will be their
center of unity, the common field of action.

Various and important, as you see, are the problems that confront us in
the realms of human activity. Now, bear in mind, the Catholic doctrine
has a solution for each problem and it is your duty to give it.
Knights of Columbus, as you helped the Church to solve the problems of
the war, so will you also help to solve the greater problems of peace.
If you wish to be the body-guard of the Church, your mission is to lend
your noble and generous efforts to your spiritual leaders in this great
work of reconstruction. For, of this reconstructive period and its
great opportunities for militant and active Catholics, we may say what
Carlysle said of the period that followed the French Revolution; "Joy
was it, in that age, to be living--and to be young, was very heaven."
The task indeed is enormous, but the incentive most inspiring.

We are bound to meet with the fluctuations and uncertainties of the
human mind, particularly in such times of readjustment and intellectual
unrest. Let us then never forget that since the coming of Christ and
the establishment of His Church on earth the principles of His teaching
are for all nations. The sun of truth has its meridian in Rome, on the
rock of Peter. There it stands at its zenith, in the permanent blaze
of a perennial mid-day; there it sets the time for the Catholic world
amid the ever-changing and conflicting problems of human history.
_Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis_.

[1] A speech delivered in the Assembly Hall of the Knights of Columbus,
St. John, N.B., December 22, 1918. "The Catholic Mind" of New York
reproduced it in one of its issues.

[2] R. H. Tierney, S.J., Editor of America, at the Catholic Federation
meeting, Brooklyn, September 15, 1918.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHOM DO MEN SAY THAT THE SON OF MAN IS? (MATH. XVI.-13.)--PUBLIC
OPINION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

_What is Public Opinion--Its Power--How is it Formed--Public Opinion
and the Catholic Church--Our Duties to Public Opinion._

Numerous and strong are the influences at play in human life. Acting
and reacting on the free will of man they are ever at work moulding his
character and shaping his destiny. Like the waves of an incoming tide
they are beating the shores of our heart; their triumph is to carry
away our liberty on their receding waters.

Surrounding influences for good or for evil are indeed, to a great
extent, the determining factor