The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [227]
(His voice broke into lamentation.) “Oh, how closely, how closely, my young friends, does not hell yawn to the youth of America!
‘Weep, oh, weep for Adonais!’ if I might quote that misguided poet, Shelley.”
(His voice became calm and normal.) “I travel through this great, wide-flung country extensively. In the course of every year, I go from coast to coast. I contact these tendencies. I see their evil effects, the young people they ruin, the homes they wreck, the sadness they cause in the hearts of God-fearing mothers and fathers. I see how (his pitch rose) those seats of the godless—the universities—those iniquitous incubators of vice, cheapness, and trash—the movies; (he sneered) those imitation Anti-Christs, modern authors whose books perfume the vilest of sins—how all these take their toll in lives, in souls. In short, my young friends, I can perceive clearly (with dolorousness) oh, how clearly, Satan is making a powerful offensive, with all his artillery and machinery of stratagems, bribes, craftiness, seductive lies and promises, upon this so-called modern world of ours.
“And speaking of books, what do I mean? (His tone sharpened.) I have no fear of naming names and titles, and condemning where condemnation is due. And if I met the authors of the books I shall mention, I should tell them to their faces (his voice rose, almost to a shout): `Your books are vile. In order to make a sale for them, you fill them with spiritual poison, with all the resources of your filthy and putrid minds. For thirty pieces of silver, you sign your names to oozing immorality. You are worse than dogs! You are the vilest of the vile, the most vicious of the vicious, lower than snakes, you rats who write books to rob youth of its shining silvered innocence!’ That’s what I would say to them, if, God forbid, I were to meet them face to face. (He vigorously smashed his hand against the pulpit.)
“What books do I mean? For one, there is a scurrilous novel, Elmer Gantry, a book that belongs in no decent household, a book that no self-respecting Catholic can read under the pain of sin, a book that should be burned in a garbage heap. In that novel, what does the author do? He mocks the most sacred profession that man can enter... the cloth, the service of Almighty God. Do you think I am afraid to tell you what kind of a man the author of Elmer Gantry is? (His voice grew in fearlessness.) Well, I am not afraid! I shall tell you... He is a liar. I say (bellowing), he is a liar, and I am prepared to tell him so to his face!”
He paused, and surveyed a church taut with silence and interest. His voice dropped and he continued evenly:
“And in Denver, there is a puny little man, whose mind would have to be seen through the lenses of a powerful micro-scope. A man who has sullied the sanctity and justice of the courts... one Judge Ben Lindsay. And what does he preach? (He sneered.)... Companionate Marriage! Companionate Marriage, another of those masked fads that rise from a cesspool of spiritual cravenness (sneering). Companionate Marriage!
That is his sugar-coated, seductive term. This little man, this human atom, this intellectual midget, what does he preach—at a profit (with rising voice)? I’ll tell you in straight language without any fake pretence of those abused words, liberality and tolerance. In simple words, this human rat, like the anarchistic, atheistic Bolshevists in unhappy Russia, says (his arms flung out in a gesture): `Away with the holy bonds of Matrimony!’ Jesus Christ (his head bowing), our Lord, said `What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!’ Mother Church, after nineteen hundred years of tested wisdom and experience, achieved with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Mother Church says that you must be married by one of God’s anointed representatives, and that unless you are, you sin when you take unto yourself a man or woman as husband or wife. And Judge Ben Lindsay (with a sneer) says that this is all nonsense. It is not modern. It is old-fashioned. Away with it! (His cassocked