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Show ;! :fH'n Cburcl) 'ri- ;j ' I which over- Universal, ss' Ij CUUECH CALENDAR. " , ' Second Sunday of Advent Gospel, St. j Matt. xi. 2-10. John sends his disciples to Christ. -Sunday, 7 St. Ambrose, B. C. D. Monday, 8 Immaculate Conception. Tuesday, 0 St. Leocadia, V. 'M. Wednesday, 10 St'. Melchiades, P. M. Thursday, 11 St. Damasus, V. C. Friday, 12 St. Oormac, Ab. Saturday, 13-St. Lucy, V. M. An Excellent Plan. The enforced absence from church by . mothers who had no one to care for their children, in South London, in-, in-, spired a pastor with a worthy project. ' ' 1 He has prepared a suitable parish room and ladies of the parish volun-t volun-t leered their services to care for the ; children during mass. The plan is a complete success, and is likely to be ; copied. Mothers who get into the habit of staying from mass because of the necessity of caring for their children are likely to Btay away from mass When i their children no longer need their care. But this plan remedies the possi-j possi-j Lility of such an evil. Questions by Non-Catholics. Iff great many Catholics will be glad lo hear that the questions asked at missions for non-Catholics given by the i Paulist fathers, together with the an swers, will shortly be published in book form. They will make a book of 600 i rages that will be certain to be a valu able addition to the already pretty i large library of literature for non-Cathr i olios. The questions asked at non- I Catholic missions cover the whole range i of objections to the Catholic church, i Every Catholic who wishes to be thor oughly grounded in the teachings of his church should be interested in this ! forthcoming volume of the Paulists. i i . American Medal "Winners, i Home, Nov. 27. The annual distribu- i flon of medals to the students of the I foreign ecclesiastical colleges in Rome I was made by Cardinal Gotti. prefect of i the propaganda, today at the college of I the propaganda. The American medal i jvlnners were: i John Turney of New York, first medal : for sacred theology; Joseph Kennedy of Philadelphia, second medal for logic, theology and canon law; Patrick Bres-1 Bres-1 han of St. Augustine, Fla., second med- I al for moral theology; Andrew Bren- ! an of Scranton, Pa., second medal for , canon law; John Cooper of Baltimore, , a first medal, and John Hartie of Brooklyn, John Fokenrode of Baltimore and Albert Burke of Cincinnati, second medals for sacred archaeology; Martin - Ryan of Wilmington, Del., and Augus- I tine Asfalg of New York, second medals for ethics; Leo MacGinley of Philadel-j Philadel-j phia, a second medal for mathematics. and Augustine Hickey received a first medal for Greek. : Another Irish. Saint, q It is announced as very probable that I the solemn beatification of Duns Sco- i tus will shortly take place. We wonder I how many of our readers will recog- nize him as an Irishman: jet he was j the greatest scholar of the illustrious line of Irish Franciscans. ;' Duns Scotus was born in County J Down about 1263. He became a profes- , sor in Oxford university in .1301, and after six years passed over.io the University Uni-versity of Paris, where he lectured on theology. He died at Cologne in 1308. Duns Scotus was the rival of St. Thomas of Aquin, and was "at once the , most abstruse doctor of the Middle ; Ages and the most formidable disputant ' in any European university." He is ' known to theologians as the subtle doc- tor and was the redoubtable champion : of our Lady's Immaculate Conception. ! It is to be hoped that the present Irish vicar general of the Franciscan order will urge with all his power the Beatification and Canonization of the ' Venerable Scotus. All the spiritual chil- ' dren of Patrick should devoutly pray 1 for this consummation, that the mother 1 of scholars become the mother of an- 1 other saint. Leader, San Francisco. j . ; 1 I ; HONEST BUT RACY LETTER. J ' 1 Cyrus Hawkins Had Been Listening j to Priest Drury. I i i The following, clipped from the Mis- I ! ' i sionary, is only one instance of the ; i many following in the train of priests i giving missions to non-Catholics. It ! is a homely, old-fashioned Kentuckian ': ' t who writes: "What started me to reading the j 1 Missionary was listening to Priest , Drury talk about his religion. Till I j heard him I thought one religion was , about as good as another, unless, per- j haps, I thought most any sort was a i little better than the Catholic. I knew i there was some big difference between ; the Catholic church and all the others, but I had no idea what it was. t ' -."Well, sir, the way Priest Drury traced the Catholic church back to j the beginning, and made it look so , plausible that his church taught