p. 114Unhealthy Literature

To prevent misunderstanding, I have to remark in beginning this chapter, that I treat of literature only in its connexion with the training of children. The wider question of the influence of modern literature on Religion, although extremely useful and interesting, does not come within the scope of the present work. No doubt, it has an indirect bearing on home-life, but so has almost every other subject that could be mentioned; and as this is not a treatise on things in general, it would be out of place to discuss in it matters not immediately connected with its main scope and purpose.

Young people have a passionate fondness for the excitement caused by novels and romances. The more this fondness is indulged the more absorbing it becomes; and even though it be checked for a considerable time, it seems never to die out: for the opportunity of gratifying it, an idle hour, the possession of a certain book, the mention of a certain story—these or other similar circumstances may, at any moment, rouse it into activity, when there will be always more or less trouble in resisting it successfully. But it may be asked, why should it be resisted at all? The habit of novel-reading, seems, at worst, only a harmless weakness: it does no injury to others, and it saves oneself from much low pleasure-seeking, besides refining the mind and ennobling the thoughts, and giving us grand, beautiful views of the world we live in. Is it not also an agreeable and perfectly legitimate recreation, after a hard day’s work, to spend a few hours of an evening in unravelling some intricate plot or following the course of some human passion to its final results? These are some of the principal arguments urged by the novel-reading class in their own defence: let us see how far they justify parents in permitting their children to belong to that class.

A love for the simple, unostentatious duties of home is a necessary condition for their faithful fulfilment. This is indeed true of all duties whatsoever. When the heart is not in the work done, it is sure to be done badly; and certainly it will not be done uniformly and perseveringly. But work done for a supernatural end and in compliance with divine authority requires in a special manner the co-operation of the interior, without which it would become a mere mechanical, outward observance on which God sets no value. A child, therefore, to be truly obedient and respectful to its parents, to be kind and affectionate to its brothers and sisters, to be patient and forbearing under home trials, must have a real, heartfelt love for the practice of obedience, and of kindness of disposition, and of patience in all its relations with its family. Now, one of the direct and immediate effects of novel-reading on children is to make them look down with sovereign contempt on all their everyday surroundings. They live and breathe in a land of dreams; they enjoy the sweet companionship and are received into the inmost confidence of lords and ladies, and even of kings and queens: they are taken to balls and parties, and range through suites of rooms luxuriously appointed with all that wealth or taste can devise to fascinate the senses; their ears are ravished with sounds of sweetest music; their eyes are dazzled with lights and colours of brightest hues; the rarest flowers diffuse their delicious odours all around them. But there is a sudden, rude awaking. A sharp, unsympathetic voice recalls the dreamer to some neglected matter-of-fact, domestic duty. What a miserable lot! The companion and confidant of princes and princesses has to run on vulgar messages, and to mind a cross-grained baby, and to be scolded, and sometimes even to be caned! I need not say what discontent and disgust are constantly seething and on the point of boiling over in that young person’s heart, nor how aggrieved he feels for the unworthy manner in which he fancies himself treated. And what crowns his misery is the thought that there is no release from the harsh, unfeeling cruelty to which he is subjected. Well, I am very much mistaken if domestic duties can be satisfactorily and uniformly fulfilled by one who is actuated by these dispositions; and yet they are the dispositions naturally and directly engendered in young people by the habit of novel-reading.

The loss of valuable time also is a consequence of this habit. To the husbandman, an hour in spring-time is worth a day in summer. Patient industry and constant labour are required to prepare the soil and to plant and cover in the seeds, that there may be a fruitful harvest. So too with the child: its youth is its spring-time, and part of its seed-sowing is its school-education; and every moment it loses then is a waste spot that remains fallow during all its future life. Of course, this illustration shows the folly of youthful idleness in general; but novel-reading is not only a waste of time, it is also an obstacle to all serious study and mental culture. When the young mind with its intense craving for knowledge can satisfy that craving by glancing its eye over a page of description or of dialogue, it is very natural that it should turn with difficulty and reluctance to a far different page, say of some dead language, in which every word is a riddle demanding patient study to solve; and when solved, conveying very little meaning after all. There is indeed a wide contrast between a novel and a school-book, as well in point of interest as of easy comprehension; and without the habit of self-discipline, the novel will be devoured while the school-book will be treated like a dose of nauseous medicine, and set aside as long as possible.

