hundred years ago, celibacy of the Catholic priests was one of the principal reasons why millions of Catholics turned Protestants. In our days, too, Catholic priests leave, for that reason, their comfortable benefices, and become Protestants. Holy Father! We must superintend public schools, exhort husbands and wives to love each other, teach parents how to educate their children: yet not being husbands, and not, having children, how can we set an example to others? Your Holiness objects that married priests would profane, the holy sacrifice of mass. Not at all! The clergy of the Greek Church, who enjoy the right to marry, also celebrate the mass without scandalizing their congregations. We live isolated in the state, forming a state in the state; we are strangers to the commonwealth, indifferent citizens. Our condition is pitiful: no wife, no children embrace us, no son succeeds us, no daughter nor in-law loves us. Though a vow impiously obliged us to kill love and patriotic zeal: still, they are reclaimed by Nature's holy duty, and the command of God and son of the Apostle, who, forsooth, did not appoint heartless monks who renounced the world, no, who ordered human citizens to teach citizens, to be active, to strive for more enlightenment, and to strengthen energy. For these reasons we petition your Holiness humbly and respectfully to re-establish the ancient episcopal liberty. Listen to the command of the holy Scriptures and of the sublime Nature! Happy with wife and kin, let us be of avail to the people as teaching fathers and examples! To which Reformer, like emperor Joseph II, or to which king, like Frederic II, shall we soon owe participation in humanity and commonweal, closely clinging to the state, by the ties of blood and affinity? Your Holiness insists that the reason why our petition cannot be granted is because, eight hundred years ago, the Church instituted celibacy, and ever since observed it strictly. And what of that? Pope Gregor VII, not the whole Church, instituted celibacy of priests, forbidding them to contract matrimony, and separating those who had married from their wives and children. In the early ages of the Church priests were not forbidden to marry. Imi Holy Father! The Church has the right to loosen that which she has bound. A humane pope can annul that which an imperious one has ordered. We beg your Holiness to be this humane chief of the Church. tate the example of pope Ganganelli (Clemens XIV,) who abolished the rotten order of Jesuits, break the intolerable yoke by which many thousands of respectable ministers of the Catholic Church are burdened; and your name, like his, will be entered on the scroll of the history of mankind, and, like his, live for ever. FUNERAL ADDRESSES. 1. AT THE GRAVE OF A SUICIDE. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-I see many of our neighbors assembled at this place; what is the reason that they flocked together, far and near, in such a great number? Did the lightning strike the house of an inhabitant, and reduce the whole village to ashes? It is a sad event which induced so many of our neighbors to assemble here at this extraordinary hour; a young man committed suicide, and will now be buried. "What," some fanatics cry, "you intend to bury a suicide? Where? In the common graveyard, which is consecrated and selected as a resting place for the faithful servants of the Lord? Never! Never! Man is called by his creator into the world, and has to remain in his station till he is recalled by him. Suicides are sinners, and must not be buried on sacred ground." Hold on, my Christian friends, are you quite sure of what you have said? Are all those saints who are bedded in the Churchyard for eternal rest? Has never an honest man committed suicide? Judge not that you be not judged.' True, life is a gift of Nature which we should conserve as long as possible, and suicide is, mostly, committed in a moment of despair. Some have wasted their health by debauchery; they fall sick from an incurable malady; they despair and kill themselves. Some have squandered their fortune by gambling or foolish speculations, and after having lost all, they spend their last penny for a rope in order to hang themselves. Or they are criminals, murderers, commited to the jail, sentenced to the gallows; they prefer to kill themselves instead of being dispatched by the hangman: The drunkard was intemperate, and the result of this bad habit was the delirium tremens; tired of the rest of his miserable life, he blows cut his brains by the revolver. Did the deceased belong to a class of these despicables? Was he a rake? A gambler? No. A drunkard? No. A murderer? No. What was he? A poor, helpless wretch who suffered from strangury, an incurable disease, many years. Physicians told him that his case was, hopeless. It is the season of harvest where all who are able to work are in the field. His chronic evil attacked him again. He was alone in the house, his parents were working, far off, outside; he cried for help, nobody heard him, nobody could hear him, and come to assist him; he saw no end of his misery; he saw the loaded rifle hanging at his bedside; crazy from pain he jumped from the bed, seized the arni, aimed at his head,pulled the trigger and with a blow, the light of life was extinguished. He was sick of the gifts which Nature has spread at the table of life, because he could not enjoy them; therefore he left it. "Judge not that you be not judged!” Matt. 7, 1. When the Pharisees brought a taken in adultery to Jesus asking him to judge her, he said unto them: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And they which heard it, being converted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last. St. John, 8, 3-9. Cover, then, also this rash act with the cloak of Christian charity! Woman Ladies and gentlemen! If we have a right to live, we must also be permitted to die, when death promotes our happiness- How many thousand warriors fall in battles, though they anticipate that they will and must die. How many soldiers killed themselves, like Brutus and Cassius, rather than to give themselves up to be |