Father O'Malley Warns Against Drinking

Decatur, Illinois, 1913

INDICTMENT OF THE EVILS OF DRINK

Made By Father O'Malley In Jubilee Sermon.

WARNING TO WOMEN

Against Liquors; Services to Last All Week.

An excoriating indictment of the evils of drink concluded a vivid and convincing sermon on "Sin" at St. Patrick's Catholic church Monday evening. The speaker was Father O'Malley, the Jesuit who is conducting the services celebrating the jubilee of the Peace of Constantine. The audience was a large one, nearly filling the church.

ROOT OF EVIL.

"Drink is the curse of our people," declared Father O'Malley. "It is the root of nearly all evil. I am not a crank about drink but neither I nor any other intelligent man can fail to recognize its terrible results."

Father O'Malley concluded with the denunciation of the growing practice of cafe drinking. He declared that the woman who drinks with a man is putting herself into serious danger. He urged the youths of the church never to touch intoxicating liquor of any kind.

ON EVIL CONSEQUENCES.

The sermon was a discourse on the hideousness of sin and the evil consequences of sin. Father O'Malley declared that all the evil in the world proceeds from two sins, the sin of the angels and the sin of Adam.

"If we realized the enormity of sin," he declared, "we should never, though we lived a thousand years, commit sin. Woe to that man who wittingly is guilty of a serious transgression of the law of God and who dies unrepentant."

ARE INTERESTING.

Father O'Malley's sermons are unusually interesting and not at all of the conventional type. They are keen in their observation and often are witty. They are directed at specific evil and they have the result of drawing large crowds.

LAST ALL WEEK.

The sermon tonight will be on "Confession," which, Father O'Malley declares, is the greatest and most beneficial of God-given institutions. "No man could have established confession," he declared last night. "Man's nature is too mean to conceive so marvelous a thing. Only God could have wrought such a mercy."

The evening services begin at 7:30. The morning masses are at 5:15 and 8 o'clock with a sermon after the second mass. The services last all week.

—The Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, November 11, 1913, page 9.