to weaken, alter, or circumscribe the
faith of Catholics.

The most exalted methods of serving religion do not lie in the path of a
periodical which addresses a general audience. The appliances of the
spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere--that of the priesthood,
of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and
self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the
distractions of public affairs. The world cannot be taken into the
confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality
be complicated with the secular questions of the day. To make the
attempt would be to usurp and degrade a holier office. The function of
the journalist is on another level. He may toil in the same service, but
not in the same rank, as the master-workman. His tools are coarser, his
method less refined, and if his range is more extended, his influence is
less intense. Literature, like government, assists religion, but it does
so indirectly, and from without. The ends for which it works are
distinct from those of the Church, and yet subsidiary to them; and the
more independently each force achieves its own end, the more complete
will the ultimate agreement be found, and the more will religion profit.
The course of a periodical publication in its relation to the Church is
defined by this distinction of ends; its sphere is limited by the
difference and inferiority of the means which it employs, while the need
for its existence and its independence is vindicated by the necessity
there is for the service it performs.

It is the peculiar mission of the Church to be the channel of grace to
each soul by her spiritual and pastoral action--she alone has this
mission; but it is not her only work. She has also to govern and
educate, so far as government and education are needful subsidiaries to
her great work of the salvation of souls. By her discipline, her
morality, her law, she strives to realise the divine order upon earth;
while by her intellectual labour she seeks an even fuller knowledge of
the works, the ideas, and the nature of God. But the ethical and
intellectual offices of the Church, as distinct from her spiritual
office, are not hers exclusively or peculiarly. They were discharged,
however imperfectly, before she was founded; and they are discharged
still, independently of her, by two other authorities,--science and
society; the Church cannot perform all these functions by her