Catholic Problems in Western Canada

by George Thomas Daly

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Reconstruction is the world's watch-word as nations rise from the ruins a long protracted and universal war has accumulated around them.

The period of reconstruction, more than that of the war, will test our national fibre. The problems we face are in extent, in character, in complexity greater than at any other period of history. The strain will be greater, for the conflict is being lifted to a higher plane, that of ideas. And ideas are the supreme realities, the dynamic forces that rule the world, the fulcrum that shifts the axis of the world's civilization.

In these momentous times, the isolation of Catholics would be a calamity; their participation, a blessing, for Church and country. To stand aloof from the solution of the problems that stare us in the face and insistently demand attention and solution, to confine our efforts solely to parochial institutions and not enter into the broader field of public life is for Catholics, at this hour, nothing short of a calamity. The consequences of this abstention will be to limit our action to mere protestation and often useless defence, when our principles are assailed and our positions in danger, when a leakage, through the social activities of others, is but too manifest. Let us on the contrary, turn the energies we lose in mere defence to constructive work, and our positions will be safer, and our principles better appreciated. "Our liberties are best defended when Catholics throw themselves into the stream of public life."

And does not Catholic doctrine stand essentially for constructive forces in the social, political and economic life of a country? We possess the foundation, the plans, the material of all true and lasting social reconstruction. The Gospel and the natural law form the rock-bottom foundation; the definite and unchanging principles of morality are its structural lines; justice is as the steel girders and charity the fast-binding cement.

"At the present day," wrote Professor G. Toniolo, the eminent Catholic Italian economist, "the great Encyclicals of Leo XIII, which, sustained by the common light of the Evangelical teachings of Christian philosophy and Revelation, have illuminated all the phases of social, civil and political knowledge in harmonious, logical connections. At the present day we possess a unified complex of sociological teachings, brought together in a system, which rests against the supernatural, which measures up to the problems of our age, which, absorbing everything, takes unto itself all that is true in modern science and is proven by experience, and thus is prepared to oppose successfully a positivistic, materialistic and anti-Christian sociology."

Yes, we possess the true solution of modern problems and . . . what are we doing to give it to the world, to the community in which we live? Why, the very fabric of social order is questioned, our working men are absorbing everywhere the most subversive doctrines; the relations between capital and labor are strained to a breaking-point; our industrial system is controlled by economic theories divorced from ethics, whereby the worker is a mere producer; the State-monopoly is gradually spreading its influences as huge tentacles, around our most sacred liberties; the equilibrium between liberty and authority—these two poles of Christian civilization—is being displaced; . . . and what are the activities of the Catholic body, as a whole, in Canada, to stem the rising tide? A sermon, now and then, on Socialism or on the rights and duties of labour, will not solve the problems and extinguish the volcano upon which we are peacefully living. In our cities, the housing problem, which involves to a great extent, the moral life of the masses, is acute; the white slave traffic has established its haunts and commercialized vice; the moving picture-show has become everywhere the most popular educational factor: at its school the young generation, eyes riveted on the flickering screen, is drinking in the alluring lessons of free love, divorce and every anti-Christian doctrine; our ports will soon see a new tide of immigration invade our shores; the non-catholic denominations are crumbling away under the very weight of their destructive and disintegrating principle of private judgment; we are surrounded with pagans to whom the supernatural religion of Christianity is but a name or a memory; from our great West comes the urgent cry for help, for men and money; the Church Extension, as the watchman in the night is crying out to our uninterested Catholics—"the day is coming, the night is coming"—meaning that the faint streak on the eastern horizon may be the last rays of a dying day or the first blush of a new dawn; . . . and what are we doing? Here and there, a spasmodic effort, a generous outburst of zeal—the work of some society, parish or diocese. While, what we need now is the combined effort of all the Catholics. This will only be obtained through a Congress. What we need is organized opinion. The modern world is very sensitive to organized opinion.—Let us get together! We only need leaders to see our opinion become "articulate and authoritative" and make its weight felt in public life. Never has a Congress been more necessary than now. Without it, Catholics will not take part in reconstruction, for a Congress alone can unite us and give us the guarantee that our energies will not be "frittered away by overlapping and friction."

There is a great moral tide now running in the world, said President Wilson in his toast to the King of England . . . and that tide is the great opportunity for Catholic social principles to take the high sea of public life. Let us therefore, like the skilful mariner, count with this set of the tide and catch it at its crest. "There is a tide in the affairs of nations like that of men, which when taken at the flood leads on to glory. If we do not direct the ideas that are awork in the seething mind of the world, they will spend their energies in retributive destruction," wrote the Philosopher President of the United States.

"The thrilling opportunities of the time, we will say with Father Garesche, S.J., should stir us to the depths of our souls' capacity with enthusiasm, energy and sacrifice. . . . Our realization of the needs and chances of the Church and the world, should stir us to the utmost of personal effort."

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