How pertinent to our own times are the words of St. Paul in the Epistle of to-day, addressed nineteen centuries ago to the Christians of Ephesus: "But all uncleanness, let it not be so much as named among you, as becometh saints. ... For know ye this and understand that no unclean person hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."
There is no vice, my brethren, more common among men at the present day in all classes of society, from the professional man to the day-laborer, among the rich and the poor, the old and the young, than that of obscene or immodest conversation.
Among the better educated this poison of impurity is clothed in language which serves to veil its disgusting nudity, and thus the more securely to insinuate itself and to deceive the unwary; while among the less educated it is oftener expressed in words that reveal its horrid filthiness and shock common decency.
Listen to the conversation of almost any chance gathering of young men, and you will soon hear the double-meaning joke, the attempt of some one to be witty, which serves as much to expose the shallowness of his pate as the corruption and rottenness of his miserable heart.
Holy Scripture says that "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." How true this is! But if one were to use this criterion in judging the thoughts that fill the hearts of many amongst us, how debased and pitiable must be their condition!
And how shocking it is, my dear brethren, to meet a young man whose dress and manner at first give evidence of respectability and good breeding, but who, when an immodest allusion is made or an impure joke uttered, is the first to shout with laughter! Such a one is well described by our Blessed Lord as "a whited sepulchre? full of dead men's bones."
And yet these whited sepulchres are not very rare in the community. You meet them in every walk of life--in the counting-room and in the factory, at the "respectable" club-room as well as in the grog-shop, and alas! must we say it, among Catholics as well as among non-Catholics.
Yes, among Catholics, who have been elevated to a supernatural state through the merits and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ; whose hearts have been sealed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and on whose tongue the Body and Blood of our Lord has often been placed--even these have dared to cherish in their hearts and express with their tongues thoughts and sentiments that would shock the moral sense even of the unregenerate.