The morality of novels is another objection to their use by children. I do not deny that there are good Christian novels; but the habitual novel-reader regards them in the light of sermons in disguise, and shuns them accordingly. They are too insipid for his taste; they have not the high flavour that he relishes so much, of thinly-veiled indecency, or of adultery and murder, palliated, if not sanctioned and approved, by many fashionable novelists. Sensual love is, indeed, one of the main-springs of that fascination which novels have for their readers, and without which very few of them have ever become really popular. Now there is no passion more dangerous to the young, none more destructive to spiritual life or more prejudicial to the welfare and happiness of homes than this same sensual love. Parents, therefore, are bound in a most special manner to guard their children against it and against all the avenues by which it may approach their children’s souls. The knowledge of sin will unfortunately come soon enough to them from causes that no vigilance can prevent; but this is no reason why all preventable causes should not be removed, so that our Christian homes may be like gardens planted with lilies, as far as parental care can make them.

If novels, then, did no other mischief besides sullying the pure virgin souls of the young with indelicate, not to say, indecent, thoughts and images, this surely ought to be enough to make parents scrupulously assiduous in their supervision of their children’s reading. No human respect, no fear of being called bigots or purists or martinets, should deter them from the faithful discharge of this duty: for no amount of severity or strictness can be excessive, where the purity and innocence of a child’s heart is in danger.

Perhaps it may be thought that I allude here only to those novels and romances that so outrage public decency as to bring a blush of shame on the cheek of every modest man or woman who reads them. But I do not allude to them at all; and indeed I have no reason to believe that it is necessary to put ordinary parents on their guard against them: for the instinct of parental love will save the child from this scandal at least. To speak plainly then: the works of fiction to which I allude are those we see in lending libraries and at railway book stalls; they are those we find in the catalogues of popular booksellers, and that are being poured out by the press in a constant stream at prices varying from a penny to a guinea and a half. They are books, too, whose effect, like those of certain poisons, is cumulative. The reading of the first is not half so injurious as the reading of the second; nor the second as of the third; and so on, until the moral constitution of the habitual reader becomes wholly undermined, and the life of sanctifying grace, after long flickering, suddenly dies out.

Of course it is to be understood that I have spoken up to this of the habit of novel reading as it affects children and young people whose education is not yet finished. But the larger question may be referred to here, namely, how far may the habit be indulged without serious danger of injury, by grown up persons whose minds are fully matured, and consequently not as impressionable as they formerly were. In reply, I think it may be safely asserted, that habitual novel-reading is dangerous to young and old,—not indeed equally, but to such an extent in both cases, that no prudent person can sanction it. I am led to this opinion by the consideration of the many unbecoming, if not sinful scenes and images with which the imagination is stored by such reading; scenes and images, I may add, that are scarcely compatible, under the circumstances, with that cleanness of heart which the Gospel requires of its followers. Our modern novelists deify sensual love; and they think that they fail in the fulfilment of the purpose for which they write, if they do not make their readers also deify it. Hence they surround it with all that is beautiful and attractive in nature and in art; and they enlist in its service every highest endowment of the soul. Surely then, it is reasonable to conclude that not the young alone, but the old too, are in serious danger of corruption from so many seductive influences.

I feel that this view of mine regarding the light literature of the day will not be freely accepted by all my readers. But those who will object to it will be persons who attach little importance to interior purity. Unfortunately there are many such to be found. They think that the divine law, like the human, has to do merely with external sin; and that it is intended to exercise no control over the acts of the mind or the movements of the heart. They account it then nowise, or at least, but lightly sinful, to dwell mentally on impure thoughts and images and to revel in the impure pleasure they occasion. I can easily understand how persons with such views may justify themselves in reading even obscene books; but I cannot understand how, with any knowledge of Christian teaching, they are able to bring themselves to hold those views. Our accountability for interior acts is so clearly revealed in the sacred Scriptures, that it seems to be a fundamental truth of Religion; and reason itself, pointing to one Supreme Being as the Author both of soul and body, points out also the necessary subjection of all the deliberate acts of each to His absolute dominion and control. Indeed if this were not so, there would be no meaning in the words of our divine Lord, pronouncing a blessing on the clean of heart, and declaring that man to be an adulterer who shall look on a woman to lust after her. As internal purity then is commanded by the same divine law that forbids external sin, it follows that whatever sullies or endangers it is to be avoided with scrupulous care by all those who would lead good Christian lives.

