Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

6o
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
of the world hardly present a more striking antithesis
tween Religion and Theology,
On the religious side few things in the history of th
Roman Church have been more beautiful than the conduct
of its clergy in Canada during the great outbreak of
ship-
at Montreal about the middle of the
fever among immigrants
present century. Day and night the Catholic priesthood of
that city ministered fearlessly to those victims of sanitarv
fear of suffering and death could not drive thesc
ignorance ;
ministers from their work ;
they laid down their lives cheer-
fully while carrying comfort to the poorest and most ignorant
of our kind : such was the record of their religion. But
in 1885 a record was made by their theology. In that year the
smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal. Th*
Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination;
but multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some
vague survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination
and suffered fearfully. When at last the plague became sc
serious that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantint
began to be established in neighbouring cities, an effort wa
made to enforce compulsory vaccination. The result was
that large numbers of the Catholic working population re
sisted and even threatened bloodshed. The clergy at firs
tolerated and even encouraged this conduct : the Abb6 Filia
trault, priest of St. James's Church, declared in a sermoi
that, " if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we ha<
a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offender
the Lord ;
... it is to punish our pride that God has sent u
smallpox." The clerical press
went further: the Etendar
exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than submit t
vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was force
to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Healt
struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circuU
to the Catholic clergy, imploring them to recommend va
cination ; but, though two or three complied
with this r
quest, the great majority were either silent or openly he
tile. The Oblate Fathers, whose church was situated in tl
very heart of the infected district, continued to denoun<
vaccination ; the faithful were exhorted to rely on dev
tional exercises of various sorts ; under the sanction of t: