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Show ABOUT CATHOLIC MISSIONS. A, Paulist father writing for the Catholic World, (Rev. William- L. Sullivan), puts the date of the present systematic non-Catholic mission movement in the United States as late as ten years ago, when Father Elliott preached the opening of the great crusade in a Michigan village. Many Catholics who remember missions conducted by Jesuits and Redemptorists thirty and forty years, ago, will pronounce the statement of Father Sullivan Sul-livan rather misleading if it stands without explanation. explan-ation. But the reviewer in the Catholic World emphasizes the character of the mission of the present day. It is a systematic and thorough movement for the conversion of non-Catholic, into which the Paulists enter en-ter as if God designed them for that purpose pur-pose alone and consecrated them for that work alone. The fruits of their zeal and intelligent endeavor en-deavor confirm that impression. The Paulists were wisely set apart for the work in which they are chiefly engaged. ; Those early missions of the Jesuits and Redemptorists Re-demptorists were undertaken to awaken the Catholic Cath-olic conscience and bring souls back to Christ, more than for exploitation of dogmatic faith. The instructions and sermons were of the practical, parable par-able order of oratory. . Old-time . Catholics fully understood why the rwinter- season was generally selected for missions; and understanding it, with greater alacrity did they turn out of bed at candlelight candle-light in the morning and run to mass upon an empty stomach. A person "making the mission" was reminded that soul-saving and self-denial go hand in hand. So this self-imposed discipline during the mission was in one sense a penance, but a penance cheerfully borne. No relaxation, no return re-turn to pleasure nor the things of this world until the mission was ended and for long after the mission mis-sion ended. These earlier missions produced an effect on our non-Catholic brethren differing in a few respects from the motives which attract them to the missions of the Paulists of the present day. Now the Paulists have the advantage of talking to Protestants who already al-ready entertain grave doubts of the revealed Word left to private interpretation. In the past the Bible was the sole light of many good, conscientious consci-entious souls, who found in its pages justification for their prejudice against Catholics, for they associated as-sociated idolatry with the Catholic worship of the Real Presence. What struck the Protestant mind in the past with greatest force, was the good example ex-ample Catholics presented the strange spectacle of rich and poor, the intellectual and unlearned, hastening to church in the darkness of the early, frosty morn. Surely, they reasoned, there must be something divine, something enduring in a religion re-ligion which exhibits such love and self-denial as this Catholic faith. Notwithstanding that intellectual inquiry is the present impelling force of attraction to non-Catholic missions, we should not lose sight of the great advantage presented through good example of Catholics. A tree is known by its fruits If Catholics Cath-olics do, not live their religion, there is little hope that others will see in it the elements of divine origin and grace. The Paulist Father Sullivan dwells upon the importance of Catholic example as a means to the end in the successful prosecution prosecu-tion 6f non-Catholic missions. He says: ' The observation is old, no doubt, and it may be suggestive of. a Sunday homily to repeat it, but it' is solemn enough, to startle one's conscience, however how-ever on reflects upon it, that, after all is said and done, the lives and deeds of Catholics, their private behavior and their public utterances, are the greatest great-est help or the greatest obstacle to conversions. Where respect cannot be won or benevolence conciliated, con-ciliated, how shall there be conversion? Through the humanities of our common life together leads the convert's straightest road to the divinity of the truth we hold. Father Sullivan speaks of another class of Protestants, firm as the rock of ages in the past, who now eagerly listen' to the Paulist missionary. These are the old-fashioned Bible Christians. Faithful to the Scriptures according to their light; zealous in. good works; ready to follow the Master Mas-ter whithersoever. he will lead, for they love him; very often with a deep sense of consecration and a sacred love'of interior prayer. How white for the a harvest are such as they! "And when they came with tears of joy to be baptized," says this Paulist Paul-ist writer; "wheu in scores of instances the amazed missionary learns that their lives' of, it may be, sixty years, have been blameless from the beginning to that hour, truly they prove, themselves them-selves the noblest conquest of our faith, the richest rich-est jewels in the crown of converts that sheds illumination il-lumination upon' the fair features of Catholicity, and throws a strong' light into the outer' darkness for the guidance of many wayfaring feet." When one reflects upon the coldness of many Catholics to the presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament, instinctively he finds solace in the joy which these old-fashioned Bible converts manifest in their adoration of the Real Presence. These . found the God of their Bible, at last, in the tabernacle taber-nacle of a Catholic altar. ::",-." ; ! . x '' . - 'V: j |