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"Minute Men Catholaganda”
is a Catholic Propaganda Pamphlet for Catholic Cam-
paigners and a Correspondence Course successfully

used by Fathers Rumble and Carty as a Follow-Up
Course for Street and Radio listeners. It is a com-
pendium of Catholicism reduced from book form to
vest pocket pamphlet size to enable the spread of the

printed word. This Correspondence-Follow-Up Course

we recommend for Convert Classes, Study Clubs and
Mixed Marriage Cases. This pamphlet of 64 pages is a
sequel to “Radio Replies” and contains twice as much
matter as is contained in the Catholigetic Series of

“QUIZZES TO A STREET PREACHER.”

INTRODUCTION TO MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA
Dear Man in the World,
So you do not know just how to go about things!

Well, then, I have decided to send you once each month
a paper, which I want you to read several times during
the weeks which must ensue before the next instalment
can come to you. Study each paper hard, learn it as
if you had to know it for an examination upon which
your whole career in life must depend. As a matter
of fact, your whole career in life—in eternal life—will
depend upon the things placed before you during this
course of instruction.

From the very beginning, too, I want you to keep
in mind that everything mentioned in this course is
absolutely true and real. It is not a fairy tale. It is

]

not mere romance. God Himself bent down to tell
these truths to man, and death will thrust us into their

midst in all their reality. It would be dreadful,
I

wouldn’t it, if we were to have no inward life, no
privacy with God; if death and God were to be to us
unwelcome surprises. There is a huge invisible world.
We are to be some day part of it. It touches us already.
We may fall through into it at any moment. There’s
no need to be panic-stricken. There is need to be

ready. And one of the best means of being ready is to
learn and know our Catholic Doctrine.

You, dear Man, above all, I wish to understand and

know the gift God is holding out to you, because, by
the very circumstances of your life, you cannot but

be an apostle. You see, we do not love what we do
not know, and I want you so to love your religion that
when people mention the subject, they will see at once
that you are a Catholic, and also that you are proud

of it, as of the greatest possession you have. Mean-
time, if the principles mentioned during this course

enter into your daily life, influencing it and making

it holy, God will love you as only He Himself can
love, and that’s all that really counts.



Imprimatur Die 15a Dec. 1939

Joannes Gregorius Murray

Archiepiscopus Sancti Pauli

I.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
My Dear Friend,
You say the first thing that impressed you was that

extraordinary institution known as the Catholic Church

—the two-thousand-years-old one. Well, we shall begin
with what first gripped your attention, and then ask

what may be the doctrines of that Church.

CHRISTIANITY

“I am a Christian” means, if anything, “I believe in
Jesus Christ, and in all that He taught.” Now, Chris-
tianity is a revelation. That is, God, in His wonderful

goodness, decided to reveal to men information of
exceedingly grave importance, which they could never

get unless He so revealed it. We may say, “God decided
to teach men.” That word is all-important if we would
understand the idea of a Christian Church. Christianity

is a teaching of men by God. As doctors teach men
information for the good of their bodies; as lawyers

teach men information for the well-being of their prop-
erty; so God decided to teach men information for the
good—eternal and supreme—of their souls.

GOD’S METHOD
God’s way of getting those truths to us was to send

His Only Son into this world in human form—to teach.
Christ was essentially a Teacher. He taught. He did
not write. He taught those with whom He came in
contact, and always as one having authority. He knew
He was the Son of God. He knew He was the Immut-
able Truth. And He never allowed His teaching to be
contradicted. The people might spit on Him—He would
not murmur. But when He taught, He knew He was
the Truth, and Simply said, “I say unto you.” Men
had to receive His words as children, or not be Chris-
tians.

Christ was the Teacher sent by God to give informa-
tion to men which they could not get unless they would
be taught by Him.

CHRIST’S METHOD
Christ brought a teaching for all mankind. He knew

He Himself was to live but thirty-three years. But to
teach all men—to teach me now—He did not depart
from His personal method. To the end of time there
will exist a body of men, selected by Him, to teach, in
His Name, the Truth He brought, and to teach it with
authority. It will be the same truth with the same
method.



2 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

You remember how our Lord said to the Apostles,
“You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you'*
(John XV, 16); “going, therefore, teach all nations . . .
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you” (Matt. XXVIII, 19-20). Before they went, He told
them everything. “All things whatsoever I have heard
of My Father, I have made known to you” (John XV,
15). He even made special arrangements to prevent
their forgetting His teaching. “The Holy Ghost will
teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind,
whatsoever I have said to you” (John XIV, 26).

THE CATHOLIC METHOD
The whole position can be summed up in a few

words. God revealed His Truth through Christ His Son
to the Apostles, who handed it on to their successors,
who, under the protection of the Holy Ghost, now
teach it to us. It is always according to the same
method of a living teacher with power and authority.
And because of Christ’s perpetual presence, His Church
shares His Nature and prerogatives. Cardinal Manning
long ago drew the parallel

—

The Church is One in doctrine and in practice,
because He is the only Son of God.

The Church is Imperishable because He has im-
mortal life.

The Church is Infallible because He is unchange-
able Truth.

The Church is Holy because He is Holiness itself.
The Church is Catholic, i. e., universal or supra-
national, teaching orally and with authority,

All Truth—not a part of it.
To All Nations—she has gone to all peoples.
At All Times—through all the centuries since
her foundation.

In All Places—she alone is everywhere.

THE REASON OF IT ALL

God’s Method, Christ’s Method, the Catholic Method

is the Only Method designed for the instruction and

salvation of all men.

For thus only can all men have an equal chance of
salvation. A teaching Church is the only method
suited to all men. Private interpretation and each

one’s judging for himself would require time for study,

and a highly developed intelligence; and I know, dear

Man, that you would be the last to give the brainy a

better chance • of salvation merely because they are

more brainy. And what about humanity before print-
ing was invented? Men simply had to be taught by
men who had themselves been taught. A Church teach-



THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 3

ing in the name of Christ and guaranteed by Him is
the only way ignorant and learned alike can know
simply, easily, and with certainty the precious truths

revealed by God. “Faith cometh by hearing,” St. Paul
told the Romans (X, 17). The truth was given to those
who heard Christ—it is given to those who hear Christ’s
successors. Christ centered the authority of this teach-

ing Church in St. Peter, who was to settle all diffi-
culties. That authority is still centered in St. Peter’s

successor to the Bishopric of Rome—today, Pope Pius
XII. The faithful can obtain any information as to
what Christ taught from any priest, whose business it
is to know exactly what the Popes and Bishops of all
time have ever taught as Successors of the Apostles.

THE GIFT OF GOD
To be a Catholic, to be a member of that Society

which embraces all those faithful Christians who are
united in one Faith, and in the same Sacraments, under

the legitimate rule of the Bishops, chief amongst whom
is the Holy Father himself, listen, dear Man in the
world, listen to what this means. It will make you
say those words of the Creed

—
“I believe in the Holy

Catholic Church”—with new joy, every time. Bishop
Hedley treats splendidly somewhere of this matter, and
his deep thought runs along these lines:

If you are not a Catholic, you will be told to think

out these things for yourself. How, when you already
work from daylight till dark? And if you could, you
can’t afford to wait for your religion till your hair is

grey. You want it in youth as well as in age. You
need it at the first awakening of your passions—as soon
as you set foot in this world. What use for you in a

faded and wrinkled old age to announce that after

deep meditation in philosophy you have at last de-

cided that your soul will live forever? It will be too

late; all that time, waiting for proof, you will have

lived as it were not going to live forever. The con-
clusion you have arrived at should have been influenc-
ing your whole life. So the Catholic Church drills into

her children truths which the independent learn, per-
haps, on their deathbeds. Our children may verify
their beliefs later, but Christian teaching beautifies

their lives from the very beginning. Is it anything to
be a Catholic? It is God’s best gift!

And now, dear knight-errant of commerce, I wish
you to make this notion of the Church your own, so
that next month we may begin on what the Church
teaches. And before beginning on any of the more
abstract doctrines, we shall commence with the first
four things you will encounter on attending our public



4 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

functions—The Mass, The Confessional, The Rosary,
and Benediction. Then, in the rest of our twelve in-
structions, we shall cover the whole field of Catholic
Teaching.

Till we meet again, that God may bless you as you
could most wish to be blessed, will be the prayer of

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

II.

THE SACRIFICE
Dear Over-busy Friend,

Your remark that “Of course a Church teaching as
one having authority can be the only possible repre-

sentative of Christ,” shows clearly how the genuine
notion of the Church carries with it its own appeal.
As regards my not dealing with the other churches,
however, I knew you realized as well as I do that not
one of them even claims the authority which you have
agreed must be the essential note of the Christian
Church.

And now for the explanation of the extraordinary
experience you had when you first set foot inside a
Catholic church on that famous Sunday morning. You
say a strangely disguised man came into the church at
a definite hour, took no notice of anybody, in fact,

turned his back on those present, read out of a book
for about half an hour, and then departed, apparently

without having done anything, whilst everyone went
home as if it were all over!
Dear mystified friend, you were present at the Sacri-

fice of the Mass! And now you are more mystified than
ever! But it will not be for long. You will admit that
Christ did not change the very nature of religion. Now
sacrifice is so bound up with the nature of religion that

if Christianity be a religion there must be a sacrifice

in it somewhere.

You see, man consists of body and soul, that is, he is
both material and spiritual; and surely, if worship is

due to God at all, it is due to Him from the whole man,
not from half of him, and the worship must in some
sensible or material way express the spiritual truth.
Now what is that spiritual truth? The spiritual truth
is that God is supreme Lord and Master, whilst we are
wholly dependent upon Him; nay—since sin—we no
longer deserve to be left in existence. Yet God lets us
live, and we are forbidden to destroy ourselves. Are
we then free to take no notice whatever of our true
relationship to God? No, for it would be contradictory



THE SACRIFICE 5

to the relationship of Creator and creature were we
to be allowed to ignore it altogether. So from the very

beginning, under God’s own command, man had to take
of his possessions and destroy them in sacrifice to show

that he was disposed to recognize the sovereignty of

God.

WHEN CHRIST CAME
He came, not to destroy, but to fulfill the law, and,

while He was at it, to redeem us. Now this latter
requires four things, viz.:

(a) that someone,

(b) pleasing to God,

(c) should offer himself for sin,

(d) and that the offering should be more pleasing
to God than our sin had been displeasing.

Out of sheer goodness and generosity God decided
to do it Himself.

(a) He became man, and “had laid on Him the in-
iquity of us all.”—Is. LIII, 6.

(b) He was the Son in “Whom the Father was well
pleased.”—Matt. Ill, 17.

(c) He was offered “because He Himself willed it.”
—Is. LIII, 7.

(d) And certainly the infinite Love-Offering of a
God is more pleasing than the finite crime of
a creature is displeasing.

THE SACRIFICE

The death of Christ on the cross was a Great Sacrifice

of a Great Victim to the Justice of God. But as man-

kind was not only of the time of Christ, that Great Sac-

rifice had to continue as long as man would be man
and have the obligation of practicing a religion. As a
matter of fact, this was predicted long before Christ
came to establish His Church. “From the rising to the
setting of the sun,” the prophet had cried, “My name
is great among the gentiles. And in every place there
is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean
obligation.”—Mai. I, 2. So it was that Christ at the Last
Supper, knowing- that He would ratify it next day,
instituted a true sacrifice, the same as would be offered
on Calvary within twenty-four hours, but now unbloody
in manner of offering instead of with bloodshed. There
was the same Victim. “This is My Body,” said Christ,
“which is given for you.”—Luke XXII, 19. “This is
My Blood of the New Testament.”—Mark XIV, 24. “Do
this for a commemoration of Me.”—Luke XXII, 19.
There was the same priest—Christ offering Himself.
There was the same object—that God should be adored
for all that He is in Himself; that He should be thanked



6 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

for all that He has been to humanity; that He should
be appeased for all that we have been to Him; and
that Grace should be won for the graceless rebels.

