Above
all broaden their minds. Give them education and the Divine tachin'
will find a surer restin' place. Ignorance and dirt fill the
hospitals and the asylums, and it is THAT so many of the priests are
fosterin'."
"I'll not listen to another wurrd," cried Father Cahill, turning
away.
O'Connell strode in front of him.
"Wait. There's another thing. I've heard more than one priest boast
that there was less sin in the villages of Ireland than in any other
country. And why? What is yer great cure for vice? MARRIAGE--isn't
it?"
"What are ye sayin'?"
"I'm sayin' this, Father Cahill. If a boy looks at a girl twice,
what do ye do? Engage them to be married. To you marriage is the
safeguard against sin. And what ARE such marriages? Hunger marryin'
thirst! Poverty united to misery! Men and women ignorant and stunted
in mind and body, bound together by a sacrament, givin' them the
right to bring others, equally distorted, into the wurrld. And when
they're born you baptise them, and you have more souls entered on
the great register for the Holy Church. Bodies livin' in perpetual
torment, with a heaven wavin' at them all through their lives as a
reward for their suffering here. I tell ye ye're wrong! Ye're wrong!
Ye're wrong! The misery of such marriages will reach through all the
generations to come.
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