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Show WHY HE BECAME A CATHOLIC. Dr. De Costa, in an address delivered in the Church of the Transfiguration in New York on May 14, said: "I have really been a Catholic since ! I was 4 years old,' said the speaker, j "Well, why, some of you will ask, did it take you so long to proclaim yourself? your-self? That, for me, is a hard question to answer, but I may answer it in one way by saying that some minds reach conclusions on great subjects slowly. But I've come out at last, and, God and Father McLoughlin willing, I've come to stay. (Loud applause.) And the conclusions that impelled me to come were the conclusions not of a boy just out of the theological seminary, with a brand new degree of B. A. at-j at-j tached to him, but the conclusions of an old man. And I claim that the conclusions con-clusions of an old man on such subjects sub-jects are just as good as those of a boy. (Applause.) "But I didn't come without pangs of regret and bitter tears at leaving my old friends. And now I would not speak harshly of them. When I was a boy I went one Sunday afternoon to the service at old St. John's Episcopal Church in Charlestown, just outside Boston. When I went home my mother asked me where I had been. I told her I'd been to the Episcopal meeting, and she held up her hands in horror and exclaimed: " 'The Episcopal meeting! Why, don't you know that's next door to the Catholic?' "If it is next door to the Catholic i Church, why should I speak unkindly of it? Why should I speak ill of the bridge which has carried me safely over? But, my friends, I want to tell you that the Catholic Church is the Church because it knows where it's at and isn't afraid to say so. If you asked twenty clergymen over there in my ward, the old Ninth, what Christ meant when He said. 'This is my body and this is my blood.' you'd get twenty different answers, and every one of those clergymen would accuse the other nineteen of the rankest' heresy. Ask the same question of any Catholic priest in any church in this city, in this country, on this continent or in the world, and you'll get one and only one answer. The. Catholic Church knows what it believes and isn't afraid of hurting somebody's feelings by saying so. (Loud and continued applause.) Maybe you don t know it, but this very church used to be an Episcopal church. The Episcopalians gave it up because they said the quarter got too bad for them. I suppose they wanted to call the righteous, not sinners, to repentance, so they moved up among the righteous. The Episcopal Church has abandoned many other parishes below be-low Fourteenth street and in this city has abandoned thirty in all. As the Episcopal Church moved out the Catholic Cath-olic moved in. Thirty battles fought and lost by the Episcopal Church in this city! Thirty battles fought and won by the Catholic Church! Is there any doubt, my friends, which Church is marching on? God willing, I mean to be on the winning side. (Applause.) "I tell you, my friends, the Refor-mationists Refor-mationists are bankrupt. They .can no longer hold their people together. Ml of us have heard of 'Rip Van Winkle' and some of us have seen the play. When he awoke from his sleep he could not believe that Washington was president and that George was not king. Some of these Reformation-ists Reformation-ists today believe that Henry VIII is king and that Cranmer- is Archbishop of Canterbury. They think Henry is king and Cranmer is Archbishop he-cause he-cause they want to think so. But Henry and Cranmer are dead, and the system of divorce which they inaugurated inaugu-rated has left to this country alone a legacy of 318,000 divorces. - Is it any wonder men who believe in the sanctity sanc-tity of marriage leave the Episcopal Church? The Catholic Church believes that religion and education should go hand in hand. The other churches believe be-lieve that religion should go as it pleases and that all education should be secular. I believe there can be no true education without religion. Therefore There-fore I am a Catholic and a Catholic I shall remain." (Applause.) |