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Show ' I I" I This is the " ; i i ' ' 1 If IT F! 'if'.' victory, which. .. i h h Lhurch uttwwsak tsh- i ' CHUECH CALENDAR. 1 Sun-lay, )(-. 20 St. Christian, B. loiidiiv, Dee. '21 St. Thomas, Ap. ! TucmUu-. !)(!-. -'2 St. Zeno, M. 1 W.'dnc-.lay. Dec. 20 St. Servulus, C. I Tliiiixluy. Doe. 21 SS. Thrasilla and Emiliana. l ri'liiy, -Dec 25 Christmas, i Saiunhiy. Dec. 2U St. Stephen, First Martyr. THE BISHOP OF BURLINGTON ON SINGING AT FUNERALS. In ;i rin-ulitr recently -addressed to 'the clergy f lii linees'. Bishop Micliaud. of Burlington, ; Mime jiertiiieut directions to the clergy and Lmi.v reyardinjr the observance of the regulations .;' die (him-h in the matter of excluding from the li'iirtrical service such singing as savors of world- . M'litiniejUality or jH-rsoual vanity. The bish- j I.;-. writes: ! "Tlie iuestiai of singing in the vernacular at 1 i imc rals lias often been brought to ihe attention I "i die- clergy. As far as we know, our clergy de- ) fin- the church regulations concerning this mat- 1 ; t" be observed strictly and to the letter. But' ; immng the laity there are many filled with vain i inin not calculated (to improve on Church ritual, rit-ual, desiring only to have a concert or musicale of Tin ir own over the dead. Frequently, too, it is the j 1 am nk of an over-zealous singer, who wishes for his or lier own glory to acquire a little notoriety in en- 1 terlaining a church audience, by throwing in here I and ihere a jiiece of music more suitable for a i eoneert hall. l-'roni continuous pressure brought on ilii- vriest. he tires in his opposition and allows the . singing of hymns or songs, in the vernacular. With ! all the authority vested in us. we forbid such abuses .mm uirv". t our clergy not to allow any such m the church or in comelcry. The.Koman Kitual and C radual are complete, jind need no addenda for funerals, either from us or from the people." CONCERNING CONVERSIONS. I The papers are now so filled with the stories of : rouversioji-, ihat these interesting life pictures have I lot.-to some extent, the element of novelty. The time was. and not very long ago, when the con- erion of one who was in ever so small a way j known to 1 1n public was heralded with large cap- ti"iis. and given a prominent place in even the I n:"-t rominent dailies; and those stories were read I wiih eager interest by every one. To become a' I ('ailiolie was no small, step-for any one who had pulilic interests at stake. It placed on on high "as. ! a target tor abuse. ' It subjected one to a great I l. a! of hotile criticism, and so strong was the feel- !; inn of antagonism to the Church that a convert. I s-.ifiV ;) not a little in. the estimation of his friends " i in his business prospects - ' . I la many places thjs isjnow all changed. The stream of converts is getting so large and it is i bearing on its bosom so many that the public is taking it as a matter of course. Xow it is only ! those who occupy some very high social position, ! "i" arc very prominent in public, office, or whose I position in the intellectual world is so prominent ihat their intellectual conviction influences a large J crowd of followers, that we read of in the daily I pros when they come over to Borne. Along with these is a vast crowd of the ordinary people who r "ino quietly 1o near-at-hand priests, are personally person-ally instructed in their ' "catechism, and indiridu- ally make their submission -.to. "the old Mother : Church. The Missionary. OUR CONVENT FRIENDS. A correspondent writes that she has a friend f who is a member of a religious community and is l"iilt i'ul as to the present to send her. As Sis- ter.s have friends, in the community and the world, i" whom they would like to give a remembrance T.r:tmas. your gift might take the shape pf l;'4 - for others. A dozen of lovely cards and cal- ': ! :. a package of Christmas pictures, which I y 'i e;iu tiud in stores devoted to the sale of re-1' re-1' -"U- articles; a ,box of books; any of these and in; i.v ..