The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

Yet I cannot admit that our older clergy were deficient in the learning of the schools. The names of England and Corcoran are at once on our lips, not to speak of a long array of others almost equally entitled to distinguished mention. If the external conditions of the diocesan clergy have improved, their relations to the Church authority have been safeguarded with even greater earnestness and efficiency. The dispositions of synods, provincial councils, and the three plenary councils of Baltimore have, we are happy to say, had little to do with questions of doctrine. They have all been held for the improvement of discipline and notably for the welfare of the clergy. In the same direction, also, have tended the numerous decisions and instructions from the Roman congregations, whose wisdom has never been invoked by us in vain, and whose sympathy for our conditions we gratefully acknowledge.

THE CONGREGATION OF THE PROPAGANDA

Any account of the good influence of the Holy See on our ecclesiastical conditions would be unjust and incomplete if the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide were omitted. To it we owe an unceasing surveillance, full of prudence and intelligence. From its offices have come to the bishops regularly counsel, warning, encouragement, co-operation. It has been eminently just and fair, also fearless in the application of the principles, the spirit, and the letter of canonical discipline. Its action is a calm and grave one, marked by reticence and patience and that composure which belongs to the highest judicial decisions. But the Catholic Church in the United States and in Canada owes it an undisputed debt of gratitude. The most learned cardinals of the century and the best ecclesiastical talent have co-operated in the creation of its legislation, which need not fear the criticism of any learned and honest judicial body of men.

RELIGIOUS ORDERS AND COMMUNITIES

In the religious orders and communities the Catholic Church possesses a very ancient auxiliary force that has rendered incalculable help during the century. By their numbers, their strong inherited traditions, their central government, their willing obedience, and their other resources they have come everywhere to the aid of the bishops and the diocesan clergy. Often they bore alone and for a long time, and at great sacrifices, the whole burden of religion. Their praise is rightly on all sides, and their works speak for them, when their modesty and humility forbid them to praise themselves. The missions of Catholicism in this century, as in others, have largely fallen to them. They stood in the breach for the cause of education when the churches were too poor and few to open colleges. They have given countless missions and retreats, and in general have not spared themselves when called upon for works of general utility. They and their works are of the essence of Catholicism, and they ought rightly to flourish in any land where they are free to live according to the precepts and the spirit of their founders, who are often canonized saints of the Catholic Church.

I shall not be saying too much when I assert that among the invaluable services rendered to the Church by Catholic women of all conditions of life—no unique thing in the history of Catholicism—those rendered by the women of religious communities are of the first rank of merit. Primary Catholic education, in the United States, at least, would have been almost impossible without their devotion. It is owing to them that the orphans have been collected and cared for, the sick housed and sheltered, the poor and helpless and aged, the crippled and the blind, looked after regularly and lovingly. They surely walk in the footsteps of Jesus, doing good wherever they go. The perennial note of sanctity in the Catholic Church shines especially in them. Content with food and clothing and shelter, they devote their lives, often in the very flower of youth and health and beauty, to the weak and needful members of Christian society. He must needs be a Divine Master who can so steadily charm into His service the purest and the most affectionate of hearts, and cause them to put aside deliberately for love of Him even the most justifiable of human attachments. This argument for Christianity is not new; it was urged by Saint Justin the Martyr on the libertine world of the Antonines.

THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM

Throughout this century the Roman Church has desired and sought by all practical means the restoration of the former unity of Christendom. Each succeeding Pope has appealed to the ancient but separated Churches of the Orient, reminding them of the past oneness and the need of union with that see which all their records proclaim the rock and centre of unity. Similarly, appeals have been issued to the divided Christian communities of the West, as when Pius IX. wrote to the members of the Protestant world before the Vatican Council, and when Leo XIII. lately addressed his famous encyclical on the Unity of the Church to all men of good will within the Anglican pale. Such efforts may seem perfunctory; but they have in our eyes a deep meaning. They proclaim the doctrine of unity that is clearer than the noonday sun from the teachings of Jesus; they make a first step in the direction of its restoration; they keep alive the spirit of charity in many hearts, and they stir up countless prayers for the consummation of an end that few believing Christians any longer consider unnecessary. Already the canker-worms of doubt and indifference are gnawing at those last foundations of the old inherited Christian religious beliefs that still worked beneficently outside the pale of Catholic unity, but are now disappearing from the public consciousness because, too often, they are no longer elements of private conviction. In the realm of faith, as in that of nature, there is an after-glow, when the central sun has spent its force; but in both that glow is the herald of coldness and darkness. To those who no longer allow in their hearts any Christian belief, Catholicism has strongly appealed in the nineteenth century by its teachings on the right use of reason in matters of faith, the claims of religion on the mind and the heart of man, the benefits of Christianity, and its superiority over all other forms of religion—in a word, by the constant exposé of all the motives of credibility which could affect a sane and right mind that had divested itself of prejudice and passion.

CONVERSIONS TO CATHOLICISM

Not the least remarkable share of the history of Catholicism is seen in the stream of conversions that began in the very stress of the French Revolution and has not ceased to flow since then. From every land of the Old and New Worlds hundreds of thousands have returned of their own volition to the ancient fold wherein we firmly believe is kept the sacred deposit of saving truth. They have come to us from the pulpits of opposing religions and from the workshops of an unbelieving science. Every condition of life, and both sexes, have sent us numerous souls. Very many of these conversions have been unsolicited and unexpected. Some of them meant an accession of wealth or social prestige or high rank. Others brought with them the beloved tribute of uncommon intelligence, experience of life and men, acquired erudition, the highest gifts of style and oratory. Very many have come from the middle walks of life, and signified no more than a great weariness of pursuing shadows for the reality of divine truth, and the excessive goodness of the Holy Spirit of God which bloweth where it listeth. Of this army of converts some have been drawn by the conviction that the Bible alone, without an interpreter and a witness divinely guaranteed, could not suffice as a rule of faith. Others have been moved by the incarnation in the Church of the spirit and functions of authority without which no society can exist. Still others have come back to the Mother of all churches, through a deep heart-weariness at the endless dilapidation of divine truth outside the Roman Church. Some have sought and found through the study of history the open door to the truth. Others again through the study of art and its functions in the Christian Church. In whatever way they returned to the unity of the original sheepfold, they are an eloquent witness to the innate vigor and the immortal charm of the Christian truth as preserved in Catholicism. For they have come in unconditionally. Their return has worked beneficially, not only for themselves, but for those of the Catholic faith, whom it has consoled and encouraged for their steadfastness, while the non-Catholic world cannot but feel that that religion is worthy of respect, even of study, which can forever draw so many men and women out of the ranks of its adversaries, even at the sacrifice of many things which are usually held dear by society.