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Updated: June 10, 2025


The most important, however, of these Catholic delicacies, the masterpiece of the cook, was a superb crucifix in angelica, with a crown of candied berries. These are strange profanations, which scandalize even the least devout.

But the profanations of this kind are more or less grievous according to the quality of the truth and the consequent faith, and according to the quality of the good and the consequent life, and according to the quality of the withdrawal from these; and therefore there are many specific differences in this profanation. Why the state of profaners after death is so horrible shall be disclosed.

It is better never to have known what the high, terrible loveliness of Her of Melos is than, having seen her, to pass the rest of our days with these copies, and prostitutions, and profanations, and parodies, "which mimic humanity so abominably"! That is the worst of it. That is the sting of it.

The sermons of the clergy were frivolous, and ill adapted to the spiritual wants of the people. "Men went to the Vatican," says the learned and philosophical Ranke, "not to pray, but to contemplate the Belvidere Apollo. They disgraced the most solemn festivals by open profanations. The clergy, in their services, sought the means of exciting laughter.

The wars of religion under Charles IX and Henry III rendered gold and silver a little more common, by the profanations of the Calvinists, who pillaged the churches, and converted into specie the sacred vases, as well as the shrines and statues of saints.

The funeral solemnities of Louis XVIII. seemed to the people a mortuary triumph of Royalty over the Revolution and the Empire. The profanations of 1793 were expiated. Napoleon was left with the willow of Saint Helena; the descendant of Saint Louis and of Louis XIV. had the basilica of his ancestors as a place of sepulture, and the links of time's chain were again joined.

Neither age, nor sex, nor profession saved the proscribed Jew from the horrors of a violent death. From Jerusalem, too, the persecution spread over the whole country; in every city the same barbarities were executed and the same profanations introduced.

Doctor Gozzi had also given way to merriment; but begged that the farce should come to an end, for he deemed that his father's eccentricities were as many profanations against the sacredness of exorcism. At last the exorcist, doubtless tired out, went to bed saying that he was certain that the devil would not disturb his daughter during the night.

Man is an image of the world in respect to his natural mind, and he is an image of heaven in respect to his spiritual mind. The natural mind, which is the world, is beneath; and the spiritual mind, which is heaven, is above. The natural mind is full of all kinds of evil, such as thefts, adulteries, murders, false witnesses, covetousnesses, and even blasphemies and profanations respecting God.

Perhaps the world is being punished for such long-continued profanations of the Mass as have been tolerated in the churches for so many centuries by the very men who were both able and in duty bound to correct them. For in the Ten Commandments it is written, Ex. 20, 7: The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.

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