-.hi r.'liings. if sent a week before Christmas, voulii ;.iioiil her much pleasure, since she, as you kti-nv. e;;1i Imy nothing for herself. In sending a i.'i in a religious, do. not confine yourself entirely i " artieie- of devotion. She is well supplied with spintiud n ailing, rosaries and crucifixes. Send her o'ie i if the good new books. The majority of Sis- :' ai il- are unable to purchase the works of all "he JaTest authors, and besides giving her pleasure, i will irove an acquisition, to the library. An-"t!" An-"t!" r ae, e,;alile gifi is a subscription to a Cath-1 Cath-1 Me i';:j'er oj- magazine. And at Christmastidc v, , v toruet iIk! friend, or cousin, or sister, who ""eli.- li'.;,, t,,. convent door. She remembers '' in her daily prayers. Your needs, your strug-your strug-your sorrows touch her as closely as they (i 1 when she. walked your way. The prayer of the in:.' of Heart pierces the clouds, and the success 'I'd happiiu'ss that have come to you, may be, in ! !'. oni's answer to her unfailing prayers for ,v"ii. THEY ARE FOUND IN THE PEWS. yiien church peojile want to rally their forces y liist stand up and get counted. The counters ' e 1 at work in New York, which some of the I ' ei like in dub the modern Babylon. Just at the ' : 1 'hat the now bankrupt Dowie was harranguing metropolis, the census takers got busy and made ; 'numeral ion of the church-goers in a section i ! the Cenl ral park. Here are a few items which v ;i! i men's t Catholics, who can extract consola-t consola-t "in of mathematics: The population of the ' -u iei is OS 4, 328, and in the ninety-one places of V i i-hip on Sunday week there were 95,039 persons ' all services. The membership of the seventy-six est a nt churches is 41, 125 and the attendance- v ".2.HJ1. Membersliip of the fifteen Iioman ' ; I; die churches is put at. 94.100. and the attend- ' e .was oO.OJST If the ratio of membership to I I "i'tiiation was the same, that would be, the asso-:'i"ti asso-:'i"ti liauns. 11,971 Protestant stay-at-homes ;-;;,iisj 01.112 Catliolie absentees, or three and a ii times as many. Of the 02.921 ersons attend- - the seveniy-six Protestant, churches all day, were ihere in the morning and 14.065 in the Veiling. There were 10.JI6S men and 19.170 women, la" l"ial morning attendance, Koman Catholics m hided, was 75.SK;, and evening, 20,057; men, 27.-''vl. 27.-''vl. and women. 55.5-18. When one recalls to mind the district near ihe park is largely made up wealthy families where Catholics are not as thick j the leaves in Yalloinbrosa, the showing that our '"''eliinnists made is not at all discreditable. Of '"His,., iu.re are Cuiholics in the Empire City H"sc sense of religious obligation varies with the 'in,, ,.,,,,. fail- weather Catholics but the above 'tisii,s are interesting at any rate. - The Proies-j'1" Proies-j'1" sense of religious observance of Sunday may j'" uiged from the fact that there are three and a limes as many Protestant, stay-at-hames as -"Mie on ihe Sunday when the census was taken. acholic Transcript. THE PASSING OF A GREAT AGNOSTIC. nu rr'm Pncer, who. died in his English home luesday, was a remarkable man. For over a r;eratioii he was considered to be what a Cath1-ci Cath1-ci 11.tf'1'. tfnnp(l "the chief apostle, of agnasti-m- It is nearly half a century since he began to write the essays, pamphlets and books which, in their collected form, made up his "Syst. m of Synthetic Syn-thetic Philosophy.'; He announced that work as being one of transcendent importance to .mankind. He proposed to revolutionize human thought; to solve all the problems of life; to furnish a key to "the riddle of existence." The sum of all his years of cogitation and literary effort ' was the simple statement that God is ''unknowable.'' ,But in his last book, published a little over a year ago, and written in the calm evening of a .lengthy life, he had the honesty to . admit-that 'his agnostic philosophy phi-losophy was a failure; audit is this book which justifies jus-tifies the application to him of the word ."great." ' In his "Fact and Comments," which, is the title of the work, he said: "It seems a strange and repugnant re-pugnant conclusion. that, with the cessation of consciousness con-sciousness at death, there ceases to be any knowledge knowl-edge of having existed. Of late years" -tjie consciousness con-sciousness that, without . origin or- cause, infinite space has ever existed, and must ever e.xist. produces pro-duces in me a feeling from which I shrink." He acknowledged in it the immense value, of Chris-tion Chris-tion faith to mankind. The Christian religion, he admitted, "gives a consolation to the oppressed and