You may gash a man with healthy blood to the bone, and time will
quickly heal the wound and scarcely leave a scar, but if the
man's blood be corrupt the scratch of a thorn may involve
consequences demanding the surgeon's knife.

The spirit that Catholic Ireland had fifty years ago is sadly
changed to-day; and its tendency to fester on slight provocation
is due to the poison distilled into it from an unwholesome,
anti-Catholic literature. Only twenty years ago we had a painful
illustration of the silent but terrible mischief that has been
done by England's Press upon the Catholic mind of this country.

[Side note: An evil crisis]

Up to the time of the Parnell crisis the priests imagined their
feet were planted upon a solid rock; they discovered they were
standing on a pie-crust. What a startling revelation was in store
for them. Small wonder they rubbed their eyes and asked in
bewilderment, Are we in Catholic Ireland?

The ground broke; the fiery breath of hell belched forth. We saw
the devil spitting hate through the lips of politicians, the
columns of the Press, and the resolutions of the schoolmasters.
Terrible as was this outward exhibition, it revealed but a
fraction. The spirit of revolt and infidelity that raged within
the breasts of young men and darkened their conversation was
awful. The writings of avowed freethinkers and libertines were
devoured, and if any young man had the heroic courage to
remonstrate, his words would be drowned in derision.