we
were still under the penal laws and legal disabilities known by our
fathers and forefathers. "What is there to check our dash forward?" we
would ask with Father Vaughan. "Absolutely nothing, but ourselves,
nothing but what we term prudence." Prudence! thin veneer, hardly able
to conceal our apathy and unwarranted timidity.

Has not the time come to throw off this false timidity and "To go out
into the highways and hedges and compel our separated brethren to come
in, that the Master's house may be filled." (Luke Ch. 14). Long enough
have we waited for them to come to us. An intelligent Methodist was
recently asked the question: "What do you think is the greatest
obstacle to the spread of the Catholic Faith?" And he answered:
"Ignorance,--because Protestants do not understand what Catholic
teaching is, and if your people have the courage of their convictions
and claim that they know the truth, why do they not come out like the
Socialists, Radicalists, Salvation Army, and other bodies who have come
out, and explain to the public what they believe and why."

Did not Cardinal Newman in the conclusion of his lecture: "The Position
of Catholics," make similar statements? "Protestantism," he says, "is
fierce because it does not know you; ignorance is its strength; error
is its life. Therefore bring yourselves before it, press yourselves
upon it, force yourselves into notice against its will. . . . Oblige
men to know you. . . . Politicians and Philosophers would be against
you, but not the people, if it knew you."

Yes, we willingly endorse what the English Dominican, Father Hugh Pope,
advocated in his article, "The Modern Apostolate," in the August issue,
1919, "The Ecclesiastical Review," and in several other English
newspapers and magazines. Has not indeed the time come when we should
revolutionize all our methods, when we should apply to Home Missions
something of the methods which now we have fancied pertained solely to
the Foreign Missions. Some we know will criticize this forward policy
as bold, open to ridicule, an innovation, an undignified intrusion, a
Billy-Sunday method, etc.--"On analysis what does all this opposition
come to, but that we are afraid." "Afraid!" our critics will exclaim,
"of what? I should like to know?" Is not the answer: "Yes, afraid of
what the people will say" (Father Pope, O.P.). Anchored in the past
they will continue to spend their energies in giving what we would call
"sp