Sacrifice is necessary to religion. Christ founded a

new religion, which was the fulfillment of the old, and
also began a new sacrifice of which the old had only
been figures. If His religion had to continue, so also

would the sacrifice have to continue with it. As a mat-
ter of fact, the sacrifice did continue. Long after
Christ’s death, St. Paul wrote, “As often as you shall

eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall show
the death of the Lord.’’—1 Cor. XI, 26.

THE MYSTERIOUS MASS
The Mass is simply the sacrifice which Christ offered

both at the Last Supper and on Calvary repeated in

the Christian Church. Calvary was the redeeming sac-
rifice; the Last Supper was Calvary anticipated; the
Mass is the same sacrifice of Calvary re-offered in our
own days to God to meet our present needs. And as
at every true sacrifice, the faithful kneel with both

priest and Victim present before their very eyes, at

the Altar of God. This was the belief of all Christians

from the first days of the Church, and St. Paul himself

wrote years after Calvary was apparently over and
done with: “We have an altar. ,,—Heb. XIII, 10.

THE PRIEST

Why, you ask, the strange disguise? Of course, you
mean the vestments. Well, then, the priest at the
Catholic Altar, although another Christ by ordination,

is in himself just a frail human being like the faithful
around him, and when he stands between heaven and
earth pleading with uplifted hands for the people of

God, he disguises his poor humanity as far as possible
in sacred vestments that the faithful may see but the
priest in him. His priestly garments are the historical

garb of the priests of the primitive church.

As for his taking no notice of the people, that is
because he is devoting all his attention to God. The
worship of God does not consist in one man entertain-
ing a handful of others, but in all, both priest and

people, offering to God by a united act the homage due
to Him. So the priest ascends to the Altar, as the holy

mountain of God, and there pleads in the Sacrifice for
his assembled people.

THE CONGREGATION

You said well when you remarked that the people
seemed to be not so much listening for what the priest
said as watching for what he did. Sacrifice is in reality
an action, and Mass is a true Sacrifice. And as in the



THE SACRIFICE 7

sacrifices of the Old Law, God never dictated a prayer,

but each made his own—Anna for a child, the publican
for mercy, the pharisee his own proud prayer—so God
is still worshipped in act, in the Greatest Act the world

has ever seen. “In Christ’s life there was one moment
beyond all others,” writes Archbishop Sheehan, “He

called it His Hour. It was the hour He gave His life
for us on the cross. In the Mass we are with Him in
that Supreme Moment. We stand with His mother at
the foot of the cross, and ask all the blessings of re-

demption. In the Mass we join with Him in His offer-
ing of Himself, and He takes up our poor and feeble
acts of worship in His own infinitely strong and perfect
acts of worship, and presents them to His Father.”
You will agree then, dear Onlooker, that the priest

you saw was far from departing without “having done
anything.” He had done the greatest thing it is given
to man to do on this earth.

WHY DO CATHOLICS GO TO MASS?

Well, in the first place, because God said quite urg-
ently long ago, “Remember you keep holy the sabbath
day.” We went from God by disobedience; the return
must be by obedience, the very essence of religion.

Thus we serve God, not because we feel like it, but
because it is just. Nor does it matter how God seems
to treat us. We serve Him not for what He does, but
for what He is. In the second place, we attend Mass
because the Church obliges us to keep the day holy

in that way, under pain of mortal sin. The Church
could scarcely do anything else. If Jesus Christ goes

to the length of sharing our life, coming down to be
crucified, and giving us His Body and Blood to be re-
offered as often as we wish, the least we can do is to
go to the length of being present at that August Sac-

rifice once a week, of being present at that central Act

of highest religion on the day which God claimed for
Himself, with a very solemn warning, lest we should
forget to render Him His due. It all means that if
Jesus Christ goes to the trouble of redeeming us, we
should at least go to the trouble of letting ourselves

be redeemed.

So now, Sir Onlooker, you understand what was
going on before your eyes that fateful Sunday morn-
ing, when you first wished to examine for yourself
the magnet which could draw those early morning
crowds. You were present at the Mass, the central Act
of Catholic worship, an Act which cannot be done away
with if Christianity itself is to remain.

There is food for a year of thought in this short



8 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

paper, but one month is all that can be spared to you
if we are to cover the whole field of Christian Faith
in the time at our disposal. Next month we shall peep
into that “fearsome institution” called the Confessional

. . . till then, know and grow to love the wondrous
doctrine of the Mass.

God will bless you through each of the next four
weeks in His own generous way if He heeds the peti-
tions of

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

III.

CONFESSION
Dear Philosopher,

Your remarks certainly justify this new title, and in
any case, who can observe human nature for very long
without becoming one? That’s why the Catholic Church
is really the greatest philosopher on the face of the

earth. She has been observing human nature for the
last two thousand years. And here I must call your
attention to a strange thing. It is the very need of

human nature that accounts for the confessional in
every Catholic church. Not that the Church invented
it; it was the foresight of her divine Founder that pro-
vided her with it. And that, of course, is why

CONFESSION AND CHRISTIANITY GO TOGETHER
It sounds a bit strong to say that you cannot be a

Christian unless you go to confession. But let us be
rationalists. I don’t mean “mere rationalists,” but real
rationalists. You agreed with the January statement
that to be a Christian can only mean “I believe in
Jesus Christ and in all that He taught.” Now just
listen to this from the lips of Jesus Christ.

“
‘As the

Father has sent me,’ said Jesus Christ to His apostles,

‘I also send you.’ And He breathed upon them and
said, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall
forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall
retain, they are retained.’ ”—John XX, 21.

This, then, is part of Christianity, and as Christianity

is for me just as much as for those who lived in those
days, there must be somebody exercising the same
powers today. You, dear average man, would be the

last to credit that Christ intended His representatives

to walk around absolving every possible human being
they might come across. Before this power is exer-
cised, the very gravity of the matter demands prudent
reflection; and certainly no one could know whether a
sin should be forgiven or retained without a knowledge



CONFESSION 9

of the sin and of the dispositions of the applicant. We
simply must tell our sins to the one from whom we
seek forgiveness. St. James did not hesitate. “Confess,

therefore, your sins one to another’* (V, 16). He meant,
not only to God, but also to your fellow men. Again,

obviously, it cannot mean to every Tom, Dick, or Harry
we may happen to meet, but to those fellow men to
whom our Lord has left the power thus to apply the
treasures of the Precious Blood, and who have been
duly fitted for the work. It would not be in keeping
with the mercy of Christ to impose the great burden
of asking us to explain our sins publicly, and confes-
sion as practiced in the Catholic Church is the only
fitting fulfilment of this Sacrament of Mercy.

WHO IS OBLIGED TO CONFESS?
Every man who is in a state of serious sin and who

wishes to recover God’s friendship. It would be a farce

were Christ to leave a power like this, knowing that
sin would be forgiven whether men made use of con-
fession or not. And as every man on the face of the
earth until the day of his death is confronted by the
possibility of yielding to temptation, every man is sub-
ject to the law of confession. Priests and Bishops, and
even the Pope, must confess their sins, private and
public, like the simplest Catholic.

PREPARATION FOR CONFESSION

Every Catholic is obliged to go to confession once a

year. This does not mean that the Church is content
with this. This law simply lays down the limits beyond
which we cannot keep from our Lord without ignoring
His voice and so committing a new mortal sin. As
a matter of fact, those Catholics who love their faith
and have a deep understanding of it can rest satisfied

with no half measures, and monthly confession is the
least they can content themselves with, whilst weekly
confession and daily Holy Communion is their ideal.
In preparing for confession the first duty is the ex-

amination of one’s conscience. You, as an expert in

business efficiency, will appreciate my description of
this as a spiritual stocktaking. Nor are we supposed
to make this scrutiny an excruciating torture; but we
are expected to give it the attention we usually give
to ordinary serious business affairs in life. It is a Sac-

rament of love and mercy.

Sin is man’s crying back, “I will not” to God’s “Thou
shalt.” Sin, then, is any wilful transgression of God’s
laws. As we have those laws in the ten Command-
ments, the precepts of the Church, and the tradition



10 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

of Christian virtues, we have not far to go in the
search for our sins. The contrast between our conduct
and these standards will supply us with matter for
confession.

THE ACTUAL CONFESSION
Even after the examination of conscience, it is use-

less, of course, to go to confession unless one has true
sorrow for the sins discovered, and a genuine intention
of not committing them again. No absolution can be
given if this disposition is absent, and should a priest,
through ignorance of the penitent’s intention, grant
absolution, it would be quite valueless.

Granted true sorrow, we must tell in the confessional
all the mortal or serious sins that we have committed
since our Baptism, and which we have not yet told in
confession. We are not obliged to tell our venial or
lighter sins, but if happily we have no serious sins,
the confession of venial faults will be sufficient to
justify Sacramental absolution.

Of course, it goes without saying that we must con-
fess our sins both as regards their kind and their num-
ber, just as they are in the sight of Almighty God.

Any insincerity would be a mockery.
Finally, we must have the goodwill to make what

reparation the Priest should consider necessary, and

to fulfil the penance which he is obliged under pain

of sin to impose.

PRACTICAL NOTES ON CONFESSION
There is a technical definition of confession which

always reminds me of the tags doctors attach to the
simplest ailments of humanity. And knowing the plain
blunt man’s satisfaction when someone comes along
and says in one word, “It’s measles,” I have searched
for a one-word description of confession. Confession

is taking one’s soul in both hands and holding it out

under the streams of the Precious Blood. That, I be-

lieve, conveys the right idea of Sacramental confession.

Of course, we may go to confession to any Priest we
like, even purposely choosing a Priest quite unknown

to us and who never will know us. It is best to forget
the man, and to think of ourselves as kneeling at our

Lord’s feet and asking forgiveness betimes, and grace

for the future. It is also a help to remember that every
Priest is bound by a most solemn obligation—the strict-
est he has—to keep secret all sins told in confession.
As a matter of fact, every Priest has enough of the

Precious Blood in his hands to destroy all the sins

that ever have been committed or ever will be com-



CONFESSION 11

mitted. He hears the sin, estimates the guilt as judge,
explains the law as teacher, prescribes the remedies

as doctor, encourages as father, forgives as Priest, and
then promptly forgets everything.

EFFECTS OF CONFESSION

On the last day God will sit in judgment; in the
confessional He sits in mercy. What is confessed is
forgiven and forgotten for ever. It will never be

brought up against us. And not only is sin destroyed.
With every confession light is poured into the mind,

strength is given to the will, grace is increased, and

God’s friendship is rendered more intimate. The shame
we offer as part of our penance and proof of our sin-
cerity, and after absolution we are free to go to Holy
Communion, to the One Who bled for us on the cross,
Who has seen our brave act, Who loves us for it, and
Who is waiting to come Himself into the heart He
thought well worth redeeming at life-cost.

HOLY COMMUNION

And now I come to your remark, dear Observer,
that I mentioned nothing in my explanation of the
Mass about the crowds flocking to the altar rails. We
have just seen that confession is a preparation for that

visit. I know you realize clearly that Christ is truly
present, that He meant it when He said, “This is My
Body,” in fulfilment of His promise, “The Bread I will

give is My Flesh.”—John VI, 52. This was St. Paul’s
idea when he wrote, “Whosoever shall eat this bread
or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily shall be

guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a
man prove himself,” i. e., confess and put himself into
a state of grace.—1 Cor. XI, 27-28.

THE LIVING CHRIST

It follows that the Treasure of the Christian Church
is the Eucharist. It is not a thing but a Person. The
Baby in the crib, the battered Body on the cross, the
little Host in the tabernacle are the same Being. It is
no harder, nor is it easier, to believe that our God is
present in the one state more than in the others. So
that, in the tabernacle there is Someone, Someone in
the Host I receive, Someone in my heart by Com-
munion—Someone adorable, Someone infinitely good
and generous, infinitely powerful. No wonder our peo-
ple have a consuming hunger for their God, their
Refuge, their Heavenly Physician, their Strength, and
their Hope, which carries them to the altar rails by
the millions.



