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Show EXPANSION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH At last, the church, thank God, is liberated from the control of governments and lower politics in Europe, and is free, in a measure, to pursue her policy and her destiny tmtrammelled by state endowment en-dowment and state patronage. This does not mean that persecution and opposition are silent. On the contrary, the church is having a hard time of it from the determined hatred of those opposed to Christianity. This satanic opposition will not end, in all probability, prob-ability, without a serious conflict. Evil will hurry on to its most wicked ends. Among all those placed in political power in France, Italy, Portugal and South America, "there is not one that is doing the thing that is good, not so much as one." But, is not the hour near, when the prophecy will again be fulfilled: "For the misery of him that is in need, and for the groaning of him that is impoverished, now will I arise, saith the Lord. I will set him in safety, I will justify the trust he has placed in me." We notice in every country of Europe and America an immense awakening of Catholic fer-for. fer-for. The churches are thronged, and devotions devo-tions are most persistently performed, for the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, and for the peace and triumph of the church. In France, in Belgium, in Holland, in England, in the various Germanic countries, in the non-Germanic parts of Austria, in the different provinces of Italy, in Spain; yes, even in Russia, wc read of tremendous outpourings outpour-ings of Catholic suppliants, going to one or another an-other place of resort called pilgrimages. A few months ago we signalized the gathering at the Grotto of Lourdcs, as the greatest pilgrimage pilgrim-age of modern times. Right on the lines of it came a pilgrimage in Belgium which exceeded in numbers num-bers that of Lourdes. Among the Germanic Catholics the customary pilgrimages have been always maintained. main-tained. And among them we have read lately that, at one or other shrine of holy reverence and faith, there have ben pilgrimages so great that it was necessary to erect temporary altars, out in the fields, and that thitty or forty thousand persons, in a single- day, have come to receive communion' at these open-air altars. The Eucharistic Congress in London marked the growth and expansion of the church in Great Britain; Brit-ain; and now from Esquipulas, Guatemala, Central Cen-tral America, comes the news that fifty thousand people, some of them from Peru, assembled for the annual pilgrimage on the plain of "Our Lord of Esquipulas." The political governments of Latin Europe seem to be dead and damned also, even before they die. But the people of Europe seem to be coming to a new life. In a short time, as things are going on, the apostate governments of Europe apostate, we mean, from the Catholic faith will have fallen. The curse of God, now on them, will be followed by the curses of their several peoples and thus, this time at least, the vox Dei will be the vox populi the voice of God will be the voice of the people. Here, in America, we fought a mighty stubborn campaign for our church ; but we won out, and the rancorous hostility to everything "Popish" or "Romish" is now relegated to the backwoods or has taken refuge in certain rural corners where the shadow of a coming civilization is now only falling. fall-ing. , |