the attack is in words and
goes no farther than words: for "sticks and stones will break your
bones, but names will never hurt you," as we used to say when we were
boys. Then, words are such fleeting things that the harm is done,
whatever harm there is, before any remedy can be brought to bear upon
it; which fact leaves no room for self-defense.

In such a case, the only redress that can be had is from the courts of
justice, established to undo wrongs as far as the thing can be done.
The power to do this belongs to the State alone, and is vested in no
private individual. To assume the prerogative of privately doing
oneself justice, when recourse can be had to the tribunals of justice,
is to sin, and every act committed in this pursuit of justice is
unlawful and criminal.

This applies likewise to all the other cases of self-defense wherein
life, virtue and wealth are concerned, if the harm is already done, or
if legal measures can prevent the evil, or undo it. It may be that the
justice dealt out by the tribunal, in case of injury being done to u's,
prove inferior to that which we might have obtained ourselves by
private methods. But this is not a reason for one to take the law into
one's own hands. Such loss is accidental and must be ascribed to the
inevitable course of human things.

Duelling is a form of murder and suicide combined, for which there can
possibly be no justification. The code of honor that requires the
reparation of an insult at the point of the sword or the muzzle of a
pistol has no existence outside the befogged intelligence of godless
men. The duel repairs nothing and aggravates the evil it seeks to
remedy. The justice it appeals to is a creature dependent on skill and
luck; such justice is not only blind, but crazy as well.

That is why the Church anathematizes duelling. The duel she condemns is
a hand-to-hand combat prearranged as to weapons, time and place, and it
is immaterial whether it be to the death or only to the letting of
first blood. She fulminates her major excommunication against
duellists, even in the event of their failing to keep their agreement.
Her sentence affects seconds and all those who advise or favor or abet,
and even those whose simple presence is an incentive and encouragement.
She refuses Christian burial to the one who falls, unless before dying
he shows certain dispositions of repentance.

Prize fighting, however brutal and degrading, must not be put in the
catego