12 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

THE CONDITIONS

Three things only are necessary that a Catholic may
go to receive that heavenly Food. He must be in state
of grace, free from all mortal sin; he must be fasting

from midnight, so that It is the first food to pass his

lips that day; and he must have a right intention and

approach from a religious motive, and not from human
respect.

UNDER ONE KIND
All, except the priest who says Mass, receive the

Eucharistic Bread only. The Priest, of course, must
always consecrate both bread and wine to secure the
sacrificial repetition of the Last Supper, at which only

priests were present. But after consecration, Christ is
wholly present whether under the appearance of bread

or of wine. . For Christ has risen to die no more, and
wherever He is present He is there, Body, Blood, Soul,
and Divinity. As a matter of fact, by receiving under
both kinds, the Priest receives no more of Our Lord
than the ordinary communicant. The doctrinal reason
for giving Communion under one kind is that it safe-
guards the truth of Christ’s complete presence wherever

He may be found. The religious reason is that it pre-
vents the possible irreverence of spilling the Precious

Blood whilst administering the chalice. The practical
reason is that in many places it is impossible to get
enough wine save for the bare needs of the Sacrifice.

THE EFFECTS OF COMMUNION

Every communion increases our sanctifying grace,
intensifies our union with Christ, strengthens us against

temptation, renders us more fervent, destroys our
venial sins, lessens the temporal punishment due to

our past faults, is a pledge of our future glory in

heaven. Thus, when our Lord has come into our
hearts, whilst Substantial Sanctity is still within, whilst

He, who will be the Great Love of our whole being, is
already beginning to transform us into His own dear
Likeness, we return to our place and devote at least
a quarter of an hour after receiving Him to the prayer
and gratitude of an enthusiastic and almost passionate

welcome.

My dear friend, go over and over the truths of this
little paper during this month. Tell them to yourself

in a hundred different ways. Make them quite your
own, and next month we shall examine those extraor-
dinary devotions known as Rosary and Benediction.

God bless and keep you as He knows best through

the month to come. Please whisper the same prayer for

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.



EVENING DEVOTIONS 13

IV.

EVENING DEVOTIONS
Dear Enthusiast,

Please do not travel quite so quickly! You say you

are a Christian, that it is as clear as daylight that

Christianity includes the doctrine of confession, and

that therefore the sooner you make your confession the
better. That’s a fine bit of reasoning; but much as the
Church appreciates the ability to reason well, she

requires more than that from her prospective children.

It will all be clear to you after I have explained to

you the mysterious thing called Faith. But I must

keep to our program and today tell you of the Rosary
and Benediction which go to make up our Sunday
evening devotions. The Rosary, of course, involves one
of the deepest questions in Catholic piety.

DEVOTION TO MARY
Our Lady—that is the way we Catholics usually speak

of her—is Christ’s Mother. It stands to reason that
honor shown to her must be pleasing to Him, if indeed

He is the best and most loyal of sons. Cold neglect of
her can scarcely fill Him with delight. In any case it
was predicted in Sacred Scripture that all generations

shall call me blessed. Surely this prophecy must be
fulfilled as much as any other, and, as a matter of
fact, it has been fulfilled from the very beginning in
the Catholic Church. We cannot forget that our Lord’s
last gift to St. John and to all Christians was accom-
panied by the words, Behold thy Mother. It is enough
for us. He meant us to love her as such—and they
have always loved Mary most who have loved Christ
most. St. Germanus did not hesitate to write in the
year 720, “We worship indeed the mother of the true
God.” Not that Catholics ever have given her, or ever
can give her, the supreme adoration which is due to
God alone. But we certainly honor her and love her
above all other creatures.

THE POWER OF MARY
In the Book of Genesis we find these words addressed

to Satan: I will put enmity between thee and the
woman. It follows that there can be nothing in com-
mon between Satan and Mary. Where Satan is, Mary
is not. Where Mary is, Satan is not. Again, in St.
John’s Gospel, we find our Lord working His first
miracle at Mary’s request, though He Himself declared
that His time had not yet come. It can only mean that



14 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

Mary has power to repel our spiritual enemies and to
move the Heart of her Child Jesus in our favor. We
Catholics cannot believe that this power to protect us
and to win grace for us was given to Mary for noth-
ing, and we make great use of it.

THE ROSARY
Dear very human friend, what will you say if I tell

you that the Rosary is the most beautiful of all devo-
tions to Christ Himself? Yet that is the simple truth.

Let us examine it closely.

To say a full Rosary we recite the Apostles Creed,
then an Our Father, with three Hail Marys, and a
Glory be to the Father, etc. After that we say fifteen
groups of an Our Father and ten Hail Marys each,
during which we reflect upon some mystery of the
Gospel narrative or Christian tradition for the length

of time it takes us to complete each section. The
mysteries are as follows:

Joyful.

1. Annunciation. 2. Mary visits Elizabeth. 3. Birth
of Jesus. 4. Jesus presented in the temple. 5. He is
found after three days’ loss.

Sorrowful.

6. Our Lord’s agony in the garden. 7. He is scourged.
8. He is crowned with thorns. 9. He carries His cross.
10. He is crucified.

Glorious.

11. Our Lord rises from the dead. 12. He ascends
into heaven. 13. He sends the Holy Spirit upon the
Apostles. 14. Mary is assumed body and soul into
heaven. 15. Mary is enthroned as Queen of Heaven.
You will see from this how clearly the Rosary brings

before our minds the chief incidents of the life of Jesus

Christ Himself, and nothing, of course, could give Mary
His Mother greater pleasure than that. As Father
Faber points out to us, the Rosary is a complete abridg-

ment of the Gospel according to the thoughts of each
of the fifteen decades.

THE AUTHORS OF THE ROSARY

Who composed the Rosary? See what good company
we are in as we recite it.

The Creed comes from the Apostles.

Our Lord Himself composed the Our Father.
The archangel Gabriel said Hail (Mary) full of

grace, the Lord is with thee.



EVENING DEVOTIONS 15

St. Elizabeth added, Blessed art thou amongst

women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb
(Jesus).

Holy Mary Mother of God was defined by the great
Council of Ephesus in the year A. D. 431.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our
death is the spontaneous cry of the whole Cath-

olic Church.

The Gloria is but a faint echo of the continuous
refrain ringing through the courts of heaven itself.

THE INDULGENCES

To encourage us to say the Rosary, the Pope has
attached very great indulgences to the use of blessed

beads. An indulgence is a remission of that temporal
punishment due to sin even after the guilt, that would
alienate us from God, has been forgiven. In other

words, it shortens the period of purification in Purga-

tory. (This is just by way of explanation in case
someone mentions indulgences to you.) We shall ex-
amine the value of our doctrine of indulgences later
on. We must give the rest of our time this month to
the consideration of the great event in our evening

devotions.

BENEDICTION

We Catholics genuflect slowly and reverently on
entering our churches, saying to ourselves quietly,

“I adore Thee, O Jesus,” because on the Altar is Jesus
Christ really present in the Blessed Sacrament. At
Benediction the Blesssed Sacrament is taken from the

tabernacle and placed in a monstrance (from the Latin,

monstrare, to show), and then enthroned high above

the Altar. Amidst lights, which represent the light of

Faith and our belief in the unseen truths of God, and

flowers, which honor Him as King of all creation, Jesus
Christ is placed on high to receive our prayers and

worship, and to hold as it were a royal reception. We,

His subjects, pay Him the loyal homage of our hearts,
sing His praises, and offer our petitions for forgiveness

and for grace, praying then more fervently than at
other times, because we know that our King of kings
and Lord of lords is really and truly there on that

throne as surely as He is also seated in glory at the
right hand of the Father.

THE INCENSING

The incensing is full of deep and holy meaning.
When the priest swings the thurible towards the throne,
bluish clouds of incense ascend, spreading a sweet



16 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

odor around. Rising from the burning coals, it signifies

our prayer rising to the throne of God from hearts on
fire with love of Him, whilst its fragrance typifies the

acceptableness of prayer in God’s sight. David says in

Ps. CXL, Let my prayer be directed like incense in
Thy sight. Objections to the use of incense are hard
to understand—particularly from Bible Christians. For
incense is altogether Biblical and Christian. Catholics

didn’t invent it, or borrow it from heathen rites, as is

sometimes foolishly said. The use of incense was first
prescribed by Almighty God Himself. And the Lord
said to Moses . . . thou shalt make incense . . . most
worthy of sanctification.—Ex. XXX, 35. St. Luke says.
The angel appeared to Zachary at the hour of incense.

(I, 10), and St. John, in the Apocalypse, or Book of
Revelations, that in heaven an angel came and stood
before the Altar, having a Golden Censer . . . (VIII, 3).
Heaven certainly sounds rather a Catholic place.

THE BLESSING

After a short exposition, the priest removes the

monstrance from the throne, and makes a large sign
of the cross with it over the heads of the people. This

is not the priest's blessing. It is the blessing of our

Lord Himself. Just as He left the glory of Heaven to
breathe a benediction on the world from His cross on
Calvary—so now He leaves the brilliant Altar throne to
breathe a new benediction from His cross on all those
assembled in His Presence. And we bow our heads,
and are glad indeed, for the Hidden God is in that
Eucharist just as He lay concealed under the form of
a tiny suffering Infant in Bethlehem. That it may be
our Lord’s own blessing, the priest covers his very
hands with the humeral veil (i. e., the veil with which

his shoulders are covered), that he may not so much
as touch the monstrance.

THE DIVINE PRAISES

After the blessing, priest and people recite the Divine
Praises as a reparation for the disgraceful use made
of God’s name and those of Christ and of Our Lady
by an unbelieving world. Then the Blessed Sacrament
is restored to the tabernacle. Benediction is over.

MASS AND BENEDICTION

Mass represents Calvary, by which heaven was pur-

chased for us. Benediction is the nearest approach

man can make to the “Heaven purchased,” on this side
of the grave. To kneel in Christ’s presence—to love
Him and be blessed by Him—that will be heaven



FAITH 17

indeed, when the veil is removed. But now we live
by faith, and the Benedictions the Church offers us are

a foretaste of our eternal inheritance.

Dear knight-errant (I am glad you like the sug-
gestion of honor in that old-world title), we have to
part company once more for a month. Be at many
Benedictions during that time. If Catholics do not

make as much of Benediction as they should, it is
because they do not realize the truths they believe.

For the rest, do not be anxious. In His own good
time God will pour the Light of Faith into your soul,

and all the privileges of Catholics will be yours. Mean-

time meet the magnificence of God’s love with the

magnificence of your trust; and believe me to be always
YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

V.

FAITH

Dear Would-be Catholic,

You seem to be so eager that I had better explain to
you at once the real nature of faith. We have carefully
examined the Church, that wondrous Being whose

attention is divided between those two whose claims

upon her are all absorbing—God and humanity. To
God in the name of humanity she offers Sacrifice; to
humanity in the name of God she offers the Sacra-
ments. The Church is really a wonderful Mother. She
gives us supernatural life by Baptism; she teaches us
by her doctrines what health is, or sickness, or death
in relation to that life; she removes what disease may
be there by Confession; sets us on our feet by Con-
firmation; nourishes us with that Bread of Angels

—

the Blessed Eucharist; sees us safely off to God with
Extreme Unction; and then, when our bodies have gone
back to the dust they came from, and our very names
are forgotten, she remembers us and prays for us. But
what is it that makes all this a reality to us? Listen
to a thing passing strange!

THE GIFT OF FAITH

A man has to believe. He believes his clergyman,
his newspaper, his favorite books, his friends, even
himself. He believes because he had faith in the one
whose word he accepts as true. And that faith rests
on two foundations: firstly, on the conviction that the
person believed, knows; secondly, that that person has
told the truth. If you, dear friend, doubted the pres-
ence of either of these qualities in your informant, you



18 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

would have no faith in him. And the world is full of
this natural faith, this taking of the word of another
because of his knowledge and integrity. Life, indeed,
would be impossible without it. Otherwise we should
have to close our very schools. Doctors and lawyers
would have to prove every assertion before their clients
could accept their decisions.

Now Christian Faith is based on exactly the same
principle, and differs from natural faith only insofar

as it rises to a much higher level. By Christian Faith
I choose to believe certain truths because God, Who
knows everything and cannot lie, Who is neither de-
ceived nor a deceiver, has told them to me.

RIGHT NOTION OF FAITH

It is most important to have a right notion of faith.

Many non-Catholics quite misunderstand faith. They
think that to “have faith” is to feel pious—which is
only imagination; or to be deeply moved—which may
be only sentiment; or to have great confidence in Christ

—which springs from hope. And with these notions
they think they have faith, whilst they refuse to be-

lieve many of the truths Christ explicitly taught; and
should their emotion or sentiment or confidence leave

them, they would feel they have lost the faith, even

though they admitted every Christian doctrine. Now
some of these non-Catholics have sometimes become
Catholics, yet have never renounced this. wrong notion

of faith. They did not regard faith as the mental
acceptance of a truth, and as long as they felt they

were in the right Church, and continued to enjoy sweet
religious experiences, they regarded themselves as

being free to pick and choose in the matter of doctrine.

If a doctrine appealed to them, they accepted it. If

not, they rejected it. And they never adverted to the
fact that they were all the time insulting Christ either

by denying His knowledge or, admitting His knowl-

edge, by asserting that He must have deliberately lied.
The result in many cases has been disastrous. I have
in mind even now the case of a man who was received
into the Church, and was an enthusiastic Catholic for
some five years. His emotions then failed, and he
found that he had never once wholeheartedly accepted

the doctrines of Christianity. He left the Church think-
ing he had lost the faith, although in reality he had

never had it! Is it any wonder that years after his
own conversion Father Faber should write in his book
on the Precious Blood: “Converts should never cease

to dread the underground action of heretical habits

of mind . . . there is a leaven of inherent lawlessness



FAITH 19

in every man who has once been a heretic . . . and
they should humbly distrust the strength and genuine-

ness of the principle of obedience within them to stop

them before they go too far”?

AN ACT OF THE INTELLECT

Faith is an act of the intellect. I do not believe any-

thing with my feelings. I believe with my mind, be-
cause belief is the acceptance of a truth. A Catholic,
then, may be quite without emotion, yet he may still
believe all the truths Christ has revealed, or, in other

words, have the faith. Instead of “feeling good” he

may feel decidedly wicked, yet his faith may be un-
impaired. He may be in the depths of despair, yet
believe as firmly as the most fervent of Christians,

or even as the devils who “believe and tremble.” This,
of course, is not the ideal state. Faith should issue in

joy and love and hope and goodness and deep con-

fidence, but we are merely trying to show that these
things are not faith. After this, dear average Man,

you will reply that it is a very easy thing to be a
Catholic; that once a man is convinced that Christ has
spoken, that Christ knows all, and that Christ could
not lie, that man is ready to be received into the
Church which Christ established and guaranteed. But,
alas, it is not as simple as all that. Though reason is
convinced, the will may be at fault. I said above that
by Christian Faith I choose to believe. The intellect
must be moved by the will.

You see, as Cardinal Newman so beautifully put it
in his discourses to mixed congregations, the arguments
for religion do not compel anyone to believe, any more
than arguments for good conduct compel a man to
obey. Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey,

and faith is the consequence of willing to believe.
Here is a difference between other exercises of reason
and arguments for religion. It requires no act of faith
that two and two make four; we cannot help assenting
to it; and hence there is no merit in assenting to it.

But there is merit in believing that the Church and
all her doctrines are from God, for though there are
abundant reasons to justify the belief, yet we can
quarrel with the conclusion. We may complain that
it is not clearer. We may suspend our assent. We
may doubt about it if we will. Therefore, it is that
Catholics freely decide to take God’s word as the sole
motive for their religious beliefs, and not the light of
their own private judgment.
You will reply, “But I do choose to believe. Why

do you still delay my reception into the Church?” I



20 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

must answer that there is something yet which we

wish to make sure of.

THE SUPERNATURAL

The supernatural is above man’s ordinary powers,

and not your own reasoning must bring you into the

Church. If it were merely that, it could quite well

take you out again. It is the grace of God that must

bring you. For this supernatural faith is a gift from

Him, and no one can be a member of the Catholic

Church until after having received this gift of gifts.

Jesus Christ Himself said, No one can come to Me,

unless the Father who sent Me, draw him. John VI, 44.

And St. Paul wrote to the early Christians, “By grace

you are saved through faith, and that not of your-

selves, for it is the gift of God.”—Eph. II, 8. This gift
of faith is a kind of light which gives additional power

to your intellect to perceive the absolute certainty of

the doctrines put before you by Christ’s Church.

You admit that the Catholic Church alone can be

the true Church of God. You say you will accept what-

ever she teaches. But with the gift of faith will come

a settled conviction of the value of these truths,
they

will become so clear to you, that you will marvel and

wonder, and ask yourself how you could have been a

non-Catholic for so many years. Robert Hugh Benson,

describing his own conversion, said that he believed

before his conversion practically all that he believed

after that happy event. The only difference was that

one day “the blind ran up!” Father Faber cried out,

“A new light seems to be shed on everything—a light
so clear as to surprise me!” A convert whom I know

very intimately once said to me, “I do not know how

I ever lived without the Catholic faith.”

But I can hear you saying to me, “But, Father,
I

have done all in my power. I can do no more. How

shall I obtain this gift of faith, this great grace,
from

God?”

PRAYER

I can only answer—by prayer! Ask, and you shall

receive, is our Lord’s own advice to you. The gifts of

God are obtained by asking for them. For the first

time during this course I urge you to pray. Hitherto

I have been content with explaining things to you. But

now you must do your part. We shall continue our

explanations, but I want you to study them with more

prayer than usual upon your lips. Ask God for light

and courage. Both are needed. Ask as if you really

wanted what you are praying for. Ask earnestly almost



FAITH 21

as the starving man begs for the crust that is to keep
his body and soul together. It may be difficult at first,
because you have got out of the way of praying. In
fact, the saints have said that you can only learn to

pray by doing it. Anyway, my advice to you is that
you should give as much prayer as reflection to this
question of religion during the rest of this course. I

would almost say that even should it seem desirable to

think out something at times, rather pray about it

instead. One thing I promise you. It is this: if you

pray perseveringly and earnestly, as I have suggested,

and always with humility, you shall certainly win from

God that golden gift. I can promise you that in the
name of Jesus Christ Himself.
Now, dear Friend, you may have been surprised last

month at my lack of eagerness to hear of your recep-
tion into the true fold. You must have thought me
sadly wanting in zeal. And it must have come as a
shock, after all you have heard of the “passion to

proselytize” which is always attributed to the Catholic

Church. But now, I am sure, you realize that such
hesitation as I have shown is in your own interests;
that though I am eager for your conversion to the
Church, I want it only when God wants it; and that,
because I realize His own time to be the best time.
Yet I know that before very long He will speak to you.
Things will grow clearer. You will not know quite
how it has happened, but you will know that you
must become a Catholic; that there is a guilt attached
to your not being one; and you will feel it urgent, and
almost imperative that you should be a child of the

True Church of Jesus Christ. When that happens, come,
for then God is calling you.

THE GOAL ATTAINED
Your welcome? I will let Robert Hugh Benson offer

you the same welcome that he offered to the Plain
Man: “Three hundred years ago we could have offered
you great things; the hatred of all who heard your
name; the contempt of those who were loudest in their
love for England. We could have offered you the
Tower as your prison, chains, stinking dungeons, the
rack, the whip, the gallows, the hangman’s cauldron.

Now we have no more than the chips of Christ’s cross
to tempt you with; a little sneering and lifting of the
eyebrows; a little good-humored laughter; a few re-
marks about ‘intellectual servitude’; a little smiling
over your mediaevalism; your lack of sturdy British
spirit, your superstition and fear of the priest. But
where the cross is, there is Christ. And you will have
the authoritative ABSOLVO TE A PECCATIS TUIS



22 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

IN NOMINE PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI.
You will have certitude for doubt. You will have the
tabernacle of God with men.—Emmanuel.
“And for the friends estranged from you, you will

have the saints of all ages and lands as blood relations,

born of the same Mother of salvation. Instead of
leaving the faith of your fathers you are returning to
it; and your parents who died twenty years ago, and
have been Catholics from the day you closed their
eyes, will only thank God for your response to His
grace.”

Next month, dear Man amongst men, we shall com-
mence in real earnest the analysis of the truths which

the gift of faith will make your most treasured pos-
session. I will pray for you daily till then, for I half

suspect what the month will bring in answer to your
own prayers. Please let some of those be for

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

VI.

GOD
Dear Wayfarer-still,

I was not in the least perturbed at your last letter.

Things are just as they should be, only you must have

patience with yourself. The Church, you may be sure,
is far more anxious that you should want to be re-

ceived than she is to receive you. And after your
reception you will realize that if she ever was anxious

to receive you, it was for what she could give to you,
not for what she could get from you.
As for your difficulty, it is true that I believe because

the Church tells us. It is true, also, that I believe

because I know that God knows, and that He cannot
tell an untruth. But you see, God Himself passed on
this attribute to the Catholic Church when He said:
All things ... I have made known to you.—John XV,
15. And then, Behold, I am with you all days even
to the end of the world.—Matt. XXVIII, 20. It is the
same motive in both cases. From this you will readily
perceive the connection between the instruction on
the Church and that on the motives of faith, so that
we can pass at once to an analysis of Catholic doctrine.

WHAT THE CHURCH TEACHES
The Vatican Council defined that we must believe all

that the Church declares to be contained either:
(a) In the written Christian deposit (Sacred Scrip-

ture); or



GOD 23

(b) in the oral Christian deposit (the traditions of

the Church, embodying those oral teachings of

Christ and the Apostles which were never com-

mitted to writing).

This involves a vast field of doctrine which must be

believed, but which need not be known by the faithful.
It is believed in a general act of faith, thus: “I believe

all that the Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches,

because she is established by God, and has the promise

of His perpetual guidance and protection.” I can hear

your tired sigh of relief as you read that you are not

expected to know the whole of Christian teaching.
However, there is a minimum which, under pain of
sin, must be familiar to all of us. (That is, if one found
he did not know this minimum, he would sin if he did
not resolve to do his best to learn it.)

TO BE KNOWN AS WELL AS BELIEVED
In the first place, we must know the Apostles Creed.

This is a splendid rule of faith to be recited frequently.

It deals with God in His threefold Personality of
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, adding what each has
done to secure eternal happiness for us. Its doctrine

can be set forth as follows:

(1) I believe in God, i. e., in one God, yet of three

Persons

:

(2) Father—Creator of heaven and earth.
(3) Son—Jesus Christ, Redeemer by means ot His

birth, death and resurrection.

(4) Holy Ghost—Sanctifier by means of the Church,
communion of saints, and forgiveness of sins.

(5) This God being Judge and Rewarder by the
resurrection of the body, and the Giver of our

own life everlasting.

THE REGULATION OF OUR CONDUCT

In addition to this summary of our beliefs, we are
obliged to know certain other things for the regulation
of our conduct: (1) The ten commandments; (2) the
Seven Sacraments, to be explained later; (3) the Our
Father and Hail Mary; (4) and finally, how to make:

(a) An act of faith—as given above, or in any other
recognized form.

(b) An act of hope, e. g., “O my God, I hope in
Thee, because Thou art faithful to Thy
promises.”

(c) An act of charity, e. g., “O my God, I love
Thee, with my whole heart, because Thou art
so good in Thyself and hast been so good to
me.”



24 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

(d) An act of contrition, e. g., “O my God, I am
heartily sorry for ever having offended Thee,

because Thou art all good, I detest all my sins,
and I firmly purpose, by the help of Thy grace,
not to offend Thee again.”

Such, dear Inquirer, is the minimum which every
Catholic must know explicitly, besides believing im-
plicitly all that the Church teaches. Yet no Catholic
should rest content with knowing merely the minimum.

A REALLY EDUCATED CATHOLIC
It is to help you, whom I hope to see some day as a

really educated Catholic, that I intend to go a little

more thoroughly into many of the truths mentioned
above. It is good to know what the minimum is, but
it is well also to understand, as far as we can, the
fullness of revealed truth. Revelation was simply God
giving us a collection of truths about Himself, Angels
and Man, which we could not have acquired unless
He had condescended to tell them to us. This month
we shall examine the Catholic doctrine concerning
God. Then in later papers we shall consider the Angels,
the Man in his past, present and future conditions.

GOD
Long before we come to what God has revealed about

Himself, reason itself has already dictated three great

truths concerning Him. We have not to think very
deeply before we become aware that there is a God,
that that God is infinitely perfect, and that there can
be only one such God.

There is a God. The universe has obviously been
made by somebody, and obviously by somebody who
can make something of nothing. No creature can do
that. We all need something to begin with when we
wish to make anything. So it is that we must deny
the existence of the universe, or admit the existence of

a Being transcending all material conditions, Whom we
call God, and Who is responsible for all that is, or else
do violence to our own reason.
God’s Nature is not fully known to us. It will be our

delight to spend our eternity enjoying God. But reason

tells us at least this much about Him: He is a self-
existent Spirit, i.e., a Being independent of every other

being, with omnipotent power of intellect and power

of will. He is infinitely perfect. He gave all the physical
and moral perfections in all humanity, in all the world,

in all the universe; and, as no one can give what he

has not got, God must be in Himself far more perfect
than the creatures He makes. While creatures therefore
are finite. He is infinite and without limits in His perfec-



GOD 25

tions. From this it follows that He is Eternal. He never
labored under the imperfection of having to begin, or

of having to end. He is not to be thought of as exist-
ing for a long time, but simply without time. This

sounds a bit bewildering, but, after all, it just has to

be like that. A God whom my finite little mind could
fully grasp would be no God at all.
His infinite perfection also implies that He is every-

where. He cannot be confined by created space limits.
He is within us and without us, above, below and
around us. Wherever we set our feet, God is there
even if we be going to do evil. And everywhere His
Presence is more real than the hardness of the rocks,
or the firmness of the earth. To keep from Him by sin
is not to escape from His Presence, or His Knowledge,

or His Power, but only from His Love. This God, too,
must be a Person. Man’s greatest gift or perfection is

his personality, and as that perfection is from God, He
also must be a Person Who can love in a personal way.
Finally, if God be infinite He must be omnipotent. He
can do all things, provided they are not self-con-

tradictory. His very wish has creative force, and there
is nothing that can resist Him, save where He Himself
decides to hold Himself passive. It quickly follows

that there can be only one God. Were there two
infinitely powerful beings, we would have to admit that
one of them could do all things, yet that the other
could prevent his doing them. It sounds rather like
the old conundrum of an irresistible force meeting an
immovable object, to which the only answer was that
either the irresistible force could not be irresistible, or
else that the immovable object could not really be
immovable.

THE MOST LOVABLE OF ALL BEINGS

Thus far, dear lover of high thoughts, we have con-
sidered what reason as well as revelation can tell us
of God. And already it is clear that God must be quite
the most lovable of all beings.

I admire strength when I meet with it, but there is
no strength as the strength of God; the philosophers of

the world are but lisping infants compared to the God
Who made both them and the things of what they
prattle; the soft beauty of landscape, the glory of a

golden sunset, the transparent grace of the fairest

human features cannot even lay claim to beauty when
I think of Him in Whom are blended the finest qualities
of them all, and that in the glowing transcendence of
His own infinity. The deepest human love, whether it
be the patient and tender love of a mother for the



26 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

frailest of her children, or the consuming, devoted and

reciprocal love of man and maid, is but the faintest
reflection of the magnificent, unselfish, inexhaustible

and constant love that is characteristic of our dear

God. So transcendentally beautiful is He that He was
forced to declare, Man cannot see Me and live.—Ex.
XXXIII, 20. So full of love, that He sent His only
begotten Son to fit us for that vision. But the very
mention of the Son of God leads me to the greatest
of Christian mysteries.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY

God has told us something of Himself which we could
never have found out by mere reason. He tells us
that, although there is but one God, in Him there are
three Divine Persons, each of Whom is God. So Christ
Himself said, I and the Father are one.—John X, 30.
No one can pretend to understand this doctrine of the
Trinity in all its fullness. That is reserved for heaven;

and even there our finite limitations will have to be

taken into consideration. But the fact that we cannot
understand it has no influence whatever upon our
believing it. It is “just a bit above us,” a feeling

every man has experienced even in the presence of
many a lesser fact. I think I can best sum up the
position in this way: History tells us that God has said
it. Reason tells us, firstly, that God must know, and
could not have brought Himself to say anything except

the truth; secondly, that the doctrine is not an absurd-

ity or self-contradictory; thirdly, that it would be an

absurdity to maintain that there can be nothing beyond

the capacity of the finite mind. The absence of con-

tradictions, of course, is clear. If we said, “There are
three Divine Persons yet only one Divine Person,” it

would be absurd. Were we to say, “There are three

Divine Natures yet only one Divine Nature,” we would

again be contradicting ourselves. It is impossible to

have three of the same thing equal in every way to

one of the same thing. But the Christian teaching, and

therefore the teaching of Almighty God, is that there

are three Divine Persons in one Divine Nature. Each

of the Divine Persons has the Divine Nature, and

therefore is God; the Divine Nature is always One,

and therefore there is but one God.

Well, dear lover of all that is beautiful, there is the

God Who made you, and Who demands that you praise,
reverence and serve Him in this life as a preparation
for an eternity of happiness with Him in the next.

Your difficulty would be not to do so, with your keen

realization that, since all beauty comes back to multi-



ANGELS AND THE WORLD 27

plicity in unity, God Himself must be Beauty Itself
in the glorious relations which flourish between the
Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Divine Nature.

As you read these things carefully, you will be saying

to yourself that a man would surely have to abandon
faith in his own intelligence, who would not admit
that Catholic Truth is an absolute treasure. And in
later years, how often you will find yourself walking
along the footpath a “foot above the ground,” for the

sheer joy of being a Catholic yourself! This much
must suffice, then, concerning God as He is in Himself.
Next month we shall consider His work in creation.
In the meantime, go, by all means, to see the priest

you have mentioned. I shall be awaiting anxiously the

result of your interview. And I can promise you, even
now in advance, that, whatever else may come of your
talk with him, you will go from it with the conviction
that he, too, must be henceforth counted in a very real

way as you already regard myself,
YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

VII.

ANGELS AND THE WORLD
Dear Heir-presumptive,

So at last you are seriously to prepare for your
reception into the Church! I am trying to puzzle out
what you must have said to that good priest! Or was
it that he heard the ring in your voice and saw the
light in your eyes, which not all the reading in between
the lines of a letter can convey! Anyway, I send you
the kind of congratulations one sends to a friend who
has just inherited a very great fortune. To be a Cath-

olic means that God, to quote the words of a convert

before you, “has looked through all His treasures and

given you the very best.” However, I must let the

wonderful experience which lies before you prove the

truth of this description, and continue the course of

instruction which you say is proving of such great

interest to you.

GOD AS CREATOR
In our last paper we spoke of God as He is in Him-

self. Now we must turn our thoughts to the creative
action of God. Everything that is not God was created
by God, or, in other words, formed out of nothing.
God simply willed that the angels should come into
existence, and by that very fact there were angels; He
thought of the universe, and the universe was; He



28 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

wished that there might be men, and the human race
began. And it is in this order that we shall consider
the separate creations of His power.

THE ANGELS
Every Christian is obliged to believe in the existence

of angels. Throughout both Old and New Testaments
again and again we read of angels ministering to the
Patriarchs, or to Our Lady, or even to Christ Himself.
And the Catholic Church teaches that these angels are
intelligent spiritual beings of a higher order and dignity
than man. No one can reasonably deny the possibility
of the existence of these spiritual beings. Were he to
do so, he would have to deny the very possibility of the
existence of God, Who cannot but be a purely Spiritual
Being. Few would venture so far. Yet, granted an
infinitely powerful Spirit, there is nothing to prevent

Him from creating lesser beings of a purely spiritual
nature like Himself. As a matter of fact, there are
many reasons apart from revelation why we should
expect angels to exist. God does everything perfectly.
We see around us purely material things; man himself
is a mixture of the material and spiritual; creation, to
be perfect, demands the purely spiritual. Again, man
is created to praise God. But he knows ever so little,
and that little comes through his senses. True, created

praise of God suggests that there must be higher beings
of an angelic and spiritual nature, who can see the
whole scheme of creation and give God a praise and
glory proportionate to the marvels they behold. Then,

too, there are historical facts of interference with the

affairs of men which can only be attributed to the
action of evil spirits.

TRUE SPIRITUALISTS
I can hear you saying, most practical of men, “So

then, we are spiritualists!” I reply, “Yes, but not mere
spiritualists; we are the real spiritualists.” And we
know more about these spirits than all the experi-
menters put together. The infallible Church herself

tells us the facts of their history, basing her doctrines

on no less an authority than the inspired word of God
Himself. The angels, we are told, had to earn heavenly
happiness by a test of submission, and many failed.
But because they were of a higher nature than man,

and knew far better what they were doing, the fallen
angels were not given a second trial. On the contrary,
Satan, their leader, and all his followers were thrust

into Hell and eternal punishment. God spared not the
angels that sinned, blit delivered them to torments,
writes St. Peter.—2nd Epistle, II, 4.



ANGELS AND THE WORLD 29

THE DEVIL

The world laughs at the notion of there being a devil,
because the world has ceased to be Christian. Yet what
are the facts? From the moment man was created,
Satan and his legions have not ceased to try to draw
men from God. They tempted Eve; they tempted
Christ; they will never cease to tempt. They are

always plotting our spiritual ruin, filling our minds

with evil thoughts, fixing our attention on temporal

things only and turning us from prayer. And Satan
reaps his greatest success from those who say, “The
devil? Who believes in the devil?” He is the only
being in existence who does not want to be known for
what he is.

THE GUARDIAN ANGELS

It goes without saying that the devil, with his pure-

ly spiritual intelligence, is far cleverer than we are,
and he will deceive us if possible. Then, too, our frail
willpower is not nearly strong enough to stand alone
against him. That is why God has said, Pray without
ceasing. But besides promising help to our prayers,
God commissions the good angels, who were powerful
enough to expel the bad angels from heaven, to watch

over us. It is Catholic doctrine that each man is
accompanied through life by an angel guardian who
protects him from evil, suggests good thoughts, and
offers his prayers and good works to God. He hath

given His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all

thy ways, David wrote in his 90th Psalm. And our Lord
said of the little .children, Their angels in heaven

always see the face of My Father.—Matt. XVIII, 10.

OUR DUTIES TO THEM

St. Bernard tells us that there are three obvious duties

to our angel guardians. The first is reverence for their
presence, refusing to do in their sight what we would
not do in the presence of our fellow men. The second
is confidence in their assistance. They are powerful,
and have already overcome Satan for themselves. They

are most devoted to us, and are more than willing to

help us in our fight also. Of course, it always remains

our fight, but the good angels are ever prepared to

assist us and will respond to our least appeal. The third

duty is love for them, even as we love all who do us
good, even as we shall love all who will be sharers of
our joy in heaven.



30 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
I do not think you could find anyone nowadays, dear

friend of mine, who would deny the existence of the
universe. I mention this because there have been some,
in time past, who were prepared to go against their
very senses. But there is a very real problem as to
how the universe began to be. The only certain infor-
mation we can get must be from someone who was
present when it all happened. Any other details will
be but conjecture and speculation. Now the Church
of that Living God Who made everything, and Who
therefore knows all about it, tells us in His name at
least this much: The world has not existed from all
eternity, but was made by God Himself out of nothing,
in the beginning of time. To doubt that much, there-
fore, is to doubt God’s knowledge or His truthfulness,
and so to cease to be a Christian. But revelation does
not tell us more than that, definitely, save in the case of
mankind. Many people think that to believe in evolu-
tion means to renounce Christianity. Belief in evolu-
tion as applied to the spiritual world involves the
abandonment of the faith; but that is not the fault of
the faith. Sane evolution as applied to things material
is in no way opposed to Catholic teaching.

For example, one could believe in the “Nebular

hypothesis.” This theory says that, in the beginning

there was a vast nebulous rotating vapor which, under
the influence of gravitation and centrifugal force, grad-

ually condensed to the state of separate globes as we
now know them—of course taking billions of years to
do so. The Nebular Theory does not say whence came
the “vast nebulous rotating vapor.” A Catholic would
have to hold that God created at least that much, out
of nothing, in time. God has revealed creation from
nothing. Besides this, it is well to remember two things.

Apart from the question of origin altogether, the idea

of a great nebula evolving into all the phenomena we

now perceive is only a rather good guess, and is not

by any means proved. In the second place, if it ever

can be proved, it will in no way belittle our notion of

God. It would be all to His greater glory to have

created a nebula which could evolve itself, instead of

His having to make each section of the universe sepa-

rately. How far man is affected we shall see next
month. As regards the so-called Scripture difficulties,

it is well to bear in mind that Sacred Scripture was

never given us as a textbook of science, but as a guide

to the securing of our own destiny. It has been well



ANGELS AND THE WORLD 31

said, “Sacred Scripture is not meant to tell us how
the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.”
The Catholic Church teaches us also the purpose of

creation. God made it firstly for His own greater glory,
for the sheer delight, as it were, of having an external

reflection of the splendor and perfection of His divinity.

Secondly, He made it for the happiness of His rational
creatures, both angels and men.

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCE OF CREATION

Since we men are ourselves part of God’s creation, a
great obligation at once falls upon us in ^rict justice,
and apart from any other consideration. We belong to
God in the most absolute fashion. To him we owe our
entire being and its preservation at every instant. If

God ceased for a moment to will its continued exist-
ence, the whole universe and all its contents would fall
back into nothingness. Of course, this won’t happen.

Because I have loved thee with an everlasting love, He
said to humanity at least, therefore have I drawn thee.
—Jer. XXXI, 3. He will keep us as long as He loves
us—and that’s always. But in view of our total depend-
ence upon God, do we not owe Him the supreme
homage of adoration to acknowledge Him as our Cre-
ator and Preserver? Must we not thank Him as our
greatest Benefactor, and obey Him as our Master? The
word “religion” is from the Latin re-ligare, which
means to bind again—there is no soft sentiment about
it, but it is the cut and dried duty man has of binding
himself to the God Who created him. To have no
religion is a very great sin indeed.

Whilst we are speaking of this subject, you will let
me say that sheer gratitude intensifies this claim of
strict justice. Do we love those who have done us
good? Who love to be with us? Yet who has been
good to us if not the God Who gave us existence, and
so made possible any other good we may receive! Who,
if not a God Who sends His Son! Dear human-hearted
being, just see Eternal Love in the crib; His extreme

poverty; His life of suffering; His death; and all for

you—to have you! And even then, almost as if He
couldn’t do without you, He left Himself in the Euchar-
ist to be able to come into your heart as often as you
will allow Him! At the mere thought of it, one’s heart
should be as the grapes in the wine-press. “To think I
should be so loved!” should be the astonished cry of

every soul. It is a wonderful thing to be loved by a
human being—but to be loved by God, and like that!

It all means that I must indeed serve God. That is
the one good, let others do what they will. I realize,
as they do not, Who God is, and how He loves. I for



32 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

one will never do what He forbids. I cannot go against
the voice of my conscience with such a Lover ever
present. The duties of my state in life, I will do for
Him as well as I possibly can, often asking myself, And
this is for God? Can I not do it better than that?
Dear man amongst men, if we but serve the God of

peace! If not, it’s good-bye to true peace and happi-
ness—they are not for us, either in this life or in the
next. But if we do but serve God—well, we shall see
what His dear generosity has prepared for us when we
treat of the doctrine of heaven.

• YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

VIII.

MAN
Dear Catholic at Last,

I have read and re-read your long letter describing

your actual reception into—what did we call it?—the
two-thousand-years-old Church! The joy of it all would
fill with jealousy the heart of the Catholic whose own
Baptism was at an age when he was too young to
appreciate the deep significance of it. My own heart,
which I thought proof against such contagion, has been

burning with your enthusiasm. For you, every hour

will so augment your inward peace that you will long

for those you love to enjoy the same privileges with
yourself. And years later you will say with Father
Maturin, “There has been an ever-deepening sense of

security and peace and certainty, with moments of
intense realization of the glory and strength of the

City of God, whose walls are salvation and whose

gates are peace."

Meantime, our little course of instruction must con-

tinue—and even when it is over you will realize that
we have merely dipped our finger tips into the vast
ocean of the treasures of Catholic doctrine.

MAN
We now come to a being less interesting to us I hope

than God, yet certainly more interesting than either
the angels or the universe. Let us begin with a brief

analysis of man. He consists of body and soul. Man is
not his body. He is a person consisting of body and
soul. The body is material, the soul spiritual. The soul
is made in the image and likeness of God. It is all the
difference between a corpse and a living, active, opera-

tive human being. A dead body can do nothing but
disintegrate, fall to pieces, go back into its original

dust. There is something that stops your body from



MAN 33

doing that at present—it is the living principle of being
within you—your soul. This soul is that within you
which thinks, which loves, makes you all that you are,
your true self. It is entirely different in nature and

structure from the body and can never cease to exist.

We cannot really therefore destroy ourselves. We can-
not commit suicide. We can only transfer ourselves
from one state of existence into another. Whether it
be in God’s love or hatred; whether it be in supreme
happiness or in direst misery, live on we must by an
absolute necessity of our being.

ORIGIN OF MAN

Dear Neo-Catholic, the Church has no definite teach-

ing on the question of the origin of life in mere vege-

tables or animals. You are free to hold that they
evolved from mere matter or that God directly created
them. I am speaking, of course, from the point of view
of Catholic doctrine. From the standpoint of reason I
don’t think you are free. The vast majority of scientists

holds that no life can possibly arise from non-living

substances, and there they leave the question, not
attempting a solution.

As regards man’s formation the Church is definite.
The reason is that she has for her chief concern his

temporal and eternal well-being. The Biblical account

is that God formed man’s body out of the earth,
and then breathed into it the human soul. As regards
the formation of man’s body out of the earth, it may
have been by God’s own immediate and personal action,
or by a slow process of evolution. A Catholic may hold
either view and still be a Catholic.

THE SOUL OF MAN

In regard to the soul, however, the living spirit, the

true image of God in us which enables us to think, to
will, and to love in a way quite distinct from all other
creatures, we must believe that God directly creates

every human soul. For it is part of God’s revelation

that after He had formed man’s body, then He breathed

into his face “the breath of life,” or, in other words,

created the soul.

Catholics must believe also that all human beings are
descendants of Adam and Eve. “Before Adam,” says
Sacred Scripture, “there was not a man to till the
earth” (Gen. II, 5), and Eve is “the mother of all the

living.”—Gen. Ill, 20.



34 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

God gave great gifts to our first parents. He gave
them sanctifying grace or a supernatural gift making
them sharers of the Divine Nature, so that after a short
time here they were to go to heaven to live with God
as His most dear children, seeing Him “face to face.”
They were also to be free from suffering and death
and to go to their eternal happiness without having to

die. These gifts, however, were conditional.

THE FIRST SIN OF MAN
God rightly demanded that Adam should remember

his true position as a creature, and therefore asked in

exchange for all these gifts one act of submission. And
God was quite honest about it. He impressed upon
Adam the gravity of the matter. “Of the Tree of
Knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in
whatsoever day thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the

death.”—Gen. II, 17. The command God gave was not
very difficult to obey, yet Adam, desirous in his pride
to be independent of God and even to be equal to God,
disobeyed.

The consequences of this open rebellion against God
will scarcely bear description. Man’s soul was for the
first time unlike God. Instead of purity, there was
impurity; instead of justice, there was injustice; instead
of truth, falsehood; instead of mercy, cruelty; hatred

for love—so that no deformity of the human frame is
comparable to the human soul in a state of serious sin.

ADAM’S CHILDREN
Every human being born into this world commences

life in this state of sinfulness inherited from Adam.
And unless God chose to provide a remedy, no one
could ever reach heaven. The children of Adam would
not necessarily incur all the pains of hell, for only our

own actual sins can deserve that. But they would not
go to heaven, nor would they ever see or meet God.

Strange as it may seem, there are people who deny
the existence of original sin. Yet even if there were no

revelation to tell us about it we would know that
humanity is a fallen race. Man is conscious of wicked-
ness. The human sense of sin comes with the dawn
of reason. You, dear man amongst men, know human
life from contact with it. You have seen poor little
human bodies twisted and deformed with apparently no
trace of sin on their part. Does it not leave, to quote

the words of Cardinal Newman, “a sense of profound
mystery which can find a solution only in some terrible
calamity in the very beginning of the human race”?

A QUESTION OF JUSTICE
You may often hear people say, “I do not believe in

original sin. I do not see why I should suffer for a



MAN 35

sin I never committed.” There are three replies to

this common assertion. The first is that our not believ-
ing in original sin will in no way make it cease to be
a fact. The second is that our unbelief has no effect
on the sufferings which are obviously a result of origi-

nal sin. We still have to endure them. And the third
is that to suppose that original sin involves any injus-

tice is a very elementary mistake. If a king were to

say to one of his subjects, “Do this, and I shall raise
you to the peerage, and arrange that all your children
will inherit the title also,” and the father refused, no

one would listen to the children in the years to come,

were they to keep harping on the injustice done to

them in that they had not been raised to the peerage.

Unfortunately for us, our first father failed and we are
born children of a spiritual bankrupt. We shall see
later that God did not leave us in our state of ruin.
True, He did not restore all the gifts that Adam had,
and this is a great mercy. With all its miseries, many
cannot even now resist making this life their all. How-
ever, He gave back the gifts that matter, that is, the
ones that last. Meantime, we get the grace to profit
by the sufferings of time, and so add to the eternal
inheritance He snatched out of the burning fire for us.

THE NATURE OF SIN

It might be well, dear friend, to pause here and con-

sider the true nature of sin. Sin is a crime. Crime is

a breaking of the law, and sin is a breaking of God’s

law. Sin is any wilful transgression of God’s laws. Just
go over that definition two or three times; you cannot
know it too well. Outside the Catholic Church there
is not much idea of what sin is. It is not spoken of.
You don’t read about it in the newspapers. It is ban-
ished from conversation and left out of account. Or
people think that sin is what harms others—as drunk-
enness, because it breaks up homes; or stealing, because

it causes trouble to one’s fellow beings. But there are
hundreds of sins which no one knows anything of save
God and the person who commits them, and which do
harm only to the soul of the agent. In serious matters
this wilful transgression of the known will of God is
a mortal disease, depriving us of all we have had re-
stored by Baptism. In lesser things it is venial, not
inflicting spiritual death, but weakening the soul in

grace and disposing it for mortal spiritual illness.

ITS MALICE

If God could be destroyed, it would be by sin. As a
matter of fact, when God took flesh, sin, the enemy
of that Flesh, was its death. It is a malice against the



36 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

Father—it blots out His image from our soul; it is
malice against the Son—it nails Him to the cross; it is
a malice against the Holy Spirit—it drives supernatural
love from our hearts. Sin enables us to force the One
who loves us to curse us. It is the only power which
seems greater than Divine Love, so bent upon saving
us. If we persevere in sin, if we do not shake it off
in the way God leaves open to us, it will compel God
to close His arms so long outstretched to embrace us,
and death in that state means hell for all eternity.
Men laugh. But if God be Holy, Just and Pure, and
man be unholy, unjust and impure, God and that soul
cannot be united for all eternity—and there’s only one
other alternative.

Since the fall, God has done all that could possibly
be expected of Him to destroy sin. And here, too, is
the difference between the Catholic Church and other

churches. She destroys sin. No other church guaran-
tees to eliminate sin but her. It is her business, and

the interest of her true priests. The Church realizes

that all sin, even venial, is a great evil. No sin is a
small thing which is a step towards eternal loss; or

which offends a great Majesty; or which can only be

cleansed in the Precious Blood of the Incarnate Son

of God; or which will detain us even for the fraction

of a second from the vision of God after death, in
Purgatory, as we shall see in a future paper.
For the obtaining of this grace of a hatred of sin, a

daily prayer will be offered by

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

IX.

THE GOD-MAN
Dear Apostle,

So already you have a non-Catholic friend “reading

with great eagerness” the papers you have received so
far on our all-absorbing subject! I have only one little

word of advice for you: Do not, as many an ardent
convert before you, develop a fever for hustling people

into the Church. If you can awaken their interest, it
is good. If of their own accord they question you
about your new-found faith, it is better. But always

remember that faith is a grace, and that grace is the
fruit, not of questioning curiosity, but of prayer and
all that prayer stands for.

We may say that our last three papers have been
concerned with God as He is in Himself, and as Creator
of all that is not Himself. We have seen, too, the
wreckage man made of his own career. Now we come



THE GOD-MAN 37

to the consideration of God as our Redeemer—a con-
sideration that cannot but move us to the very depths
of our being.

THE INCARNATION

The very center of Catholic teaching is that God the
Son, the Second Person of the most Holy Trinity, be-

came man, and that by His life and sufferings and
death on the cross He made reparation for man’s sins,
both original and actual, meriting for us grace and a

second opportunity of gaining eternal life. As man,
the Son of God took the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus
meaning Savior, and Christ the Anointed or Conse-
crated One. We must believe without any equivocation
that in Christ there are two natures, the Godhead and
manhood, yet only one Personality, that of the Son
of God. I am going to dwell a little on this point,
because it is of the utmost importance at the present

time. I remember talking with a well-educated Angli-
can layman on one occasion, who would have scorned
the suggestion that he was not a Christian. I said to
him, “You believe in Jesus Christ?” “Of course,” he
replied. “You believe that He was Divine?” “Un-
doubtedly!” “You believe, then, that He was God, In-
finite, Omniscient, and Omnipotent?” “Oh,” he replied,

“I wouldn’t go so far as that!” He did not see that

there is only one possible answer to the question,

“What think ye of Christ, whose Son is He?” The

finite mind may rebel. The Pharisees themselves could
not bring their lips to answer this interrogation. Many
non-Catholics, even ministers, will not face the issue.

Yet the only possible answer is the Catholic answer

—

“Jesus Christ is GOD,” in capital letters. We must
accept this doctrine or throw all Scripture to the winds,

and give up all pretense of being Christians. We may
be anything else we like—but we will not have the
right to call our religion Christian. For how can anyone
say, “I believe in Jesus Christ, the Founder of my
religion,” and then in the next breath admit that He
was either a lunatic or a deceiver! I know this sounds
dreadfully blasphemous, but we must face facts. If He
thought Himself to be God, whereas He was just an
ordinary man, He was certainly mad! If He knew quite
well that He was not God, yet insisted that He was,
He was simply a blasphemer and a liar. If Christ were
not God, then it is foolishness itself to continue being

a Christian. The Catholic Church knows this quite well.
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” is
the cry ever on her lips.



38 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

THE CLAIMS OF CHRIST

Dear logician, just run through these few assertions.
St. John wrote in the beginning of his gospel, In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God . . . and the Word was made
Flesh and dwelt amongst us, Jesus Himself did all He
could to be accounted God. I and the Father are one,

He cried.—John X, 30. For which of my good works
do you stone me? He asked the Jews. Not for a good
work, replied the Jews, hut because Thou, being a

man, makest Thyself God.—John X, 33. But if ever
there was a time for Christ to make Himself quite
clear, it was when St. Thomas fell at His feet and
cried, My Lord and my God.—John XX, 28. If He were
not God, He permitted a terrible sacrilege in that
moment! That, of course, was simply impossible. See
the almost terrified earnestness of St. Peter, the head

of Christ’s own Church, lest anything like that should
happen to him on the occasion of the miracle of the
lame man’s cure! Men of Israel, he cried, why look
upon us, as if by our own strength we had made this
man walk ... it is the God of our fathers who has
glorified His Son Jesus . . .—Acts III, 12.

THE WORSHIP DUE TO CHRIST

Jesus Christ was born of Mary, the daughter of
Joachim and Anne, who, as all Catholics are obliged

to believe, ever remained a virgin. No earthly father
therefore can lay claim to Jesus as to a natural son.

The power of the Most High came upon Our Blessed
Lady, the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and she mirac-
ulously became the Mother of God. St. Joseph was
then appointed as protector of the Mother and Child,

who were to mean so much to humanity. I have gone
right back to the birth of Christ, because I want to
face a few facts from the very beginning. We have
seen that Christ was certainly God. Thus we say in the
Creed at Mass, “God of God, Light of Light, True God
of True God.” We do not hesitate. Now listen to the
consequences. To Christ in His Human Flesh, wherever
He is to be found, whether as a Babe in Bethlehem,
where the kings from the East adored Him, or as a

Victim for sin dying on the cross, or as our Guest in

the little Eucharistic Host, we owe that supreme adora-
tion which must be given to God and to God alone.
Everything in the Human Nature of Christ, since it
belongs to the Person of Christ, is also to be adored,

for example, His Most Precious Blood or His Sacred

Heart. When I meet Almighty God in eternity, I shall
not offer Him a different adoration from that which



THE GOD-MAN 39

I now give to Jesus Christ. It may be more intense
owing to my more vivid realization of the truth; it
will not be different in nature.

THE ACTUAL REDEMPTION

This, then is the Christ Who came to redeem us.
How He did so is well known to you. After a life of
singular beauty and devotedness, He allowed Himself
to be condemned to death by the very creatures He
had come to redeem, and died, nailed to the wooden
cross on Calvary, not overpowered by excruciating

pain, but drowned and buried in it. The Precious

Blood of Jesus Christ shed on that hill in Palestine

was the price of our salvation. His veins were drained

for the redemption of humanity. And everything good
and precious came about through that Precious Blood,

so that none of us can attain heaven unless our souls

be bathed and purified in those wondrous streams.

How that Sacrifice continues in the Christian Church,
constituting the very essence of its worship of Almighty

God, we have already seen in our second instruction
on the Sacrifice of the Mass. Here we must turn our
attention to a very deep but interesting question.

THE REDEMPTION OF A SOUL

The water supply of New York is locked up in huge
dams some fifty miles from the city. The water there
is enough to keep all New York and its suburbs sup-
plied. Yet all that storage would be quite useless unless
it were brought into contact with the various houses by
a very intricate system of water mains. There is a
very great similarity between this provision made by
man for the continual refreshment of his animal nature,
and the provision made by Jesus Christ for the redemp-
tion and continual refreshment of the human soul.
The Precious Blood of Jesus was the Price of our
redemption, but it also meant the creation of a tre-
mendous, an infinite supply of divine grace to be at

the disposal of men under certain conditions. Unless
those conditions are fulfilled all that vast storage is

useless to us. It is there, but does not come into con-
tact with us. What those conditions are we shall see
in our next instruction. Today we shall see what may
be the nature of this product of the Precious Blood,

this life-giving element called grace.

THE NATURE OF GRACE

When man sinned he ceased to be pleasing to God.
He forthwith lacked those qualities which alone could
make him attractive in God’s eyes. He put himself



40 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

outsic^e the pale of God’s friendship. He was in dis-
grace with the One with Whom it was all important
to retain friendship. Now, redemption can mean only
a buying back for us of the very quality we had fool-
ishly forfeited. Sin had expelled grace from our soul;
grace must be made to expel sin. So Jesus Christ came
and established inexhaustible stores of divine grace

to effect our reconciliation with God. Now, just what
is grace? Just as whiteness is a quality in the natural

order by which a thing is distinguished from some-
thing that is red, so grace is a supernatural “quality”

which affects the soul of man. It is a very definite

and divine gift of God, through the merits of Jesus

Christ, which lifts the soul on to a new plane, so that
God once more acknowledges us as His sons, and heirs
to the riches of heaven. The possession of grace by the
soul is absolutely necessary, if the soul is to live the

life in heaven. There are two kinds of grace—habitual
and actual.

HABITUAL GRACE
Habitual grace is sometimes called sanctifying grace,

because its chief effect is to sanctify the soul or render

it holy. It not only hides, but it actually destroys all

mortal sin from the soul and makes it definitely and
habitually pleasing in God’s sight. It gives a super-

natural radiance, although we shall have to wait for
heaven before we shall realize all the transcendent
beauty of a soul in a state of grace. This habitual grace

carries with it seven virtues, or powers, by which we
are enabled to perform supernatural actions. Three of

these are called theological virtues, because they deal

immediately with God Himself—Faith, by which we
believe God; Hope, by which we trust in His promises;
and Charity, by which we love Him. The other four
are called the moral virtues, because they affect our

morals or conduct—Prudence, by which we judge all
things in the light of Christian teaching; Justice, by

which we render to everyone, both God and our fellow

man, his exact due; Fortitude, by which we are enabled

to endure all the trials incidental to a holy life; and

Temperance, by which we practice self-restraint, and

deny ourselves those things which cannot be had with-

out sin. You will see that just as the human soul
thinks with its intellect and chooses with its will, so

sanctifying grace is, as it were, the soul of our spiritual

life, which operates by means of these infused virtues

or powers. I would like you to fix these things well

in your memory, dear lay-theologian, so that the next

paper but one may be perfectly intelligible to you.



THE GOD-MAN 41

ACTUAL GRACE

By the possession of habitual grace and the virtues,
we have the power to perform Christian and super-
natural deeds, instead of merely natural ones, which

have no eternal value. But this does not mean that
we will Necessarily do so, any more than to have an
intellect is necessarily to be always thinking, or to

have a will is to be always choosing. So there is

another kind of grace which differs from habitual

grace, and consists in an impulse “to act,” and this

grace is called actual. It is not habitually with us,

but it is given us under certain conditions (which will

be explained next month), to enable us to preserve

habitual grace and actually operate, by means of the
virtues, in a way pleasing to God and meritorious for
ourselves.

MERIT

Since by sanctifying grace man has been elevated to
a participation in the Divine Nature and has been
constituted a true child of God, his very operations

become, as it were, divine, and worthy of an equiva-
lent recompense. This reward consists in eternal life
with God for all in a state of grace, and an increase
of grace and glory for those who are faithful to actual
grace by ever advancing in Christian perfection. Merit
then may be defined as a property of good works per-
formed in a state of grace, by which we acquire a
right to additional eternal happiness. The ability to
merit ceases at the moment of death. This follows
naturally from the fact that from the moment of death
we will no longer be tempted to do wrong, and when
one cannot do anything but good, being no longer free

in the matter, there is scarcely room for merit if he
does it. The practical consequence of this doctrine is
that we are very foolish if we lose even a single day
of the life that is at present entrusted to us. The graces
of today, if lost, are lost for ever. Tomorrow may
bring its own opportunities, but it will not restore
today’s. The good impulses of grace given us today,
if unheeded, will never come back. God may send
others, but today’s will be gone for ever. And it is a
sobering thought that for all eternity we shall never
have more merit than that with which we die. Pur-
gatory may purify us, but its pains cannot add to our
glory in heaven, nor are they in any way meritorious.

