all civilized nations acknowledge. Its opposite, that the end justifies
the means, is so odious that the practice of it is a black stamp of
ignominy on any man or any set of men that would be guilty of it. The
Catholic Church has, all through her course of existence, taught the
maxim that the end cannot justify the means. She has impressed it on the
laws and hearts of all Christian peoples. She inculcates it in the
teachings of all her theologians and moral philosophers and in all her
channels of education. And since we Jesuits are among her leading
educators and writers, we have maintained that thesis in thousands of
printed volumes, as firmly as I am maintaining it before you to-day. No
Jesuit ever, nor any Catholic theologian or philosopher, has taught the
contrary. And yet even such pretentious works as the "Encyclopædia
Britannica" have carried all over the earth the slander that we teach
the opposite maxim, that the end does justify the means, and the odious
term _Jesuitry_ has been coined to embody that slander.

Is it not strange then, very strange, that they who thus falsely accuse
us are often the very men who will procure an abortion to save the
mother's life, who will do wrong that good may come of it? And you find
such men maintaining the lawfulness of abortion on the plea that the
operation, whether licit or not, is a necessary means to obtain a good
end.

IV. Gentlemen, if once you grant that grave reasons would justify
abortion, there is no telling where you will stop in your career of
crime. To-day, for instance, you are called to attend a mother, who, you
think, must die if you do not bring on a miscarriage. You are urged to
do it by herself and her husband, and perhaps by other physicians. There
are money considerations too, and the possible loss of practice. Will
you yield to the temptation? The next day you are visited by a most