Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 1927)
HEPPNER GAZETTE TIMES, HEPPNER, OREGON, THURSDAY, JAN. 13, 1927. PAGE FIVE REV. HI MAKES DH A vicious and wicked attack is made against the Catholic church by an alleged preacher of the Gospel, who calls himself Mr. Phelps. Three Fin gered Jack a few years ago made a similar attack, and now he is a pen itentiary bird in the state of Wash ington. Mr. Phelps may be irrespon sible; but know, and take notice that not only every Catholic, but every pure-minded, fair-minded, self-respecting person holds responsible the people of Heppner that stand sponsor for a man of the calibre of Mr. Phelps. We want a square deal, we want facts, not fiction, not lies, not scandal, not slander, not rottenness. As there are certain animals, insects, vermin that feed and fatten on the corruption that fills the sewer, so there are certain human animals, hu man insects, human vermin, always and ever looking to the gutters for their food. Such people with dark ened, perverted, and vile minds, and ;orrupt hearts, relish filth. Filth is food, and drink, and sleep to them. There are many good people in Hepp ner, but there are also a few bigots, fanatics, Ku Kluxers as in every city. They are to be pitied. They do not think for themselves, they do not ver ify their statements, they go by hear say, by gossip. They crave after lies. Now they shall have their fill. They demand impurity, and here is the sup ply. Mr. Phelps, your oracle, your prophet, your idol, your paragon of a preacher, is about to speak. You vermin in human forms, go and lis ten to him and drink in his rotten ness. He has no message from the Loving Master to give, no truth, no doctrine, no good seed to sow. If you sow corruption, and hate, what kind of a harvest are you going to reap? No wonder our law courts stink with the stuff that pours forth from the lips of girls in their teens with unblushing cheeks no modesty, no reserve, no respect, no decency, i no sha.ie. There is a natural law binding us to think as well as we can of everyone, and this law is observed by every noble and generous mind. There is the golden rule, "Do unto others as you wish others to do unto ou." There is a commandment of the Decalogue telling us, "Do not bear false witness against Thy Neighbor." The Law and the Prophets are fulfill ed according to Our Divine Lord, by Loving God above all things, and by loving our neighbor as ourselves. St. John the Evangelist tells: "If we say we love God and hate our neigh bors, we are liars and the truth is not in us." We have all the same Creator, the same Redeemer, the bame destiny, and the criterion to know that we are followers of the Master is: "That we Love One An other." There is a saying, "There is some bad in the best of us, and some good in the worst of us, and it ill be comes any of us to talk about the rest of us." What would any reasonable person think of any priest that would gather up all the scandals and sins committed by Methodist preachers and dish them out to his audience? No self-respecting person would tol erate it. He would be a disgrace to the priesthood and to his office. Is Mr. Phelps preaching the gospel? "Woe to the man by whom scandal cometh." When a man wants really to get information on a subject, no matter what it may be, political, scientific, religious, etc., he eschews reports, mistrusts understandings, and betakes himself to headquarters. Some good personal knowledge of Catholics, and intercourse with them in the way of sincere inquiry is worth all the conclusions that you may draw from rumors, false witneasings, suspicions, morsels of history, mor sels of theology, and from the cup of scandals filled to the brim by preachers of the ilk of Mr. Phelps or Three Fingered Jack, Why do you go to Mr. Phelps ot know the doc trines of the Catholic church? What are his credentials? What does he know about fatholic Confession? How often has he gone to Confession? Could not any Catholic tell you more about the Catholic church than Mr. Phelps? Why not go . to a Catholic priest to learn about the Confession, and the conditions required to make a good Confession? His subject on Sunday is the Confession Unmasked. The Priest and the Woman. Has he a scandal to peddle? Is it made out of whole cloth? Is it a figment of his wild imagination? Is it a lie? The poeple cry out for a real live scandal. Please Mr. Phelps, be par ticular this time. Go into the details. leave out no important circumstance. Do not say you heard it from anoth er preacher, or got it from a book, like Marin Monk. Let it be fresh Let it be of recent date. Mention the names of the priest and the woman Tell us the place where it occurred. Name the city, county, state. Tell us the year, the month, the date. Be not vague, Indefinite, general. Be defi nite, particular, individual, specific, personal. Swear that you personally know that individual priest, and that particular woman. Be careful not to bear false witness against your neigh bor. If you sincerely want to know about the Confessional, go up to the Catholic church in this city, examine it, and examine the basement also to see, can you find gunB and ammuni tion. The doors of the Catholic churches are open to everybody. The Mothodist church can't be the church founded by Christ for the simple rea son that It is founded by John Wes ley, and is seventeen centurieB too late to be of Christ, God and not Man is the founder and Institute of Confession. In the Gospel of St. Mathew, Our Lord thus addresses Pe ter. "Thou are Peter, and upon this Pock I will build my Church." Mind the word church, not churches. Christ built but one church. As there is but one God, one baptism, one Christ, there is ut one Church. Our Lord again says, "I give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, nnd what soever thou shalt bind on earth, shall bo bound in Heaven, and whatever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven," Matthew, 16 Chap. 18th and 19th verses. Ho uses the same forcible language to all the Apostles assembled together, "What soever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in Heaven, and what soever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed aho in Heaven." Matt. XVI1I-18. The object of the mission of Christ was to release the soul from the bonds of sin. The very name Jesus" indicates this important truth. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus," said the Angel, "for he shall cave His people from their sins. Matt I, 21. The soul is enchained by sin. I give you power, says our Lord, to release the penitent soul from its galling fetters and to restore it to the liberty of a Child of God. Jesus, sfer His Resurrection, thus addressed His disciples, "Peace be with you, as the Father has' sent me, I also send you. Receive you the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, whose sins you shall retain they are retained." John XX 21-23. The Father had sent his only begotten Son into the world to redeem it from sin. Our Lord tells us Himself, that His Mission was to save sinners, "For the Son of Man is come to save that which is lost." (Matt. XV, 24.) They that are- in health need not a physician but they that are ill, etc. For I am not come to call the Just but sinners. (Matt. IX 12-12, I 21) (Tim. I. 15) Our Lord in His mortal life frequently pardoned sinners their offiences. Mag dalen, (Luke VII 47), the woman in adultery (John VIII 11) St. Peter, the Thief on the Cross, (Luke XXIII 23). The Man sick with the palsy (Matt. IX 2). In the last instance He insists on this power of forgiveness as Son of Man despite the objection of the Scribes and their accusations of blasphemy, (Matt IX 3). "But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, then He said to the man sick with palsey, 'rise, take up thy bed and go into thy house." "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth." "As the Father had sent me to pardon sin, 1 also send you iothed with my di vine authority and with my divine power to pardon sin in my name." "Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins jou shall retain they are retained." In the Apostles'' creed it is said "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, in the forgiveness of sins." It is plain from this that at the time of the Apostles there was confession. The Catholic Church continues the mission, the work of Christ. Scrip ture, or the Bible, is on the side of tiie Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the kingdom of Christ on earth. It is His body, His home, His fold, His school. He uses it as an instrument to teach, to govern, to forgive sins and thus to save souls. The Catholic Church teaches us with power and authority, with certainty, with infallibility. It is the divinely appointed guardian, custodian, de fender, interpreter of revelation. The gates of -Hell, of ignorance, error, calumny, scandal, shall not prevail against it. As the Scribes, the Phar isees, the Sadducees, .conspired against Our Lord, so, also all the sects, no matter how they differ and dispute among themselves, unite in persecuting the Catholic Church be cause it is the moral body of Christ. Our Lord said "Blessed are ye, when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you untruly for my namesake," Matt. V. 11. Our Lord also said to the Apostles, "I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. "Beware of men, they will deliver you up in the Coun cils, they will scourge you in the Syn agogues, and you shall be hated by all men for my namesake." "The Deciple is not above the Master, nor the Ser vant above the Lord. If they call the good man to the house of Beelzebub, how much more them of the house hold." Matt X 16-24. It is a his toric fact that from the time of Adam to our own day God has always in sisted on some confession or ack nowledgement of sin before granting pardon. Adam confessed, "I did eat." Cain refused to confess. God gave Adam the hope of pardon. To Cain God said "Cursed thou shalt be upon the earth." Gen. IV 12. The Mosaic Law prescribed the confession for sins not only for sins in general, but for particular sins, Leviticuls IV to VII. Confession was practised in the time of John the Baptist. "Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and the country about the Jordan, and were baptized by him confessing tneir sins. Matt. 111-18. The early Catholics confessed their sins. Many of them who believed came confess ing and declaring their deed to the Apostles. Acta XIX-18. And this is why St. John said: "If we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." (I. Jons I 9.) All the fathers of the Church, from the first to the last insist on the sac ramental Confession as a divine in stitution. Saints Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Chrysostem, are called upon to give testimony about confession in the Catholic Church in the third and fourth cen tury. St. Basil writes: "In the confess ion of sins the same method must be observed as in laying open the in firmities of the body; for as these are not rashly communicated to every one, but to those only who understand by what method they may be cured, so the confession of sins must be made to such persons as have the power to apply a remedy." In Reg. Brev., quest CCXXIX. T II, P. 492, Later on he tells us who those per- sons are. "Necessarily, our sins must be confessed to those to whom has been committed