CATHOLIC INTERESTS IN AMERICA—ENTHUSIASM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 46, 14 March 1874, Page 9

CATHOLIC INTERESTS IN AMERICA—ENTHUSIASM.

Amebica is a great and a wonlerful country in many respects. It promises, for one thing, to outstrip all other parts of the world in the enthusiasm with which the Catholic religion is being received not only the European races, but the Indian tribes are showing their jenthusiasm. Happy would it be for this Colony if Europeans and Maoris both possessed that zeal for the true faith which God has put into the hearts of so many of the various European and Aboriginal races in America. Will the Catholics of New Zealand allow themselves to be outdone in enthusiasm by their co religionists, both the white skins and the brown in America ? Surely not. Enthusiasm is infectious. Let such examples aa those exhibited in the annual American extracts stimulate the zeal both of the clergy and laity among us. Remember we are already eight millions strong in America, and that our number is daily increasing by conversions and otherwise in that country. Catholic hearts, as Cardinal Wiseman once said, are linked together by a golden chain of divine charity, which encircles the whole world. To our zealous brethren in America we owe our best acknowledgments for the noble example they are placing before us, and by which it may be hoped they will draw us on to imitate them. Well may the learned Jesuit be an object of terror and hatred to all the enemies of the Catholic Church, visible and invisible. If the Catholic religion continues to advance at the rate it is now doing in America, the United States will be a Catholic conntry ere long, and leave England behind. Protestantism, as we have been reminded by Lord Macaulay, only advanced for about fifty years, and then rotted, or rather began to recode. But the Catholic religion progresses not for fifty years only, but for ages ; or till the consummation of the world.