ch of Canada has
pledged itself in the Plenary Council of Quebec to help the Ruthenian
cause; the Catholic Church Extension Society of late years is enlisting
the sympathies of Eastern Catholics for our Western missions. With the
help of their motherhouses our various sisterhoods have dotted the West
with convents, schools, hospitals and charitable institutions. We all
recognize the beauty and the heroism of their Catholic charity and
apostolic zeal. Notwithstanding these noble efforts, can we safely
state that the Church of Eastern Canada, as a whole, is deeply
interested in the Catholic welfare of the West? Have we kept pace with
the changing conditions the last decade has brought throughout our
Western Canada? _No_. _And this is our national sin_. The Church as
a whole, has not awakened to its responsibility. As individuals, as
parishes, as dioceses, Catholics here and there have nobly done their
duty. As a body, as a living Church of Canada, we have failed to help
the struggling West as we should have done. We have not thrown all the
energies of our great living, organizing Church into this missionary
work. The Catholics of our Eastern Provinces are not yet united in one
great, generous effort to protect and spread the Kingdom of God in
their own fair Dominion. The call of the Church in the West has not
been heard.

Never has the importance of the West loomed up before the public mind
as it has since the beginning of the war. To realize this you have
only to remark its growing influence in our political life. It cannot
be otherwise; the possibilities of the West are so great and so
numerous. Immense virgin prairies are still waiting for the plough.
After the war, during the period of reconstruction, necessarily so
pregnant of great events, the producing powers of our agricultural West
will be tremendous. This is, therefore, a trying period for the Church
in the West. Beyond the waving wheat of the prairie we should
contemplate the ripening harvest of souls. Like a growing youth, the
Church in Western Canada needs more than ever, help and support from
the Mother Church of the East. This assistance in the present stage of
the Western Church is a pressing duty of conscience, not only for the
individual Catholic, but particularly for the Church as a whole, in
Eastern Canada.

This duty is a duty of the hour, a duty most serious, most imperative.
How can it be accomplished? By the united action of t