The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

"THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE. 425We have divided Prussia into Protestant andCatholic because statistics are kept according to thereligious creed of the people; and we discover that,whilst among the Catholic portion of the empirethere is but a percentage of six and a half of illegitimate births, among the Protestants it runs upto ten per cent. And the same remark is applicableto Ireland.The Scotman, whose statements are based on thereport of the British Kegistrar-General, publishesthe following statistics :The proportion of illegitimate births to the totalnumber of births is in Ireland 3.8 per cent. ;inEngland the proportionis 6.4 ;in Scotland 9.9 ;in otherwords, England is nearly twice, and Scotland nearlythrice worse, than Ireland. Something worse has tobe added, from which no consolation can be derived.The proportion of illegitimacyisvery unequallydistributed over Ireland, and the inequality ratherhumbling to us as Protestants, and still more aaPresbyterians and Scotchmen. Taking Ireland according to the registration divisions, the proportionof illegitimatebirths varies from 6.2 to 1.3. Thedivision showing this lowest figure is the western,being substantially the Province of Connaught,where about uineteeu-twentieths of the populationare Celtic and Roman Catholic. The division showing the highest proportion of isillegitimacythenorth-eastern, which comprises,or almost consists of,the province of Ulster, where the ispopulationalmost36*