sorrowing and sorely afflicted which no. other form of belief can claim to do;" and he declared that no sceptic or agnostic should ever attempt to change the creed of one who believes in God and Christianity. "Xothing but evil." he wrote, "can follow a change in the creed of such; and, unless cruelly thoughtless, the agnostic will shun discussion discus-sion of religious subjects with them." This is sure--ly an admission, that the agnostic has no truth to offer; for if he Jiad he would feel it incumbent upon him to proclaim it. to all men. Catholic philosophers like William Samuel Lilly and Wil frid Ward have clearly demonstrated the illogical teachings of the author of the "synthetic philosophy," philoso-phy," especially the former, whose keen intellect detected all its fatal flaws. Pittsburg Oscrver. l HEBREWS AND CATHOLICS LEAD If the results of an investigation into race suicide sui-cide made by Dr. Walter Laidiaw, secretary of jhe Federation of Churches and Christian Organizations Organiza-tions of Xcw York City, may be accepted as por-. t raying existing conditions, the Hebrews and Cath-, Cath-, olics are the most patriotic of American citizens, : gauged by the Roosevelt test. The - Federation, . which , is the quarterly organ of the federation, says: ' t-. "That religion may have directly to do with lae question of race suicide has been illustrated by the sociological studies of the federation. Material has been collected on both the east and west sides of Manhattan and in various wards of Brooklyn during the last seven years. The average number of children in the Protestant families is 1.8G; in the Roman Catholic, 2.03, and in the Hebrew, 2.54 children. Only 16.6 per cent of the Hebrews are without children, whereas "28.0 per cent of the Protestants Pro-testants are without children. It should be noticed that six times as many Hebrew families have nine children as have the Protestant families; and that for every Protestant family with eight children there are proportionately four Hebrew, and twice as many, with seven children. At the other end of the table, it appears that the' proportion of Protestant Pro-testant families w-ith but one or two children is larger than that of the Hebrew families with one or two children. Among the Protestant communions commun-ions there are several whose average of children is higher than the Roman" Catholic average, notably .the Episcopalian and Presbyterian, but excepting the Free Methodists, "there. ' is not a single Protestant Pro-testant communion in which' the average is as high as the Hebrew." ."V: . Dr. Laidiaw contends that the same condition prevails throughout ther.whole country. It is now lip to the members of. -o'thcr churches to produce their birth records and prove that Dr. Laidlaw's figures are inaccurate: ' - ' " FOR CATHOLIC MISTRESSES. There is a letter for; Catholic "mistresses in the, following letter written -by 'a servant girl and pub.-lished pub.-lished in the London Catnolic Times : ' "There are ' many 'reasons 'why Catholic servants serv-ants prefer to work for Protestants.""' I give you an instance from my own' 'experience, if you will be kind enough to insert if iu your, columns. 1 Jived with Catholics for some, tune,, where T w-as the only servant kept to work for a large family. We were within easy walking distance of the church and during the month of May, as is usual in most churches, there were processions every Sunday evening even-ing in honor of Our Lady. I had a right to attend at-tend them, as I was a Child of Mary, and had been able to do so the previous year. But the lady wished, to attend these herself, and when, one Sunday, Sun-day, Tasked permission to do so, she refused, saying say-ing that we could not both go. "as she could not have the house left. I was sorely disappointed, as I looked forward with eagerness to the honor of walking in procession "during the. month of our Blessed Lady whom I love so dearly. If my mistress mis-tress had only given up the pleasure, for once at least, of going, and given me a chance, I should not haveminded. I felt it. very much at the time. I am now living with Protestants, and, candidly, I haw found much more happiness with. them. They are kind and considerate, and I have had more chance of attending the Sunday services than ever I had while living with Catholics." Li : , '. |