The morality of novels is almost equally blamable in some other respects as in respect of purity. Revenge for injuries inflicted, blow for blow, life for life, this is the gospel of the world; and the novel is its most eloquent exponent. The heroism of restrained passion, of forgiveness of insult, of patient endurance of calumny, is pronounced craven and white-livered. Duelling, too, is a cherished institution in works of fiction; and I can well imagine the look of blank amazement, gradually settling into deep disgust, that would darken the face of some fair reader, were she to find the hero of her last three volumes from the lending library guilty of refusing a challenge from conscientious motives. In fact, the type of manhood held up for admiration, and expected to be found, as a matter of course, in novels, has not a single Christian trait to recommend it: nay more, it is wanting in some of those characteristics that paganism itself required in its ideals. A Spartan or a Roman mother would disown, were he her son, the effeminate fashionable snob, stereotyped in novels, whose only claim on our notice is his cynical contempt of marriage ties and of the happiness of the homes into which he is admitted. And the novelist’s type of womanhood is still worse. Instead of being represented as queen in the realm of her home, as the centre of domestic love, and the light of domestic life, woman is painted in colours that fit only a class that no Christian wife or daughter can belong to without sin. But it is needless to pursue this part of my subject any further.

From these remarks I think I may fairly conclude, that the habit of novel-reading is injurious both to young and old, and that parents do not discharge faithfully their duties to their children, when they neglect to exercise a careful and constant supervision over the books of light literature read by them.

But there are other books beside novels against which children must be safeguarded. English literature is, for the most part, anti-Catholic. Indeed it could scarcely be expected to be otherwise, written as it has been, almost entirely, by Protestants for a Protestant people. We are, thank God, beginning to have a literature of our own; but the time seems to be still distant when it will be sufficiently complete to satisfy all the requirements of Catholic readers. Meanwhile, the utmost prudence is necessary to pass safely between the two opposite evils: That of starving the intellect and the imagination through fear of poison in the food supplied to them; and that of being reckless whether the food be poisoned or not.

History, as it is written by non-Catholic writers in this country, presents, I think, more dangers to young people than any other branch of English literature. The Catholic Church has from her beginning exercised so profound an influence on human events, that her action must be discussed by every one who would give even an outline of modern history. But Protestants are naturally reluctant to give any credit to the Catholic Church for the benefits she has conferred on the world. They hate her too cordially to see any good or even any capacity of good in her; and therefore they are wanting in the first essential requirement of an historian,—that freedom from prejudice, namely, that would help them to see and narrate events as they really occurred. Truth is the ground-work of history; and as there can be no reliable truth where there is a prejudiced statement of facts, it follows that our Church must be always more or less misrepresented by those historians who deny her infallible authority and her exclusive mission to teach the nations of the earth. In fact, she must either act under divine influence in asserting the absolute control over men’s consciences which she asserts, or she must act from ambitious human motives, such as love of power and heartless despotism. Non-Catholics, of course, can scarcely admit with consistency the former alternative; and accordingly they feel bound to square all their views and statements of ecclesiastical facts with the latter. Hence we cannot take up a modern history written by an English non-Catholic author, without finding in almost every page something to pain and insult us. In one place, it is a Pope whose moral character is vilified and his public action attributed to base, unworthy motives. In another, it is a heretic or an heresiarch whose rebellion against the Church is characterized as manly independence; or again, it is some occurrence about which two statements widely different have come down to us, one of which, inasmuch as it tells against us, is sure to be the one recorded. In writing about the Reformation period, in particular, non-Catholic historians have hitherto accepted party accounts of men and events that are now proved by documentary evidence to be scandalously false. And yet those accounts are embodied in school-books and taught in universities and colleges and schools, as though they admitted of no contradiction. Hence it comes that Catholics must be on their guard against many books of history that have become part of the literature of our country. We have been over and over again called hard names for this prudent caution; but the investigations that have been lately made into the State Papers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show now how fully our caution has been justified. In fact, modern English history has not yet been written by any non-Catholic historian in the full light of unprejudiced truth; and until it is written so, the same principle that keeps men from giving poisoned food to others must also keep us from putting into the hands of our children the popular English histories that our Protestant neighbours prize so highly, and whose every statement they accept with such implicit confidence.

