George Thomas Daly

“ Yes, the immense West is "white already to the harvest." There stand as immense fields of ripening wheat, the Catholic youth of Eastern Canada, the sturdy and thrifty Catholic settlers of the British Isles and continental Europe. There the rising generation of Catholic children, like the tender green blades of the future harvest, is springing into manhood. Staring us in the face, their eyes in our eyes, the children of foreign parentage wonder what account we will make of their faith, what protection we will offer it. ”

“ Americanization is more than a mere matter of language. It involves stripping the immigrant of much of what he has inherited from the centuries. He is the finished product of those centuries. His speech, his manner, his dress, his ideas along social and political and industrial lines have been fashioned upon the distaff of time. He lands upon American soil and at once there is a strangeness in the atmosphere that awes him, it is a new world in truth and the newness of it repels him and drives him back upon himself. The faintest link between the new world and the old is a Godsend to him. ”

“ The mind is always the storm centre of revolutions, the breeding ground of the most conflicting theories. The great storms that sweep over humanity always gather on the high summits of religion and philosophy, blackening the mental horizon; sooner or later, they break out on the lower plains of the economic social and political world, spreading everywhere revolution and destruction. The blasphemous Proudhon gave utterance to a great truth when he wrote: "It is surprising how at the bottom of every political problem we always find some theology involved." ”

“ Of all the influences underlying human activities in the moral, social, economic, and political world, one of the most universal and most effective is beyond doubt, nowadays, Public Opinion. We may well name it the "current" of Public Opinion. In every sphere of life one can indeed feel the constant pressure of its tremendous power. Like the waters of a mill-race constantly and irresistibly the stream of Public Opinion sweeps on. It is very difficult to determine exactly where lies its strength; it is nowhere and everywhere. ”

“ The teachings and influence of their home, of their school, and of their church lie in their minds, strata upon strata, as the silent and lasting mementoes of the great religious upheaval of the Reformation. Only the influence of a genuine, frank, Catholic life, seen and felt in daily intercourse will gradually wear the barrier away. It is a long and slow process, we know, but one worth trying. Like the ever returning tide it eats its way into the most solid rock of prejudice and bigotry. ”

“ Like the tide, it creeps from pebble to pebble, from rock to rock, submerging every thing under its conquering waters.
The logic of Catholic life lends its consistency to this silent force. Our life is indeed the best proof of our principles. No one on the contrary does more harm to the Church than a Catholic whose life is not in harmony with his belief. The non-Catholic points to his life, with a sneer, and says: "See, he is no better than others!" This reasoning, we know is false, but for the unthinking masses, very often conclusive. ”

“ Are we to fold our arms and let others rebuild the very framework of society according to plans which our faith, reason, and history disapprove of, and very often condemn? Our ideas in the matter may not prevail, but how would we be justified in deploring the consequences of a legislation which we did not even try, by our influence, to suppress or modify? To abstain as Catholics from this great work of reconstruction is profoundly un-Catholic. It is the act of a traitor to the Church and country. ”

“ Nature indeed is then most beautiful in the West. But for the Christian soul to whom Faith "is the evidence of things unseen and the substances of things we hope for," the visible harvest leads to the thought of that spiritual harvest to which the Master so often points in the Gospel. Under all the feverish activities which characterize our Western communities lie deep in the consciences of men those unseen realities, those spiritual values and eternal issues which constitute the religious world. In the mysterious furrows of the human heart is ripening the harvest of eternity. ”

“ We are bound to meet with the fluctuations and uncertainties of the human mind, particularly in such times of readjustment and intellectual unrest. Let us then never forget that since the coming of Christ and the establishment of His Church on earth the principles of His teaching are for all nations. The sun of truth has its meridian in Rome, on the rock of Peter. There it stands at its zenith, in the permanent blaze of a perennial mid-day; there it sets the time for the Catholic world amid the ever-changing and conflicting problems of human history. ”

“ A society, Catholic in principle and membership, must, to last, and be an asset to the Church, have a definite programme of action in harmony with its aim and constitution. If it keeps its energies pent up behind the walls of the council-chambers and only finds them an outlet in social functions and friendly gatherings, it will soon go to seed or die of dry rot. When on the contrary an organization, such as the Knights of Columbus, throws the full weight of its energies in the forwarding of a great cause, the possibilities of its influence are limitless. ”

“ Never has any generation in history been so freighted with the responsibilities of the future as ours is, marching home from the battlefields of Europe. We are living in stirring and changeful times. Nowhere in the Dominion of Canada will the period of reconstruction have more far-reaching effects than in the West. The after-war problems will meet there with rapid and very often radical solutions. To understand this issue that faces our country, to grasp it in all its breadth and fulness, should we not broaden our vision, readjust it, we would say, to the new scale of changing conditions? ”

