its aspects are ever changing and
its importance growing, I would wish to throw light on some new factors
at play in this momentous issue.

* * * * * *

Immigration has brought to the Church of Canada many serious and knotty
problems. Among these stands first and foremost the Ruthenian
question. Only those who have followed the various developments of
this perplexing problem and are fully aware of the unceasing activities
of the various Protestant denominations among Catholic foreigners,
grasp their meaning and understand their importance to the Church. The
average Catholic, we are sorry to say, is not awakened to the reality
of this live issue and fails therefore to meet his responsibilities.

Over 250,000 Catholic Ruthenians, of the Greek rite, have settled in
Canada within the past decade or so. They are scattered throughout the
length and breadth of our immense Dominion. You will find them in the
very heart of our large industrial centres, from Sydney to Vancouver,
and in compact groups on our Western prairies. The vast majority of
these Ruthenians belong to the Catholic Church and are our brethren in
the Faith. To protect them against unscrupulous proselytizers, to help
them to keep the faith in the trying period of their acclimatization to
our Canadian national life, in a word, to make the Church of Canada
assume the proper responsibility which Catholic solidarity imposes on
all her children in regard to this new factor of Catholicity in our
country, . . . this is the Ruthenian problem as it presents itself to
us with its various aspects and critical issues. Problems of the moral
and religious order are of a very complex nature. Principles remain
but circumstances change with the fancies of imagination, the impulse
of passion, the whims of the will. This explains how, in the great and
everlasting war between right and wrong, truth and error, the line of
battle is ever shifting, the methods of attack ever changing. Various
therefore have been the phases of the problem under discussion. But,
we presume, they may all be related to two periods: the period of
settlement and the period of assimilation.

_The Period of Settlement_

When a few years ago our shores were heavily invaded by the rising tide
of an intense immigration from the British Isles and Continental
Europe, the Church had to face conditions heretofore unknown. Without
doubt, the most complex in its elem