Five-minute Sermons: Good Reading
by VP
Posted on Sunday June 04, 2023 at 12:00AM in Sermons
"Converse in fear during the time of your sojourning here."-I. St. Peter i. 17.
PRINTING as an art has been of such great value to the human race that it may seem to some like an attack upon the liberty of men to say anything against the use of it. So many books have been written, so much knowledge has been spread abroad by means of them, so many evils and abuses exposed, and so many thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of lives made happier because of the printingpress, that it deserves a place among the greatest of God's blessings to men.
This we admit, and gladly and heartfeltly thank the Lord for the benefits He has been pleased to bestow upon us through the press. We know it has had, and still has a noble office, and has done a noble work. It has uprooted evil and righted wrong; it has advanced knowledge and has given joy to many a heart. And it has done well when it has done these things. It has done well when it has aided justice and truth and the living of a good life.
For all these reasons its influence and power are deservedly great, so great that to lightly estimate them or overlook them would be to ignore great factors in human affairs. Nor do we wish, nor do we seek to lessen this influence as long as it is exerted in the cause of what is right; but the press, like many another thing good in itself, has been misused.
It has been made to pander to the grossest vices of men. It has been made to lie, to steal, to be impure. It has been made to teach false religion, false politics, and false morality. At times it has been the very worst enemy of mankind; filling men's minds with theories entirely impracticable, or such as, put into effect, would destroy their happiness.
Nor have men hesitated to prostitute its high calling for the sake of furthering personal gain and ambition, or even revenge. The trust and confidence of the public have not unfrequently been abused, and error commingled with truth so subtly, and right with wrong, that the public sentiment has been arrayed against truth and justice; for there is an almost unaccountable impression given many people that what they find printed is of necessity true unless it is absolutely proved to be false.
Our care must be, in the light of the facts before us, to distinguish between the good and the bad press. We must beware of the evil sent flying, as it were, upon the air, and hold ourselves aloof from the crowd, when it is being hurried along to its ruin by bad advice and by bad principles. Good books and good papers are doing God's work in the world-as apostles in their way; but those that are bad are working in the interest of the "prince of darkness."
A good press sheds a bright light over the earth -the light of truth; a bad press is like a heavy cloud obscuring the sun. We can have nothing to do
with evil; we should hate evil. Let us have nothing to do with bad books
and bad papers. Let us neither read them ourselves, nor permit others
to read them, when we have authority to prevent them. Let us banish them
from our houses; that at least we can do, for there we are supreme. Let
us strive also to have them banished from the shops where we deal and
from the land wherein we live." Five-minute Sermons by the Paulist Fathers 5th Sunday after Pentecost
