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these publications at a price less than cost, and distribute them
gratis to all classes likely to be benefited. To catch the eye of the
American people, to affect their hearts, to supply their religious
wants with Catholic truth, were objects kept in view in preparing the
tracts. Although some of them were addressed to Catholics, enforcing
important religious duties, nearly all of them were controversial.
More than seventy different tracts were printed first and last, and
many hundreds of thousands, indeed several millions, of them
distributed in all parts of the country, public, charitable, and
penal institutions being, of course, fair field for this work. They
were all very brief, few of them covering more than four small-sized
pages. "Three pages of truth have before now overturned a life-time
of error," said Father Hecker. The tract _Is it Honest?_ though only
four pages of large type, or about twelve hundred words, created a
sensation everywhere, and was answered by a Protestant minister with
over fifty pages of printed matter, or about fifteen times more than
the tract itself. One hundred thousand copies of this tract were
distributed in New York City alone. It is printed herewith as a
specimen, both as to style and matter, of what one may call the
aggressive-defensive tactics in Catholic controversy:

IS IT HONEST
_To say that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible_--
When anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic
bookstore, and can see on the first page of any one of them the
approbation of the Bishops of the Catholic Church, with the Pope at
their head, encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, in these words:
"The faithful should be excited to the reading of the Holy
Scriptures," and that not only for the Catholics of the United
States, but also for those of the whole world besides?

IS IT HONEST
_To say that Catholics believe that man by his own power can forgive
sin_--When the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the
agent of our Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him,
according to these words, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are
forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained?"
(St. John 20:23).

IS IT HONEST
_To repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priest to
pardon their sins_--When such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the
Catholic Church--When any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as
a grievo