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The Catholic Democracy of America, 76
of princes and of feudal lords are gone; monarcks hold their thrones to
execute the will of the people. Woe to religion where this fact is not
understood! He who holds the masses, reigns. The masses are held by
their intellect and their heart. No power controls them save that which
touches their own free souls. We have a dreadful lesson to learn from certain
European countries, in which, from weight of tradition, the Church
clings to thrones and classes, and loses her grasp upon the people. Let us
not make this mistake. We have here no princes, no hereditary classes.
Still there is the danger that there be in religion a favored aristocracy, upon
whom we lavish so much care that none remains for others. . . . The time
has come for 'salvation armies' to penetrate the wildest thicket of thorns
and briars, and bring God's word to the ear of the most vile, the most
ignorant, and the most godless. Saving those who insist on being saved, as
we are satisfied in doing, is not the mission of the Church. ' Compel them
to come in' is the command of the Master. This is not the religion we
need to-day—to sing lovely anthems in cathedral stalls, and wear copes of
broidered gold, while no multitude throng nave or aisle, and the world outside
is dying of spiritual and moral starvation. Seek out men; speak to
them not in stilted phrase or seventeenth-century sermon style, but in burning
words that go to their hearts as well as their minds."
With no words better than these can we conclude. They
are the words of no visionary optimist, but of a leader looked
up to by millions of the most intelligent and most prosperous
nation in the world. The English-speaking race is fated to
dominate the earth, and for the first period of its domination
the American people are bound to take the foremost place.
Supposing that the Catholic Church only retains its present
proportion of the inhabitants of the United States, even then,
before the coming century has grown old, the American Catholics
will probably number sixty millions, and there will be
more Catholics in the world speaking the English tongue than
any other language. We make no conjecture as to the form
which the revolution in the economy of the Church will take.
Events march so rapidly in this age that it would be futile to
look forward even ten years ahead. We know not whether
the dawn of a new century will break upon the chair of St.
Peter still jealously surrounded by a band of Italian reactionaries
; we know not whether on the continent of Europe the
name of Rome will still be associated with the policy of retro-