There is one other department of English literature about which I feel bound to say something. I refer to the philosophy of science. Many writers have in the present generation acquired a reputation by discussing, and, to their minds, determining, the relations between science and Faith. They set out with the first principle that a conflict may exist between these two sources of knowledge; and the entire scope of their works consists in formulating theories by which men may be guided when such conflict presents itself. These theories are generally very ingenious; and having been worked out with much literary skill, they gain many readers for the works. Their authors are talked about wherever men usually assemble, the quarterlies and monthlies and weeklies have learned articles on them, and even the daily papers have notices of them and allude to them in occasional leaders. In this way among others, we, Catholics, are brought into contact with them, and what is the consequence? It is, that we either read the books themselves or study the theories second-hand in Reviews or Magazines. This would be right enough if the Reviews or Magazines were Catholic; but unfortunately, as the bulk of these serials, read by our people, are not Catholic, the influence of the second-hand reading is much the same as that of reading the works themselves. Divine Faith is spoken of there as though it were a mere human invention, and its dogmas are discussed and criticised and condemned with a scorn and a flippancy that are not only irreverent in the highest degree, but are outrages on all decorum and good taste. Scientific facts, on the other hand, are strung together and vested with an infallibility that is denied to the word of God; and so human reason is deified, while the Author of human reason is deposed and vilified, and crushed out of His own creation. This, I believe, to be the gist of most of the books to which I am referring. Now what is the influence of those books on Catholic readers? It is, I think, chiefly twofold. First of all, they get from them an exaggerated idea of the importance of modern scientific discoveries in their bearing on revealed Truth. Most of us have a tendency to become slaves to the books we read. We are inclined to accept unhesitatingly the opinions and views they express, and to surrender our judgment to their teaching, as if they had some authoritative mission to instruct and guide us. Hence, when they tell us that science is to be the light of the future, before which all other lights are to pale, and into which they are to merge, and when they tell us that facts already discovered by scientists disprove the truth of all Christian revelation, we become anxious and disquieted, and a half-conscious, involuntary fear grows upon us, that modern science and modern discoveries are about to bring some terrible disaster on the Church to which we belong. The step from this point to doubts about divine revelation is short and easy; and unfortunately it is frequently taken, to the serious, if not permanent, injury of the soul.

The other influence that this class of literature has on Catholic readers is the uncatholic idea of Faith which it conveys. With us the object of Faith is God’s spoken word to man; and the motive of our belief is the truthfulness of Him who has spoken. Now everyone who admits the existence of God must attach the highest possible credit to His spoken word; so much so, indeed, that no evidence either of the senses or of reason can have any weight against it. But in order that men attach such credit to Divine Revelation, some medium, absolutely certain and unerring, must have been established by which it is to be conveyed to individual souls. Even though God spoke in times past by the prophets, and last of all by His Son, we must be assured by some authority appointed by Himself, first, that He has spoken, and secondly, what He has spoken, before we are obliged to give His words the credit due to them. This infallible authority resides in the Catholic Church. Hence whatever the Catholic Church teaches to have been spoken by God, has, beyond all possibility of doubt, been spoken by Him; and it would be impious to set up the testimony of the senses or the testimony of reason or any other possible testimony against what He has said. Indeed it would not only be impious but irrational to do so.

Non-Catholic writers convey a very different idea regarding the Christian faith. They invariably go on the supposition—when they admit any revelation at all—that God spoke to the world without making any absolutely sure provision for the teaching and transmission of His word to future generations. They, therefore, accept it on grounds exactly similar to those on which they accept other historical statements, that is, on merely human testimony. And this supposition or first principle leads to another, namely, that all testimony in favour of revealed truths is to be set aside whenever it conflicts with reason or science. According to those writers then, Christian faith is a body of truths stated to have been revealed by God, that have come down to us side by side with other truths not revealed. Their origin as well as their transmission to us are to be weighed and examined before they ought to be accepted; and the same canons of criticism are to be applied to them as are usually applied to other historical truths.

Infidel writers treat of Christian faith very much in the same way as those just mentioned. They examine the teaching of Jesus Christ just as they examine a Dialogue of Plato, and they bring to the examination, as their first principle, the rejection of the supernatural. Denying the existence of any living authority in the world commissioned to teach men God’s message to them, denying, too, the possibility of God speaking to His own creation, except through human reason and external phenomena, those philosophers, denying all this, naturally look on and write about revealed truth as the mere outcome of a grand and beautiful but merely human intellect. They accept it as a past or passing phase of humanity; but they deny it to be a supernatural expression or a gratuitous message of love from a personal God to His creatures.