“ They catch the restless and undirecting currents of popular feeling when they are seeking an outlet and swing them slowly at first but with a growing impetus in the channels of their own interest or of the party they represent. The people are deluded into thinking that they are their own leaders and masters. The feeling of unrest that now prevails is due to this abuse of Public Opinion. Like children the leaders of nations have been playing with this wire of high voltage. Should we be surprised to see the world suffer deadly shocks from whence it should receive light and power? ”

“ Uniformity in education, as a source of efficiency, is one of the fallacies of our materialistic age. Schools to be successful have not to be submitted to the same laws of a commercial or industrial combine. Ethnical and moral values do not follow the laws of the mart and the stock exchange. If in our extensive Dominion even a unity of tariff, readily acceptable to the East and to the West, is Utopian, how much more so would be the unity of the school system? Education, to be effective, must take the colour of the environments to meet the needs of the community. ”

“ Authority and liberty are the two poles on which revolves Society. The perfect equilibrium of these two contending forces, one centripetal, the other centrifugal, make for its safety and welfare. The encroachment of one upon the other displaces the social axis and throws a nation out of its natural orbit. Political Society then oscillates between autocracy and anarchy. The infringement of this supreme law of moral gravitation has strewn the paths of history with the ruins of kingdoms and empires. The violation of a natural law bears always with itself its own punishment. ”

“ The Catholic Church has always been the teacher and guardian of that natural moral law which stands as the foundation and buttress of the social edifice. Her plans of Reconstruction rest on the eternal principles of equity which God has engraved on the human conscience and which the teachings of Christ have sanctioned and perfected. In the light of Catholic doctrine moral laws are definite and unchanging, for they are the deliberate expression of the necessary and fundamental relations upon which rests human nature. They are the living, free expression of man's place in creation. ”

“ There are Catholics who make this blindness and consequent bigotry an excuse for their own narrowness and selfishness, for their neglect to share in the nation's work, for their refusal to co-operate in patriotic, civic and social undertakings as if they were none of our business. The nation's business is our business. If we serve the nation efficiently, we serve the Church. We take then the best means to open the eyes of our fellow-countrymen to the fact that Catholicism is not uncivic. If we make ourselves valued, anti-Catholic prejudice will be dispelled. ”

“ What has weakened the moral fibre of our modern society so much that at times one wonders if we are living in the Christian era? If the home is now so often desecrated by theories of free love and trial marriages, if the cradles are empty, if the very sense of shame is a thing of the past, if the most elementary principles of morality are questioned, is it not because the public conscience is being warped, chloroformed, deadened by a frenzied propaganda of a corrupted Public Opinion? ”

“ When I say moral, I mean morality based upon religion. We cannot build a system of morality on any other than a religious basis. We have gone too far in allowing religion to be eliminated from our schools. I would not have religion taught by public school teachers, but all sects and creeds should have equal opportunity to furnish at their own expense to students whose parents desire it, such instruction not to interfere with the hours of school. Our people will be better citizens and stronger for their work if along with the trained mind there is also an awakened moral sense. ”

“ The "crop" is the ever-recurring factor and eternal topic of Western life. No better picture reflects this attitude than that which is offered to the traveller as his train goes rolling on through the even prairie. Ever emerging on the horizon and dotting the landscape of the bald plain the grain elevator stands indeed as the most conspicuous land mark of our Western towns. The elevators are in our prairie landscapes what the church spires are in the Quebec villages, along the shores of the St. Lawrence. Here and there they stand as symbols; they interpret an ideal. ”

“ How is the child to grow up with the feeling of Religion's importance in life if the ban is placed upon Religion the moment he passes the threshold of the school-room? "What we most dread," said Bishop McQuaid, "is not the direct teaching of the State-school, it is the indirect teaching which is most insidious and most dangerous. It is the moral atmosphere, the tone of thought permeating these schools that give cause for alarm. It is the indifferentism with regard to all religious belief we most of all fear. This is the dominant heresy that, imbibed in youth, can scarcely ever be eradicated. ”

“ The theory of compelling a nation to learn a certain language as if it were the only vehicle of the "Great Message of Christ" or of waiting until the people know the missionary's own language . . . is not Catholic. The Church of Christ is not a nationalistic Church. No one has to deny his race nor to give up his language to become or to remain Her faithful child.
But, facts are facts and one must face them and take from them one's bearings. They stand as the tossing buoy on the drifting waters of our ordinary life. To ignore them often spells disaster. ”

