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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
THE BULLETIN
The Official Organ of the Catholic Laymen’s
Association of Georgia.
Published Quarterly by the Publicity Department, 107
Ninth Street, Augusta, Georgia.
VOL. I. No. 3
We Catholics want to live in peace with our
neighbors. From early childhood we have been
taught to respect the rights of conscience and
the sincerity of the religious belief of our neigh
bors. We bear malice to no man and we de
sire to injure none. We preach the Gospel of
Love, and with God’s help we try to practice it.
We do not ask from any man that which we
are not willing to accord him. The Southern
Messenger, San Antonio, Texas.
THE CHURCH IN GEORGIA.
While the past few months have witnessed a sig
nificant recrudescence of anti-Catholicity in the State,
they have also seen some happenings that mark great
progress for the Church. Catholics number about
one-sixth of one per cent, of the population, yet a
large number of politicians and other professional
anti-Catholics profess to see in their presence a dis
tinct menace to the grand old commonwealth. And
these modern Cassandras fail to understand what a
great compliment they are paying us. Talk about
David and Goliath. There are not enough of us to
even raise a big noise if we wanted to, yet they make
the welkin ring with their yellings about the danger
to Georgia we are. Of course, these outbreaks of
mouth disease are most numerous around election
times, and they must be vote-getters, else their pop
ularity would not be so great.
But let these fearing ones note the following: Dur
ing the quarter just ended the debt on the Cathedral
at Savannah was wiped of? and the handsome edifice
consecrated.
The last ten thousand owed on the Sacred Heart
Church in Atlanta was paid and the fine church of
the Marists was formally devoted to the service of the
Most High a few days ago.
The debt on Mount de Sales Academy in Macon,
amounting to $100,000, was paid off through the
splendid efforts of that excellent cohort of Catholics
who live in the Central City, and Rev. Mothers Gene
vieve and Alphonsus celebrated their golden jubilee.
The Catholic Laymen of Augusta, under the lead
ership of Dr. W. A. Mulherin and Mr. Thomas S.
Gray, raised a fund of $100,000 to start and perpet
uate a free boys’ high school.
A new church has been started in Moultrie in the
vast mission district of Father Emmet Walsh.
Father McCarty has started a new church in Col
linsville, Savannah.
The high school in Savannah is being rebuilt at
great cost.
A new church at Gainesville is planned in Father
Clarke’s Athens District.
These are the important forward steps noted by
the editor of The Bulletin. Doubtless there are others,
but these should be enough to console those who see
dark days ahead for the church. And if these evi
dences of material progress do not suffice, consola
tion may be had in the following figures taken from
the latest Catholic Directory:
State Converts Cath. Population
West Virginia 160 61,000
Maryland 918 273,200
Virginia 468 42,800
North Carolina 81 8,100
South Carolina 99 10,000
Georgia 266 19,829
Which analyzed shows that in the province of Bal
timore this diocese leads, in percentage to Catholic
population, in the number of converts to the Faith.
And another thought: The State that comes closest
in the South to Georgia’s percentage is Alabama,
which is another place where the anti-Catholic bigot
rages. So, all in all, there is no much for Catholics in
Georgia to worry about, as long as they continue to
mind their own business and keep up their campaign
of informing those who seek knowledge. The fellow
who is filled with prejudice is not doing so much harm
as he thinks he is.
FIRST CATHOLIC DAILY.
Catholics all over the country are rejoicing in the
appearance July 1st of The Daily American Tribune,
published at Dubuque, Iowa, beginning July 1st. This
is the only Catholic daily published in the English
language anywhere. That this consummation was ef
fected in the United States should please every Ameri
can and should please enough to secure its support.
The Catholic daily is an experiment; not a rash one,
but nevertheless a venture. For years one of the
livest and best of the Catholic weeklies has been The
Catholic Tribune. Some time ago it became a semi
weekly, and latterly a tri-weekly, and the daily was
begun only when enough subscribers had been secured
to at least give chances of success.
The American Tribune is a real newspaper. It is
not a church paper, as this term is generally under
stood. It gives the news of the world every day
and has the usual departments of the secular daily.
It simply gives a Catholic tone to Catholic news and
prints nothing that is anti-Catholic or unfair to the
Church. Instead of minimizing Catholic news, as
the regular press is accused of doing, it aims to give
due importance to such, and while being careful to
preserve proper proportions, yet seeks to give Cath
olicity its due.
The editor is Nicholas Conner, one of the leading
Catholic laymen of the West and indeed of the coun
try. He is a thinker as well as a doer, a forceful
writer and the possessor of a great fund of general