d
_eight million dollars_ ($8,000,000.00) for their missions in the next
five years. With the enormous sums these various religious bodies
receive from the East they support the non-Catholic institutions of
higher education to be found in all cities of Western Canada, they
distribute free of charge tons of literature throughout the prairie,
they defray the expenses of their social workers, field secretaries,
etc. Among the Catholics of hundreds of parishes does not the
prevailing policy seem to be: "Charity begins at home"--and we may add,
often ends there. When one has paid his pew-rent and his dues, bought
a few tickets for a sacred concert or bazaar, thrown on the collection
plate each Sunday a few coppers or a small piece of silver, he thinks
he has accomplished all his duty to the Church. The vision of too many
Catholics does not go beyond the boundaries of their parish or their
diocese. Circumscribed in their views, they remain illiberal in their
sympathies.

Floyd Keeler, a neo-convert to the Catholic Faith, made recently this
most instructive statement. "Perhaps the greatest problem which the
convert is the most surprised to find existing in the Catholic Church,
is the problem why the average American Catholic is so supremely
selfsatisfied and seems to have so little thought for the propagation
of the Faith which he professes. Coming from a body which has had for
many years a well-organized system of missionary propaganda and which,
in spite of its many and grave doctrinal difficulties, is fairly well
permeated with missionary spirit, _it is a shock_ to find that within
the Fold so little attention is paid to what really ought to be the
very breath of life to its people, the Extension of the Kingdom of God
on earth, the carrying out of our "Lord's Last Will and Testament." To
find Catholics whose ideals are bound up within their own parishes, who
possess no sort of vision of the world beyond, still lying "in darkness
and in the shadow of death" and no concern over its redemption, is a
phenomenon which is hard to explain."

"It distresses us more than we can tell to find those who are nourished
at the breasts of the Bride of Christ, callous to Her charms, unmindful
of Her privileges, thoughtlessly and grudgingly rendering their minimum
of service, for we realize how Christ is thus being 'wounded in the
house of His friends' and His Bride made to lose Her comeliness in the
sight of men. But the Catholic