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Show RESULTS Of DISCIPLINE j i Support of Charitable Institutions Socie- .; I I ty of St. Vincent de Paul Vigilant Care f of. Children In Weekly Touch With : J Church Reach Manhood well Instructed Instruct-ed Sodalities for Women Holy Name ! Society for Men Three Great Dynamic l-' Powers to Cement the Faithful. :. j All these institutions are managed with a skill J that is possessed only by trained and disciplined j bodies, and with an economy that cannot be equalled. i J All the religious bind themselves by the vow of pov" erty as well as by the vows of chastity and obedi- J I f ence. They receive no compensation for their labors except what is necessary to purchase their food. ''' All these charitable institutions of the Church ; are supported mostly by the free offerings of the ! '. - , people. In many instances the religious communi- ; ties themselves, by the wonderful alchemy of prayer ; and their own sacrifices, secure .what funds are ' '. needed for the maintenance of their institutions. In this diocese there is for most of the institutions an organized form of support in the way of aid as- " i , sociations, Avith branches in the various parishes. V' The generous laity are thus associated with the : . bodies of religious in prosecuting the works of char-ity. char-ity. Besides the institutional work in charge of re- :, ., ligious bodies, there are, of course, charitable works conducted on a large scale by the laity such as the ;.' finding of good homes for neglected children, the visitation of the sick poor, the maintenance of day nurseries and kindred works. Chief among the organized lay charitable agencies agen-cies is the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. This ; society, inaugurated some seventy-five years a.u'o by the brilliant young professor and litterateur, Fred- eric Ozaman, has now in the United States more r-' than 450 Conferences with a combined membership of nearly 8,000. It is an organization solely for men, and its purpose, as set forth in its constitution, is the sanctification of its members through works of charity, principally through the visitation of the poor in their homes. Sphere of Conference. ' The Conferences naturally find their field in tha . ; cities. Each Conference works within parish limits. : Its members meet weekly and report upon the wants k or progress of the family they have been assigned to visit, and ask for a grant of what they think will be necessary for the family during the coming week. Each family on the relief roll is visited weekly, until un-til such time as it is able to get on without assistance. assist-ance. It is impressed again and again upon tha membrrs of the Conferences that their work is not simply that of mechanical relief; that oftentimes it is the heart an dsoul that are sick and weary more ' than the body; and that with kindness, prudence and tact they are to seek to win the confidence and friendship of the families they visit, and so be in a position to extend spiritual and moral help, as well as physical assistance. As a matter of fact, these , excellent Christian laymen exercise a great influ- ence for-good, and the St. Vincent de Paul Confer- : ence has come to be a factor of importance in the life of the Church in the United States. The charitable work of the Church is an essential essen-tial and important manifestation of her life, but it ; . is by no means her chief service. The greatest source of strength which she brings to this or any country is the moral and spiritual life which she generates and sustains in the millions of her adherents. ad-herents. And it is moral fibre, spiritual energy, .' which, after all, must determine more than any other contributing cause the true greatness and en- durance of a nation. First of all the Catholic Church, with a most earnest solicitude, watches over the children. She ; realizes that they are the future. Where the finan ' I cial condition of the parish warrants it, she estab- ' lishes the parish school, wherein religion sits as a constant influence in moulding the plastic souls of the little ones. We are convinced that psychologically psychologic-ally it is adsastrous blunder to separate the religious re-ligious force trom the daily training of the child. We believe that as character is by far the most im- ; portant product of education, the training of the will, the moulding of the heart, the grounding of the intellect in clear notions of right and wrong,. obligation obli-gation and duty, should not be left to haphazard or squeezed, as an after thought, into an hour on Sunday. Sun-day. The moral and spiritual growth of the child ought normally to keep pace with his mental growth. ' And the Church is of the conviction that taking hu- ? man nature as it is. this result cannot be obtained effectively without including a judicious admixture -of religious training Avith the daily routine of the : school. Religious Education A Necessity. The Church is the more convinced of the necessity neces-sity of this religious training for the children, as she views the alarming increase of religious indifference indif-ference 'which is a marked characteristic of our national na-tional life. It is for this reason that Catholics who ,( prize their faith above every earthly possession are making so many sacrifices to build up a system of religious schools, which, besides equipping their children for success in the struggle for the goods of this earth, will ground them so thoroughly in the principles, beliefs and salutary practices of their re-ligion re-ligion that they will be proof, so far as human nature na-ture can be made proof against the dangers and temptations they will meet in actual life. About 1,000,000 children are now in Catholic schools throughout the United States. We believe that in thus building our religious schools at great cost to ourselves, we are not only taking the best means of safeguarding the faith in our children, but we are at Continued on Pege 5. ' RESULTS OF DISCIPLINE. (Continued from page l.) the same time rendering a very great service to the best interests of our country. "We are certain that as time goes on, as the dangers to the nation resulting result-ing from the growth of the irreligious spirit become more apparent, the wisdom of the Church's cause will be recognized and applauded by our fellow-citizens. fellow-citizens. For those children who do not attend parish schools there are the Sunday schools, and all the children are kept at Jeast in weekly touch with the Church until their entrance into work or into the high schools. From this period the Church, knowing the increasing dangers