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Show WANING AND PADDED ( LISTS. Bishop McFaul's proposition that this country is being dechristianlzed cannot can-not be refuted by a hysterical shriek of denial. Whether the public school system is responsible for the fact or not, the evidence that it Is a fact is overwhelming, and it Is all forthcoming from Protestant sources. Catholics have not to go to the trouble of collecting col-lecting It, if ever they were so inclined, for all they have to do is to read the statements of Protestant ecclesiastics and statisticians in the public papers. Here is a case right under the nose of the editor who got wild over the bish- i op's statement. It was" furnished no later than last Sunday in the city of New York, in St. Paul's M. E. church at the West End, by the Rev. R. J. Trevorrow. The church, he said that is, the whole M. E. church was a failure; fail-ure; and before he proceeded to work out this dismal confession by a mathematical math-ematical demonstration he consoled his dumbfounded hearers by assuring them that it was no more a failure than any other church. This was a roundabout way of saying that all the Protestant churches are failures, from a business point of view. Then the reverend threnodist proceeded to prove his case. According to figures given in a recent number of the Church Economist, the ministry at the Methodist Episcopal church' in the United States numbered 17.609, and the membership amounted to 2,778,209. The property was valued at $173,980,192. the members' contributions contribu-tions being $18,951,049. The appalling feature of the report, he said, was a loss of membership amounting to 3,-960. 3,-960. Out of 7,000 other churches, he added, only 5,081 could show an increase of fifty members. Two thousand churches had no increase whatever. But there is much more than this to confess if the prophet were only bold enougn to avow it. rne Kev. .nomas Dixon declares that in many churches the membership lists are fraudulent. They contain the names of dead men. They are "mushroom records." Out of a list of 4,000 members in one parish, he added, not 200 could be found when the record was accidentally burned. The Methodist Episcopal church does not want for. company. A similar discouraging dis-couraging story i3 told of the chief non-Catholic denominations. It is only the Mormon monstrosity that gains ground and . this is so because it is Protestantism in its ultimate expressionan expres-sionan endeavor to reconcile the spiritual spir-itual with the carnal and material in the nature of man. Standard and Times. |