THE MISSION OF CATHOLICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 12, 23 July 1897, Page 25

THE MISSION OF CATHOLICS.

Archbishop Ireland, in the magnificent address which he deliven d in the Cathedral of Baltimore, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the ehtablishment of the Catholic Hierarchy in the United States, remarked that " w<- are advancing towards one of those great epochs in history, in which mighty changes are wronght. The world is in throes, a new age is to be born." Few truer words has preach' r ever uttered. Look where ■we will we see evidences of the fact to which the great prelate of the North-West alluded in the eloquent audress from which we have q l uxl. The old world seems crumbling awiiy. Its traditions, that iave enshrined the hopes .md oonrfeorau d the actions of men for Ofiituries on cent uri*^, are in process of disintegration. Some lands h >ye thrown <iff iiionan hy al'og.'thor. Others have tampered it by constitutional pr vii ge. Otners, again, that stiil retain it in the to U;«, uuetiviabl torui of autocratic Ciesarism, are spectacles to the world of a tacit revolt <>( the subj ct populations — a revolt, not yet a revolution, that fearfully terrifies the crowned ruler with the spectacle of red-handed anarchy or dissolvent socialism. The electoral lesson of this year, more even than in years past, has shown the great advance made oy those varied forms of opposition to established rule that bears one or other of the unsavoury names that men give to the modern movements in which the multitude thinks to find the redress of its real or imagined grief. Even in our country, where, with all the drawbacks that the most captious critic can allege, the pyramid of freedom is broader based upon the popular will than in any other land, with the sole exception of the United States, even with us there are heard, in no uncertain tones the ground-murmurs of that great advance of the proletariat which makes thinking men tremble for the days to come. No one can shut his eyes to the fact that at the polling booth, where, if not upon the throne, the workman wears the crown of monarchy, questions are being, and will be still more in future, decided by the popular vote which tend, as their direct results to take power out the control of the classes, and hand it over to the keeping and the of direction of the masses.

Catholics, and when we say Catholics we mean the Church herself, cannot be indifferent to the trend of this movement from feudalism to democracy. The Kingdom of God, which is for all ages, and which carries in her Divine teaching the panacea for the woes of every century, knows no distinction of Government, provided always that it be established on the broad basis of the popular will, and erected by the power of the popular consent or the people's choice. She known nothing of the divine right of kings. Everyone is " rex " to her who is authorised to rule. But Bhe may have, and she has had, to adapt her actions to the changed circumstances of the holders of power. In the days when power passed from above below, she directed her attention to those whose words counted for the wills of many. But now when power passes from below above, when the rulers are little more than the accredited agents of the ruled, she his to reckon with the multitudes from whom authority is in the first instance derived, and from whom, through the Press and the influence of public manifestations, the direction of the legislative or executive acts is so largely furnished. She must, therefore, and her children with her and tor her, be intimately concerned with the operation of any method of influencing the minds of the many who themselves guide the decisions of the elected few. She must be keenly alive to all the aspects of material and intellectual progress ; she must watch carefully the movements of thought in the political and social sphere ; she must keep her fingers upon the popular pulse and see how things are likely to forbode good or threaten ill. In a word, she must ever strive to guide the natural that it forsake not the channel of that which is supernatural. She is herself opposed to no progress that is true, for all that is true is good, and progress towards good is progress towards perfection for the individual and the race ; but on all occasions she must protest, with the energy of her Divine life, against all so-called progress, which viewed in the everlasting light of revealed knowledge is a progress towards evil and destruction.

We have no need to fear the future. Timid minds in all ages have dreaded change. When feudalism was in its deathbed-throes, fearsome people believed the world would sink into a universal ruin. They could not imagine a state of things other than that with which tradition and use had made them accustomed. And so men now. Croakers on all sides fear the future ; harp unceasingly on the risks of change. But, as Archbishop Ireland, truly remarks, " the conservatism that wishes to be ever safe, is dry-rot." Men who struggle to ameliorate the sorrows of an imperfect world will have plenty of criticism — often the only contribution from those who think that to do nothing is the safest way to escape blame But this apathetic inertia ill becomes the heirs of all ages. Who rests, rusts. Catholics to-day, in face of the Protean development of popular ideas, must be on the alert to keep in intimacy of touch with the movements that in many lands have, through their regrettable inactivity, forced the masses to drift further and further from the Church. The Church that rules the multitude rules the world. It was the multitudes that Christ saw to be ripe for harvest in the fields of the Heavenly Kingdom. All Ithat interests them, all that may be utilised to make them accept the good tidings of the Gospel, must be seized and u>-ed. It is no satisfaction to have grand churches, an i magnificent altars, and decorous services if the portals of the holy fanes are never crossed by the weary feet of the majority of men. To us in Great Britain, and wherever, indeed, the English tongue is spoken, a geat work lies ready to do. And it is a work sketched out for us by the hand of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Wherever men are outside the influence of the teachings of the Church ; wherever menare thirsting for a draught of truth purer and clearer than they have tasted yet ; wherever men are even ti r iiing or have turned with loathing from the fountain of muddy waters to cisterns that hold no water at all ; there the Catholic who reveres the word of Peter's successor must direct his energies to spread the

humanising and spiritualising influence of Divine Truth. The future of the world is with the English-speaking race. They fill the ends of the earth, and direct the destinies of untold millions. We who are of the dominant people, must be at all times ready to push on the opportunities for good which our freedom allows and that to the dawniug of that day whea the great Englishspeaking world shall be as Catholic and as devoted to the Holy See as was the old and now decadent Roman world that alone in the annals of the history of man caa be placed in comparison for extent and for power with ihe world that speaks the language of the most progressive people of to-day. What the Roman was of old for the Church, that we must make the Briton and the American divided but in name. Let them know the Church and her victory is won But she must go to them ; they will not come to her.— Catholic Times.