Carmen laughed. “Don’t quit the field, Monsignor––unless you surrender abjectly. You started this controversy, remember. And you were quite indiscreet, if you will recall.”
Monsignor bowed, smiling. “You write my faults in brass,” he gently lamented. “When you publish my virtues, if you find that I am possessed of any, I fear you will write them in water.”
Carmen laughed again. “Your virtues should advertise themselves, Monsignor.”
“Ah, then do you not see in me the virtue of desiring your welfare above all else, my child?”
“And the welfare of this great country, which you have come here to assist in making dominantly Catholic, is it not so, Monsignor?”
Lafelle started slightly. Then he smiled genially back at the girl. “It is an ambition which I am not ashamed to own,” he returned gently.
“But, Monsignor,” Carmen continued earnestly, “are you not aware of the inevitable failure of your mission? Do you not know that mediaeval theology comports not with modern progress?”
“True, my child,” replied the churchman. “And more, that our so-called modern progress––modernism, free-thinking, liberty of conscience, and the consequent terrible extravagance of beliefs and false creeds––constitutes the greatest menace now confronting this fair land. Its end is inevitable anarchy and chaos. Perhaps you can see that.”
“Monsignor,” said Carmen, “in the Middle Ages the Church was supreme. Emperors and kings bowed in submission before her. The world was dominantly Catholic. Would you be 173 willing, for the sake of Church supremacy to-day, to return to the state of society and civilization then obtaining?”
“That would not follow.”