in their path, has various religious re-ligious societies whose main purpose is to keep the growing youth to the faithful practice of religious duty, as well as to give them that larger knowledge of Christian principles, obligations and motives which their expanding intelligence requires. Thus the average Catholic child comes up to the battle of life with a firm grasp of his faith, instructed in his duties, and with a series of powerful helps to upright up-right living. If he falls in the struggle, surely the Church is not to be held in blame. What now does the Church do for the moral and spiritual life of her grown children ? The parish is the unit of organization, and every well conducted parish of any considerable size has societies that reach out to the several divisions of the congregation. congrega-tion. The married women and the young women have each their own sodality, meeting weekly or twice in the month, with all the members, in a body,, receiving Holy Communion once a month. These societies so-cieties of women in the larger city parishes not infrequently in-frequently number from six to eight hundred active members. The general society for men is the Holy Name Society, which flourishes all over the country. One of iis objeets is to promote reverence for the Holy Name of Jesus and to maintain a crusade against profanity. Its members meet monthly and receive Holy Communion four times in the year. An allus-t allus-t ration of its strength in this vicinity was given in the remarkable demonstration of last year, when 40,000 men paraded the streets of this city, under the banner of the Holy Xame of Jesus. And most of them were young men. The special needs of the young men arc met in many parishes by associations, which to the usual athletic, social and educational features of young men's clubs, add a religions spirit and observance. Attendance at Sunday Mass. II is to be expected that a large proportion of every parish, if not by far the largest, will not be enrolled in these societies. Upon this great body of worshippers, as upon the members of the societies themselves, the Church brings to bear her three great sources of dynamic power the Sunday Mass, with its accompanying sermon or familiar instruction; instruc-tion; the Confessional, and the Holy Communion. These are the main batteries of the Church in her warfare against sin. They are the means on which she relies to build up strong spiritual lives in her children. and clothing; indeed, money could not pay for what they give; coming from all classes of society, even the highest, their time and their hearts are undivided undi-vided by the cares and selfish interests of the world; they give themselves unsparingly with the utmost measure of heroic devotion, to the service of God in their brethren; the friendless, the-homeless, the des-titude des-titude and the outcast find in them what they most need the tenderness and strength of hearts that are at once virginal and motherly. Every Catholic is obliged, under pain of serious sin, to be present at Mass every Sunday, unless prevented pre-vented by a good reason. The Church thus safeguards safe-guards the honor that is due to God through the public worship of His children. So it is that, rain or shine, in heat or in cold, our churches are crowded crowd-ed every Sunday. It is a very indifferent Catholic who will not put himself to great inconvenience rather than absent himself from Mass on the Lord's Day. -To Catholics the Mass, whether cerebrated amid all the imposing solemnity of cathedral appurtenances appur-tenances or whether offered in an unadorned chapel of a backwoods village, is the great act of worship. They believe that Christ Himself becomes present on the altar and blesses them and all they hold dear. No man sincerely believing this doctrine and assisting assist-ing at Mass with proper dispositions can go back to his home and to the duties of the week without an infusion of comfort, courage and high resolve. Every Sunday there is at the low Masses the short, familiar instruction, because time does not permit of anything else, and at the high Masses the set sermon. In large parishes there are from six to eight Masses of a Sunday, so that all the members mem-bers of families may be accommodated. Many times is the church, and each time is the appointed passage pas-sage from the Gospel read and expounded and applied ap-plied to the daily life of the people. Thus throughout through-out the j'ear the Church keeps up her mission of preaching the Gospel, now calmly explaining homely duties, now warning, now encouraging, now reproving, reprov-ing, now pleading, now thundering against abuses, now explaining with authority revealed doctrine always conscious of her responsibility and yearning that Christ may more surely be formed in the hearts of her people. What a towering and impregnable bulwark the forces of orderly government have in the Catholic pulpit and in Catholic worship. The Catholic pulpit may be said to reach every Sunday 12,000,000 souls; for while it would be idle to pretend that we have at the Sunday service our full number, yet we may safely say that practically every family, when it has not all or most of its members present, has at least some representative who will hear and bring back to the home circle the Sunday message. And that message will always be one of self-restraint, of respect for the rights of others, of obedience to lawfully law-fully constituted "authority, of charity and of peace. What-an armory against the growing dangers of anti-Christian socialism society will find the Catholic Catho-lic Church. From her pulpit men learn their duties as well as their rights. The poor find in her an equality which they can discover nowhere else. They sit in the same pews, kneel at the same altar-railing, altar-railing, kiss the same crucifix with their richer brethren. They know that they are the children of their Father in Heaven as much as the wealthiest and the most distinguished; nay, that they are the favorites, if they but live purely and justly, of Him, who, while Ruler of the world, deigned to be the Carpenter of Nazareth. With the blessing of the Church they will strive by every honest and legitimate legiti-mate means to better their condition; but they will not be misled by. the false lights of the theory whose gods are earthly comfort and impossible equality; least of all will they be persuaded to purchase possessions pos-sessions here, at the price of surrendering their allegiance al-legiance to Him whose life and teaching have forever for-ever sanctified labor, and have given to the nobly poor the infallible promise of the kingdom of Heaven. . |