all j that was good and condemned all that was bad, was a revelation to me, and I . i eaid to myself, says I, 'Cy, none of the : other churches can set up such a claim as that.' Then when the fellows piled ! the questions into the box, and Priest : Drury took them out and answered every one of them fair and square, and i showed that the charges against his church were false and that he had scripture for his doctrine, I vras satisfied satis-fied that the interesting things to learn i about the Catholic church that I had ! never heard of would fill several books: so that's why I started to reading your i Ijiiper. It was down at Sorgo, on the Hen-' Hen-' iersnn road. Horton's hall was full. - People from all around Sorgo were there, and from Eirks City and West, and from over in Henri Jones-Brown's district. They wanted to hear Priest Drury answer questions. Mose Green was there. He had spent three davs searching the scriptures for hard ones. Mose thought maybe the priest did not know much about the scriptures. Lots f the folks there that night had never heard a priest talk about his religion br-fore. Mose was one of them. Along about the time the priest was finishing finish-ing Mose's scripture questions, and Mose was b?ginning to look like he had ; 1 lost the trail, 'old Dick Stout handed up a" question. He wanted to know why Catholics had so many crosses on their churches. "Well, sir, the priest took that as a text, and gave a talk that made me ! see things in a new licht. 7To cair the cross was the banner of Christianity. Christian-ity. He talked about an army marching march-ing under the flag, and told how a regiment or brigade that would refuse to carry the flag would be called traitors. trai-tors. Then he told how Christians had always marched under the cross as their banner till the sixteenth century, when Luther and some other fellows refused to carry the cross and tore it down from the churches. He made it all mighty plain how those sixteenth century fellows were traitors to the j principles and the cause that the cross represents, and how their followers , to , this day have been misled, and are slill bushwhacking about the world without with-out a banner. : -" -. "Put when he told why the cross I was -selected as the banner of Christianity Chris-tianity and described how the Savior suffered and died on the cross, ril tell you, Beii, I began to feel like I ought to be trying- to get into the ranks under un-der that banner. I never thought that way before. I did not know till then how lonesome it is to be without a flag. Ben, the next time Priest Drury comes to the Green river country go to hear him." Cyrus Hawkins in the Missionary. Venerable Jeanne d'Arc. In view of the rumors recently current cur-rent as to the failure of the cause of Jeanne d'Arc, the bishop of Orleans authorizes this statement: "The introduced intro-duced cause (for Jeanne d'Arc canonization) canoni-zation) has in no sense been suspended, much less abandoned; it is simply following fol-lowing its course with the slowness and deliberation imposed by the Roman rules for the cano'nization of saints." The prelate takes occasion to confirm a fact not perhaps generally known that of a miraculous cure lately effected, ef-fected, which has contributed much toward to-ward strengthening the "process" of the venerable Jeanne. "Active Old Age. The world is always interested in hearing of men and women who have preserved their bodily or mental vigor far beyond thejlimits usuallyassigned to .human activity. The nonagenarian grandmother who can still read without with-out spectacles, or the equally old grandfather who daily chops the wood for the kitchen stove,, and who .walks four miles ; every, election day to deposit de-posit 'his vote-these are notabilities of whom not merely their relatives, but all the residents of their county or district, are not a little proud. In a hie-her snhpre nf enfiot - tha 5n tellectual Vigor and administrative ability of very old statesmen, rulers, ministers,-is a favorite theme of the modern newspaper; but physical health and strength in extreme old age invariably in-variably excites more wonder than do unimpaired mental faculties. The present Holy Father, retaining at 92 the intellectual verve of a sexagenarian, sexagenari-an, commands the admiration of the world. But if his constitution had so far withstood the onslaught of years that he could still walk briskly about the Vatican gardens for an hour or two daily, he would certainly impress the most of us as being a great deal more wonderful . than he is. The Archbishop of Philadelphia and the Bishop of Rochester are no longer young; nevertheless we are- always conscious of a littl resentment when they are referred to as "old" gentlemen. gentle-men. It is by courtesy that we call them "venerable'' prelates. It is told of Archbishop Ryan, who has passed his seventieth birthday,- that he' preached a long sermon Jn Cleveland on occasion of ' the golden jubilee of St. John's cathedral," participated in subsequent features of the celebration until Sunday evening, then took a train for home, traveled all night, and on arriving in Philadelphia drove at once to the cathedral,, w here he sang pontifical ponti-fical requiem mass. He didn't even wait for breakfast, adds one of the daily papers. Very gratifying; indeed, is this evidence evi-dence of unimpaired vigor on the part of the beloved archbishop, but we insist in-sist that it is not marvelous. Ten or fifteen years hence will be time enough, we hope, to refer lo the extraordinary vitality of the venerable Mgr. Ryan. Our excellent contemporary, the Standard Stand-ard and Times forgets that he is ten years the junior of Bishop McQuaid, who thinks nothing of working all day ' and being on the train at nfght. The Catholics Cath-olics of Rochester will be disposed to smile at the affectionate boastfulness of devout Philadelphians, and we can assure our editorial conferes that if they were to take a walk with Bishop McQuaid, they would regret lon before be-fore it was over that a drive had not been proposed. Pleasantry aside, in view of the importance im-portance attaching to the prolongation of lives exceptionally good and useful, it seems almost too bad that the trio are not blessed with the hardy physique of a French ecclesiastic who lived one hundred and three years Abbe Des-roches, Des-roches, pastor of Lisieux. Centenarians, of course, are not extremely rare; but very old men as active and vigorous as Father Desroches are -notable even among centenarians. , At the age of 97 this , French priest .acted, the role of heroic fireman and saved a mother and her two children from a fierce conflagration'; con-flagration'; and five shears later, when he was 102, he jumped into a river and resoued a drowning waterman. Father Desrroches died in 1792. Had his. birth taken place a little later, he would have lived in three centuries. Ave Maria. Bishop Stariha at His Post. The arrival of Right Rev. John N. Stariha from St. Paul, to take his post as bishop of the new-, Catholic diocese of Lead, was madfc the occasion of the largest and most remarkable religious reli-gious demonstration ever witnessed in Lead. The mines of the Homestake company were closed down that the miners might participate in the reception, recep-tion, and the bishop and party were greeted by between "3,000 and 5,000 people peo-ple at the depot. There were in the party, besides Bishop Stariha, Bishop O'Gorman of Sioux Falls, whose diocese dio-cese formerly included the western part of South Dakota; Bishop Shanley of Fargo, N. D., and Bishop Cotter of Winona, Minn., besides fifteen priests fiom other parts of South Dakota. An Endless' Chain. Some of our people, not satisfied with the approved prayers of the church to be found in their prayer books, have joined in a rather queer endless chain in honor of St. Joseph. The Gesu Directory Di-rectory thus feelingly alludes to the pious antics of some over-pious Catholics Cath-olics engaged in this endless chain business: bus-iness: "These circulating prayers go like the wind everywhere; whence they come, no one knows; whither they go, who can tell? But they come and go periodically like the measles, and they are catching, - too. Some well-meaning I person woman, we suppose not content con-tent with the beautiful prayer in honor hon-or of St. Joseph, with an.jndulgence by our reigning Pope, strings together a harmless number of words, and sends the composition afloat from some lunatic luna-tic RsVlnm' nprhans.. Ha? cho u-ipalncc communication with St. Joseph? What foundation for the requests? Why impose im-pose conditions and attach to them infallible in-fallible certainty! Who is she, anyhow? any-how? The requests and conditions are the main thing; the firecracker attachment attach-ment that makes the thing go.- You must say the prayer thirty days twenty-nine of thirty-one would not do-beginning do-beginning the day you receive it; next day the charm is gone.. You may ask three requests four would spoil the business and two would Avreck the scheme; but they must be the same each day; .no fooling here. You must make five, copies to extend the "fraud and give them tq persons: within a week, while the prayer, is hot. To obtain ob-tain your request you must not neglect neg-lect a day, night does not count. When ' ! will Catholics be satisfied with the beautiful prayers of the church and cease chasing .vill-otherWisps?" Calendar. Cal-endar. - ' '" '"".' '" '' |