the dispensation of the mysteries of God. Thus, also are they found to have acted who did pen .ir.ee of old in regard of the saints, It is written in the Acts, they con fessed to the Apostles, by whom also they were bapitzed." Two conclusions obviously follow from these passages of St. Basil First, tho necessity of confession; secondly, the obligation of declaring our sins to a Priest whom in the New Law is committed "the dispensation of the mysteries of God. St. Ambrose, of Milan, writes "The poison of sin; the romedy, the accu satlon of one a crime; the poison 1 iniquity; the confession is the remedy of the relapse. And, therefore, it is truly a remedy against poison, if thou declare thine iniquities, that thou mayest be justified. Art thou asham ed. This shame will avail thee little at the judgment seat of God." St. Augustine writes: "Our merci ful God wills to us to confess in this world that we may not be confounded in the other." And again: "Let no one say to himself, I do penance to God in private, I do it before God. Is it in vain that Christ hath said, Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven?" Is it in vain that the keys have been given to the Church? Do we make void the Gospel, void the words of Christ?" St. Chrysostem says, "Lo, we have now, at length, reached the close of Holy Lent; now especially we must press forward in the career of fast ing , . . and exhibit a full and accu rate confession of our sins . . , that with these good works, having come to the day of Easter, we may enjoy the bounty of the Lord. . , . For, as the enemy knows that having con fessed our sins and shown our wounds to the physician we attain an abund ance of cure, he in an especial man ner opposes us." St. Jerome writes. "If the serpent, the devil, secretly bite a man and thus infect him with the poison of sin, and this man shall remain silent, and do not penance, nor be willing to make known his wound to his brother and master; the master, who has a tongue that can heal, cannot easily serve, him. For if the ailing man be ashamed to open his case to the phy sician no cure can be expected; for medicine does not cure that of which it knows nothing." With us the Bishop or Priest binds or looses not them who are merely innocent or guilty but having heard, as his duty requires, the various qualities of sin, he understands who should be bound and who loosed." Every Catholic doctrine is dearer than life to the Catholic heart and every Catholic is ready to shed his blood for it, as the martyrs did of old. Prejudice against Catholics and their church comes not from observa tion, not from facts, not from truth, but from lies and slander. Many Pro testants are too wise to form their conceptions of the Catholic church from productions like Maria Monk and the shocking disclosures of es caped nuns, runaway priests, and oth ers of their ilk. How would protest ants like to be judged from men that have been expelled from the ministry. Many a Methodist minister would rather cut his throat than to defame and slander the Mother Church, the Catholic Church, the Church of An tiquity, the Church of Christianity, the Church of every Age, of ,every place, of every race, the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church. REV. THOS. J. CANTWELL. PIERCE IB (Continued from First Page) collect the monex necessary for state activities from sources other than a tax on visible property; "For arousing the people to the necessity for more equitable assess ment laws; "For creating public sentiment for law enforcement, including prohibi tion; "For changing the policy in regard to guaranteeing interest pn irrigation bonds and the use of state credit; "For initiating a program that will eventually make the penitentiary self-supporting; "For changing the highway program from a bonding policy to a "pay-as-you-go" plan; "For changing road construction from "black-top" to oiled macadams, and For an active, earnest interest in ull matters pertaining to education. "I am laying down my work as gov ernor of this state with ill will tow ard none, with friendship for all. I again reaffirm my faith in American institutions. I am grateful for the opportunity to live in this wondrous age of human activity, in a country of which we are all a part and parcel, reaching from ocean to shining ocean, using one language, of practically one religion, with free public schools and libraries everywhere, without .tariff walls at state boundaries, and with modern means for the transportation of freight and intelligence that are the marvel of all the centuries. Closes With Poem. "I extend to my successor the kind liest of greetings. It is my sincere hope that his administration may be as successful as I believe the future historian will proclaim mine to have been. Let me close my message to you, and the final moment of my term as governor of Oregon, with these thoughts: "I hold that man alone succeeds, Whose life is crowned by noble deeds, Who cares not for the world's ap plause, But scorns custom's outgrown laws; Who feels not dwarfed by nature's show, But deep within himself doth know That conscious man is greater far Than ocean, land or distant star; Who does not count his wealth by gold, His worth by office he may hold, But feels himself, as man alone, As good as king upon a throne; Who, battling 'gainst each seeming wrong, Can meet disaster with a song, Feel sure of victory in defeat, And rise refreshed the foe to meet, Who only lives the world to bless, Can never fail he Is Success!" EVERYBODY'S comai "CALIFORNIA bids you turn back the calendar to summer and come play in the warm sunshine. Ai an added inducement the Union Pacific now offers special low round trip fares and