POWER OF THE CONFESSIONAL.

New Zealand Tablet, 12 February 1920, Page 40

POWER OF THE CONFESSIONAL.

_ The Ave Maria, quoting from the New York Independent, recently attributed the following statement to the late Miss Frances Willard:

“I am a Protestant, but there is no blinking this fact: the Catholics are, in this country and .in England and Ireland, ahead of us in social purity. You can take a Protestant family into a London slum and put them into a room at the; right-hand top of the stairs, and then put a- Catholic family on the other side of the stairs, and you will find, after two, three, or four years, half of the

girls of the Protestant family have gone to the bad, and all the members of the Catholic family, have retained their virtue.” '■ ■ ;: ,: r - - ' . -

What made the difference Not human naturewhich is very much the same. Miss Willard attributed it to the influence of the confessional. She was right.