“ A speedy and complete return to Christian principles will alone re-establish the world on its proper axis. Christian Truth shall again make the world free and save it from the bondage of neo-paganism. For, history and experience prove that there is nothing more tyrannical than that bondage—let it be the bondage of Czardom or Bolshevism—which comes to man under the cover and name of liberty. In the present universal unrest, so widely and so emphatically voiced throughout the world, the mission of the Catholic Truth Society appears as most providential. ”

“ Lawrence, the call of the West has been heard.
Its alluring sound has cast a spell upon our youth, the hope of the country. Faces flushed with the bright hues of life's dawn, eyes sparkling with the fires of early youth, instinctively turn to the West. From all points of Eastern Canada young men and young women are leaving for that mysterious land of brilliant promise and great possibilities. ”

“ The appeal that comes to the Church of Canada from the Catholic Extension is straightforward. It needs no apology. It stands its ground on its own merits. It is not—let us never forget it—an appeal to our charity. It is a pressing call to accomplish a sacred duty, a timely warning not to neglect it. And indeed, active co-operation in the work of Extension is, we repeat, an unfaltering belief in the reality of our Catholicism. It knits our soul to the very soul of the Church, our heart to Her heart. ”

“ Receptiveness of mind is, in our estimation, the first and most important duty of the non-Catholic. Open-mindedness was named by Confucius "mental hospitality." It opens the door to truth by allowing ourselves to be convinced by the strength of argument and the weight of evidence. This state of receptivity permits the mind to correct its distorted vision, and to see facts and principles as they really are. Freedom of mind enables those who possess it to see things in their true proportions.
Fair-mindedness will overcome prejudice, the great obstacle in matters of Religion. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. WHOM DO MEN SAY THAT THE SON OF MAN IS? (MATH. XVI.-13.) —PUBLIC OPINION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH What is Public Opinion—Its Power—How is it Formed—Public Opinion and the Catholic Church—Our Duties to Public Opinion.
Numerous and strong are the influences at play in human life. Acting and reacting on the free will of man they are ever at work moulding his character and shaping his destiny. Like the waves of an incoming tide they are beating the shores of our heart; their triumph is to carry away our liberty on their receding waters. ”

“ Indeed, we need in all the avenues of life men whose university training will give them influence in public life. But let it never be forgotten those captains of industry, those brilliant and successful professional men, those progressive farmers—valuable as they all may be—must count more as leaders of Catholic thought than as money-makers. If not, they will be found wanting when the Church needs them the most. We emphasize this point, for in the plea for higher education very often our attention seems to be more on the successful business man than on the Catholic thinker. ”

“ Too long have Catholics lived in isolation, allowing others to think and act for them. It is indeed, high time that they felt the pulse of life that beats in the real statesman, as distinct from mere politician. Duty demands that Catholics add their power of intellect and will to the similar power of other citizens anxious to help the commonwealth. We are not aliens in this land, not aliens by birth or principle. As to the latter, I may say with all truth, that no one has given clearer expression to the basic principles of democracy than the Catholic theologians, Suarez and Bellarmine. ”

“ Strengthened by these highest motives of Catholic Solidarity and Christian Charity we should give joyfully and generously. Let us levy a tax on our income, no matter how small it may be, remembering the fiduciary character of our earthly possessions. Let us give our time and our services to this noble Cause. Let us give lovingly and willingly our children to the great harvest, if it be God's will to call them to His service. But above all let us pray that the Kingdom of Jesus Christ may come in our beloved Country through the Extension of His divine Church. ”

“ When they commit them to the care of others for instruction it is their right to have them educated as they wish. As by the supreme and sacred right of conscience man is free to give to his life its moral direction, so also does the same principle apply to the education of a child for whose conscience, as for whose life, the parent is responsible. The moral right of the parent, which is one with that of the child in that period of life, is fundamental. It constitutes the bed-rock on which rest all other rights in matters of education. ”

“ Yes, religious, philosophical, social, political, economic truth we do possess. But of what use to the world, to the laborer, to the patriot, to the inquirer, is this truth and the solutions to problems it offers, if they are not known? If we have the light we cannot hide it under the bushel. We must place it where it can be seen, where its beneficial rays can light up the way for those who are "sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death." ”

“ Nor can we forget that the Society is in a real sense "the work of one man," though never has it been that very different thing, a "one-man work." No one layman (and very few ecclesiastics) has done a larger definite and objective work for the Catholic Church in our time than Mr. Britten."
Such a record should shame the faint-hearts among us who seem to think that no corporate efforts are of any use in the world now rushing on to its own destruction. That it should shame those who take no interest at all in the progress of their religion, would be too much to hope. ”