assure! you a marvelous journey on the finest of fast train. Connections via Portland or Salt Lake City. MAKK TOUft BKSHYATIONt MOW Another Good SMOKER BURGOYNE HALL, LEXINGTON FRIDAY, JANUARY 21 Headliners in Boxing: RUSSELL WRIGHT vs. BOB MARSHALL VESTER LANE vs. CHAS. MARSHALL Good Semi-Finals, Special Events and Preliminaries. DANCE AFTER SMOKER CHESTER DARBEE, Agent Heppner, Ore. derful privilege of being American citizens. They simply don't care. The rich and the powerful must be made to see that it is not only their duty, but is necessary for their safety, to help the less fortunate to secure po sitions where they can earn a com petence. Equal opportunity to earn and acquire is necessary above all hings. Free institutions will be ap proaching the end when men and wo men accumulate in numbers and are ,iot able to secure employment at re munerative wages, and these great fortunes of the rich and the powerful may melt in a night, before the angry, unreasoning mob, demanding bread, ust as such fortunes have melted away many times in centuries past. "Prohibition and the enforcement f the Eighteenth Amendment is here to stay. The bootlegger and the man ufacturer of moonshine whiskey must be driven from the boundaries of our state. The product sold as whiskey s killing and blinding hundreds and disabling and impairing thousands. No man can with safety today drink the moonshine whiskey that is be ing illicitly sold." Mr. Pierce stated the belief that law enforcement is on the upgrade n Oregon and will continue to im prove. Recommendations Made. After giving a brief survey of the condition of irrigation and irrigation districts in Oregon, the ex-governor made the following recommendations with regard to this issue: "(1) that it be declared that the state in no way assumes responsibiliy for the bonds issued by the irrigation dis- tncts; (2) that you propose the re peal of the constitutional amendment guaranteeing interest on these bonds; (3) that the right of the bondholder to all of the property in the districts be freely acknowledged; (4) that you do not provide for a commission or commitete to invesitgate. , . ." Going on through the line of all slate institutions and charges, Mr. Pierce made recommendaions with regard to each. He told of savings made m highway maintenance and construction by the use of oil; recom mended that the state market agent be retained with increased powers; explained the work carried on toward making the penitentiary self-sustain in K. He asked that the legislature oppose any change in the industrial accident law, and then went on to recommendations for all state insti tutions. A strong plea was made for continued educational aid, with the recommendation also for the full state library appropriation. - Accomplishments Cited. After paying tribute to the place of women in public life, Mr. Pierce closed his address with the following otirring remarks: "For four years my every official act has been controlled by my earnest do ire to do that which was best for all the people. Fear of opponent, friend ship, or hope of reward have in no way swayed me or affected my decis ions. Bitter and unjust criticism has been the cause of much worry and many headaches, but has in no way affected my official course. I faced threat of recall because I would not bow to a powerful group that do manded certain action from me. I knew at the time that their full pow er and strength would be used to pre vent my reelection. I felt their ef fectlveness in the campaign Just closed. In my inner consciousness I knew I was right, and I held for the verdict of tho future. "I believe that in the years to come my administration will be given cred it "For arousing interest in hydro electric development; "For an earnest effort to brin about a state reforestation program "For beginning the movement to EYE SPECIALIST Here ALL DAY, SATURDAY, JAN. 15 At BUHN'S Jewelry Store (formerly Hay lor's) from 8:00 a. m. to 8:00 p. m. CONSULT HIM ABOUT YOUR EYES MRS. HOUSEWIFE: Would you not like to see in operation a washing machine which has been acknow ledged and proven to be the greatest wash ing machine ever made, which will accom plish more, with better results, than any machine ever before manufactured abso lutely without obligation? See ED. CLARK The MAYTAG Salesman or drop him a card to get booked for a demonstration in your own home on your own clothes or for help on any laundry difficulties. GORDON'S ServiceEnlarged FOR HEPPNER PUBLIC New Location IN 1. 0. 0. F. BUILDING In addition to our confectionery, tobaccos, fountain service and magazines, we now offer lines of Stationery, Toilet Goods, Patent Medicines Drug Sundries All poisons sold and prescriptions compounded by Graduate Registered Pharmacist Kodak Finishing Service We thank you for your generous patron age at the old stand and invite you to visit our new quarters where we are able to serve you better. GORDON'S "First for Thirst" Phone 1002 I. 0. 0. F. Building Phone orders delivered within the city QUALITY That is the thing in Feed and Flour , that gives you results. Our Feed and Flour give results so they have QUALITY, yet you pay less than for other feed and flour. The difference is in manufacturing costs. More than two years of continuous trial has prov en our feeds equal to any others sold and they cost you less. Give us a trial, you will gain. Brown Warehouse Co. Phones: Warehouse 643, Residence 644 Brought from far off lands, right to your table with all their sun-ripened, nature flavored goodness. You can depend upon our canned fruits, veg etables and delcacies to be the very best. We recommend them! Or der some today. Prices reasonable. Phelps Grocery Company i 5 PHONE 53 e5 9a