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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA 5 Attending Protestant Services. We do not attend any religious service except our own. Why should we? We believe Christ founded our Church, that our bishops are true successors to the Apostles. In the case of other religions they were started by men. We know the men who started them, and the time and place where they began. Is it not enough that we give them credit for good intentions, for sincerity and honesty of purpose, that we must also go to hear their teaching to see if it is better for us than the teaching of our Lord? But, suppose they, too, believe that Christ founded their Churches! Very well, they should abide in them. They should not attend Catholic worship because Catholics be lieve in the Catholic Church, should they? What ever Protestants believe, it is their belief and not the belief of some one else, that they must be saved by. And so Catholics must be saved by Catholic belief and not some other kind. Why, then, if one is truly and sincerely what he is in religion, believing that it is the religion of Christ Himself, should he wish to attend some other religious service than his own? Let me put it this way: we all have a hesitancy in singing German songs of late years, or in paying tribute to the German flag, and so forth, but are we any more certain of ourselves in this matter than in matters of religion? Surely, we ought not to be. We expect the Germans in their own country to eschew American things in the same manner, and have a little less respect for them if they do not stand by their country as we stand by ours. The parallel is not perfect, of course; none is; but does not this suggest to you that it is a part of Christian loyalty for one who believes he* belongs to the Church that Christ founded, to stick to that Church and not be joining promiscuously in all kinds of religious ser vices? It is very plain to me, and to most Catholics, and we do not altogether see how it can be objection able to any one. You say we cannot all be Catholics. However, we were all Catholics at one time, that is, all who were Christians were Catholics. But anyway, we can all be what we are, without uncharity towards others and without taking offense at their sincerity, and if both Catholics and non-Catholics would try for a while to live by this rule, we would all be happier, and, I venture to think, a little better, too. Preaching the Gospel. Finally, you ask me why our priests do not go into the highways, and by-ways and preach the Gospel, like the Twelve. They do. In China, Africa and all heathen lands, they are very Apostles, preaching the Word of God to the natives, “teaching them to ob serve all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” There is not an unchristianized country in the world where the Catholic Church has not her missionaries, not housed in the cities with their families, but pene trating the distant habitat of the unconverted and not infrequently still savage tribes; lone men, sworn to the undivided service of God; without family or wife or companion; vowed to a life of poverty; they labor there for five, ten, twenty years, and die, unheralded and unsung, and others go to take their places. These men, priests of the Catholic Church, have been the forerunners of civilization in every land where civili zation has been carried. They were here in America before the trader or the gold-hunter even, and long, long before the settler. They explored the Missis sippi before the Colonist had reached the Allegheny Mountain slope. They planted the cross on the heights of Quebec long before Wolfe was born. They Christianized the Iroquois, the Huron, the Abnecki, settled the shores of the Floridas, penetrated the deltas of the South and crossed the uplands to the pueblas of the West and preached the Gospel to the Indians across the Rockies a hundred years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on our shores. They had established schools in Mexico a century and more before the Latin school of Boston began. And in every country, it is the same; among the first white men there, is the Catholic priest; the first building to go up is a Cath olic chapel; the first school is a school of Christian doctrine; the first song to awaken the echoes of the forest is the chant of the Holy Mass. And today; every year they go out; from the seminaries of the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Franciscans and a score of other religious communities, into distant lands, to carry the Gospel and fulfill the command of their Master to teach all nations and preach the Gospel to every creature, which is the chart and the mission of the Catholic Church and her ministers unto the end of time. Dives and Lazarus of Today. Our priests do not go out into the by-ways in a Christian country, it is true. They do not preach from the street corners and hedge-rows in a civilized land, because such a course is not considered edify ing. There is such a thing, you know, as “casting pearls before swine,” which our Lord commanded us not to do. You will recall the parable of Lazarus and Dives, and how Dives asked Abraham that some one be sent to warn his five brothers what a terrible place hell is, and Abraham answered: “They have Moses and the Prophets.” When, therefore, the Church has established her missions, erected her houses of worship, her schools for education, her hospitals for the sick, her asylums for the orphan, has, in short, penetrated the life of a people so that her presence must be known to all and her ministries are available to all who desire them, she, too, can say that they have Moses and the Prophets, or, better still, Christ and the Gospel, and it is not for her, if that parable has any lesson, to brow-beat men into accept ing her good offices. The Catholic Church is not a proselytizer. She would rather convert one heathen who knows not Christ than to bring into her fold ten thousand Protestants who already acknowledge and believe in Him. I hope that these remarks fully an swer your question on this score. I trust, also, my answers to your other questions prove satisfactory, but if they do not I shall be glad to go into them further, if you will only be good enough to indicate to me what you wish further ex plained.