It will be seen, then, how dangerous for Catholic readers is the habit of perusing works treating of religious matters from an un-Catholic standpoint. Such Catholics very soon come to take the same standpoint themselves; and the consequences need not to be particularised.

All that I have been writing in this chapter may, perhaps, lead some to suppose that I look with indifference, if not with a certain amount of distrust, on the habit of reading in general. This is not so. I think a habit of reading is most useful and desirable for everyone; and I think Religion has few more powerful natural helps than such a habit, safeguarded and controlled by Christian prudence. The mind acquires an elevated tone by it, and all the faculties receive from it a development that could scarcely be attained by any other means. It produces, too, broader views of life than we would otherwise have, and it proportionately enlarges our sympathies with our fellow-beings. Our daily employments and surroundings are only too apt to make us hard and material and selfish, whereas a habit of judicious reading brings home to us insensibly that we were not created for ourselves exclusively; that we have duties and responsibilities towards the world in which we live; that life is something more than a money-making speculation; and that the tender sentiments of our nature were given to us not to be plucked up as useless weeds, but to be trained and developed as well for our own perfection as for the help and advancement of our neighbour. This habit may indeed be made a powerful means of enlightening and eventually saving the souls of those with whom we come in contact. Ignorance has been always a most fertile root of infidelity and vice. Bring, then, a well-stored, well-informed mind in contact with one that is narrow and shrivelled by want of education, and the light of the former will very soon find its way into the latter, and will very likely be made for it the vehicle of faith and holiness in the merciful designs of divine Providence. In these countries, at the present day, a sublime apostleship seems to be conferred on our Catholic laity, in the work of spiritual enlightenment, a work they have such splendid opportunities to discharge. They eat and drink and work with men, many of whom are kept, solely by traditional prejudices, out of the Church of Christ. Why not direct the habit of reading to the acquisition of that doctrinal and historical knowledge that would enable us to dissipate those prejudices and to open the way to those men’s conversion? Unlikely as it may seem, I find it nevertheless to be true, that much more is done in this direction among the labouring and uneducated classes than among those holding higher ranks in society. Good taste is generally put forward by these latter as an excuse for not mentioning religious matters in mixed society; and, no doubt, it is a valid excuse when the circumstances of time or place or person are unfavourable. But very often they are not unfavourable; and yet the silly fear of being thought over-zealous and enthusiastic keeps many from speaking a seasonable word or making a casual suggestive remark that they know might be productive of good. There is more zeal among the poor of our Church; and if they were to eschew controversy and suppress all display of party-spirit, confining themselves to a simple explanation of what they believe as Catholics, the good they are undoubtedly doing among their fellow-labourers and companions would be very much increased.

I have now, before concluding this chapter, to add only a few words about the libraries of our Catholic homes. They ought, as far as possible, to consist, to a large extent, of Catholic books. Now that the Reformation has given back to us some of the brightest talent of which it robbed us, and that talent being conspicuously displayed in our contemporary literature, we can have no excuse for not making our libraries emphatic expressions, not only of the Religion we profess, but also of the earnestness with which we profess it. I do not know a surer test of a man’s character than his library; that is, when he has the selection of the books entirely in his own hands; and so too, a truly Catholic home is best known by the collection of Catholic books found in it. Standard works, of course, need not be excluded, although their writers be not of our faith, provided their general tenor be not anti-religious or immoral. But we look in a library not merely for a proof of the owner’s literary taste, but for an expression of his individuality, and this expression, in the case of Catholics especially, is found in the class of modern books with which they fill up their book-shelves and strew their library tables. Unfortunately many of our homes, examined by this test, give a very unfavourable idea of the religious earnestness of those who control them. Indeed if any of our cities or towns were to be suddenly overwhelmed, like Pompeii of old, and to be excavated after eighteen centuries, the explorers would find, in the libraries discovered, little clue to help them to distinguish between Catholic and non-Catholic homes. The fact is, we have no taste for Catholic reading, and we make no effort to acquire it, and our indifference reacts on the Catholic book-market, limiting the sale of religious books and diverting Catholic talent into un-Catholic lines of exertion. We must awaken from this apathy and show more appreciation of our own literature before we can hope for a general revival of Catholicity in this country. But independently of this consideration, we must seek to preserve and nourish and develop the spiritual life of our homes; and a great aid to the attainment of this object is a good Catholic library.