Talks on American Sunday

1902

Cardinal Gibbons Declares That the Rich Man Desecrates the Day by Newspaper Reading

In his sermon on the American Sunday at the cathedral at Baltimore, Cardinal Gibbons, among other things, said:

"It has been the boast of our country that in no nation of the world was the Christian Sabbath better respected than in the United States, but a close observer cannot fail to note the dangerous inroads that have been made on the Lord's day in this country during the last 30 years.

"The average business man of America is in a state of habitual feverish activity. He rushes through life at full steam. The one aim of his existence is to become rich. Money making is not the means, but the end, of his life. He increases his wealth, not so much for the love of it as from the fascination attached to the accumulation of a fortune.

"On Sunday mornings, as he is debarred from the conventionalities of life in going to his place of business, he seizes the morning paper and devours its contents of 20 or 30 pages, its news of stocks and bonds, or pleasures and amusements, of crime and scandal, until his whole being is saturated with this unhealthy diet. Like animals gorged with food, he spends the morning in a comatose condition."

—The Indiana Democrat, Indiana, PA, Nov. 26, 1902, p. 5.