OUR RESTORATION
From all that I have said, you will see how complete

has been the success of Christ’s reparation of our first



42 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

misfortune. He has expelled sin, restored us once more
to God’s favor, lifted human nature to a far higher
level than it could ever possibly have risen to had He
not become incarnate, and, if He has not removed all
the merely temporal difficulties which followed in the
train of original sin, He has done something far better
by giving us the means to profit for all eternity by
those very miseries which were sent us as a punish-
ment. Surely the presence of a temporal trial, which
can be productive of eternal merit, is better than free-

dom from it, and it would really have been less gen-
erous of Jesus Christ to remove these occasions of
present detachment and future benefit.

Dear friend, I know how eager you are to learn the
best means to obtain continual supplies of this precious

grace, the fruit of the Passion of Christ. But that I

must leave till next month. You will not find four
weeks too long to ponder over all we have spoken of
today, and the deeper the conviction you have of these
things, the more you will appreciate the value of all
that I must yet explain. Pray for me as I do for you,
and believe me,

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

X.

CHANNELS OF GRACE
Dear Ambition-itself

!

I address you thus because it is the key to your

difficulties. You say that everything is quite as con-
vincing to your intellect as ever it was, but that the

“glow” which you thought would remain for ever seems

to wear a little, and that you find yourself fulfilling

your duties less and less because of the joy of doing

so, and more and more simply because it is right and
just. This is splendid. Excuse my enthusiasm, which
must seem to you quite misplaced. But I know you are
ambitious, and God is leading you by the most direct

route to the attainment of your highest aspirations. I

tremble for the life that is altogether free from trial

and weariness. God certainly would not be bent on

making very much of such a life. You see, there is
a vast difference between Christianity studied and

Christianity practiced. To learn cultured thoughts and

not self-management is not religion. Religion involves

the formation of the whole man, of all his powers, of

all that his character includes. Constancy implies con-

flict, and the inconstant man, who abandons all upon
the least trial, has no notion of what faith is, or prac-

tical religion, or, for that matter, Christian merit. He



CHANNELS OF GRACE 43

has never really learnt the difference between time

and eternity. He does not know their relative values,
and that the sufferings of this present time are not

worthy to be compared to the joy that is to come. He
loves being religious till he has to be religious, then

he quarrels with it—or simply forgets. So keep on
serving God “merely because it is right and just.”
Remember your Catholic notions of faith, grace and
merit, and make a very practical study of the subject
of this month’s paper.

THE CHANNELS OF GRACE

We spoke last month of the vast stores of grace which
are the result of our Lord’s life and death, and we
said that there are two kinds of grace—habitual and
actual. Today we shall consider the means by which
we may obtain supplies of these life-streams. Of
course, you realize that habitual grace is the more

important of the two kinds, but I am going to com-
mence with the general means of securing supplies of
actual grace, which either disposes one for the obtain-

ing of habitual grace, or, supposing one already a happy
resident in the state of grace, perfects it. This means
is within the reach of all and must be used by all,
even by those who have attained the highest Christian
perfection.

PRAYER
Prayer, dear employee of God, is an act of religion

by which a rational being begs of his Creator the
things necessary or useful for salvation. It is not ex-

actly a “channel” of grace, as we shall see, but it wins
from God the direct concession of actual graces for
our every need. It is so important a means of grace
that we can make Cardinal Manning’s words our own,
“Alas for the man who is too busy to pray, for he is
too busy to be saved.” Reading the Sacred Scriptures

we cannot but be struck by the insistence of the sacred
writers on the necessity of prayer. The texts follow
one upon another. Ask, and it shall be given. If any
man want wisdom let him ask of God. Watch and pray
that ye enter not into temptation. We ought always to
pray and not to faint; and so on, almost indefinitely.
An analogy that appeals very much to me is this

:

Grace is the atmosphere of our soul. It surrounds us.
It is a necessary condition of our spiritual life. Prayer
is simply breathing that divine atmosphere. The least
prayer, and our soul is flooded with actual grace, en-
abling us to resist temptation or to perform good
actions. Stop breathing the air that is all about you.
Do so for five minutes, and see what happens. You
will not make the experiment again. The effect of



44 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

ceasing to pray—I do not say for merely five minutes,
but rather I mean habitually—is very like that as re-
gards our spiritual life. And I do say that, if through
neglect of prayer, you give way to temptation, whether
against faith, or holy purity, or any other virtue, the
fall will be through your fault, through your fault,

through your most grievous fault. Of course, in speak-
ing of prayer, I have in mind not any kind of prayer,
but earnest, insistent prayer, in which you mean what
you say, as if you really wanted that for which you
are asking. Such prayers are always heard, even if a
man be actually in sin.

THE SACRAMENTS
We now come to the consideration of the real “chan-

nels” of grace instituted by Jesus Christ Himself.
Habitual grace cannot be obtained except through cer-

tain of these channels, as we shall soon see. But firstly,
let us examine the nature of these channels in general.

A sacrament is a visible and tangible channel of the
invisible grace which is the fruit of the Precious Blood.

It was to be expected that Jesus Christ would establish

the Sacraments, once He had determined upon the
Incarnation. The whole genius of the Incarnation is

the restoration of the invisible by means of the visible.

Jesus came as the visible Destroyer of invisible sin.
And He established a visible Church for the regenera-
tion of the invisible souls of men. Now this regenera-
tion can take place only by the application of the

grace, purchased for us by Jesus Christ, to each indi-

vidual soul; and in accordance with the precedent

already established by Himself, our Lord left to the

Church certain visible instruments by which she might

continue His own great work. These we call the Sacra-
ments. Father Faber, in his book on the Precious

Blood, has a very beautiful description of the Sacra-

ments which I cannot refrain from giving you here.

It is based on the definition of the Council of Trent

that the Sacraments both contain and confer grace.

“The Sacraments,” he writes, “are the machinery of

the Precious Blood. They are the effort of the Precious

Blood to become omnipresent that it might embrace all

souls. It cast itself into Sacraments that it might reach

souls by a quicker road, in more diversified roads,

with a more infallible operation and with a more

abundant success.” And he adds, “They are of in-
exhaustible grace. No one can tell how much grace
lies in a single Sacrament. . . . Who can tell if any
creature has ever yet drained any single Sacrament of

the whole amount of grace which was contained in it

simply by virtue of its being a Sacrament? For the

Sacraments are the actions of Christ. He instituted



CHANNELS OF GRACE 45

them as man, and they are the continuation of the

thirty-three years on earth. Earth’s intercourse with

heaven is carried on today, directly or indirectly,

through the Sacraments. They are causing or hinder-

ing millions of actions daily. Society would hardly

credit to what an extent it is held together by them!”

After this, I know how anxious you must be to review
with me the seven Sacraments which are so important
a part of your Catholic Inheritance, if only that you

may be able to make the very best use of them.

BAPTISM

The first and most important of the Sacraments is
Baptism. By this Sacrament received actually, or if
that be impossible, by desire, or even by the supreme
sacrifice of martyrdom for Christ, the human soul is
regenerated, or born again, to the life of grace which

should have been ours but for the fall of our first

parents. Without this Sacrament no one can possibly

attain to the supernatural life of grace, or ever enter

heaven to enjoy the vision of God. So Jesus Christ

began His public life with the solemn assertion, Unless
a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John III, 5),
and ended it with the commission to His apostles, Go
ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost. (Matt XXVIII, 19.) We know that no one
is saved except by the graces secured by the shedding
of the Precious Blood. Here we are told that no one
is saved except by Baptism. It follows therefore that
Baptism must be a channel of these graces. So, too,
with the other Sacraments. Baptism also, since it alone

confers the supernatural life, must be considered as
the prelude to all the operations of that life, so that

an unbaptized person has no right whatever to the
other Sacraments. It is the gateway to a Christian life.

Nor is it a thing of the past, over and done with. By
it a character has been impressed on our souls, and
we can never again be as if we had not been baptized.
There, then, is the remedy for original sin, the means

appointed by Christ to undo that first great misery,
and apply the fruits of His passion to our souls. It is

an extraordinary fact that many so-called Christians
in the world today are becoming indifferent to a rite
of so serious a nature as Baptism. With so many around
us growing careless, we ourselves must make doubly
sure of the great truths of our religion; and upon no
truth must we have stronger convictions, than upon
one which is laid down by our divine Savior as an
absolute necessary condition of salvation.



46 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

THE OTHER SACRAMENTS
After Baptism, one is newly-born to the spiritual life.

No matter what a man’s years, he is but a beginner
in the ways of supernatural activity. Christ therefore
instituted a second Sacrament, as a kind of comple-

ment of Baptism, to make us strong and perfect Chris-
tians, attaining to the full spiritual strength to which

our spiritual birth should normally lead. This Sacra-

ment is Confirmation. Thus St. Peter and St. John
went to the Samaritans, who had been baptized by
Philip. “Then they laid their hands upon them, and
they received the Holy Ghost. ,,—Acts VIII, 17.
Yet even after Confirmation (which you must receive

as soon as you conveniently can), we are not free from
the danger of falling into actual mortal sin. Confirma-

tion does not destroy our liberty. We, personally, can

fall from God’s friendship as surely as our unhappy
first parents. And we know that we cannot be bap-
tized twice. How then regain God’s love and our own
forfeited spiritual life? Obviously it could only be by
some means such as Baptism itself, by another channel
of the Precious Blood. If Baptism was necessary for
sins that were not our own doing, how much more
necessary must a Sacrament be for the destruction of
sins which are our own doing. Foreseeing all this,
Christ Himself left us a second Sacrament for the

restitution of the habitual grace, conferred by Baptism,

should we have the misfortune to lose it, called Pen-
ance or Confession, a fuller treatment of which I have

already given you in the third instruction. In the same

month I also spoke to you of Holy Communion, which
brings into our hearts the very Author of divine grace,

as the Food of our souls.

Holy Orders is the fifth Sacrament, or channel of

grace, of which St. Paul spoke when he wrote to
Timothy, “I admonish thee that thou stir up the grace

of God, which is in thee by the imposition of my
hands.”—II, I, 6. By this Sacrament certain men,
chosen by God, receive the power to administer all the

Sacraments and “to offer up gifts and sacrifices for

sins,” as we saw in the paper on the Mass.
Matrimony is a great Sacrament to provide Jesus

Christ with children to redeem, which conveys to the

souls of the contracting parties the grace to fulfil, in

a truly Christian way, the duties of their state.

Lastly, we have Extreme Unction, which is clearly
described by St. James. “Is any man sick among you?
Let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let
them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord . . . and if he be in sins, they shall
be forgiven him.”—V, 14.



CHANNELS OF GRACE 47

There then are the seven channels of divine grace

left at the disposal of Christ’s privileged disciples. But

besides prayer and the Sacraments there is yet another

means by which we may obtain actual graces. You
will begin to think the Church simply inexhaustible!

Nor would you be very far out in coming to such a

judgment!

THE SACRAMENTALS

Do you remember how Christ said to the Church,
Whatsoever you hind on earth is hound in heaven,

and whatever you loose is loosed? The Church natu-

rally takes that seriously, and exercises her commission

in very many ways. One of these ways is the institu-
tion of Sacramentals. Have you ever noticed how the
Catholic Church always seems to be blessing somebody
or something in the name of Jesus Christ? Not that
it is surprising when we consider that she exists but
to continue the life-work of Him who went about
doing good! Now Sacramentals are certain visible
objects which have been blessed by the Church with

the intention that they should be means of grace

for the faithful. They are called Sacramentals because
of their resemblance to the Sacraments. Yet they

differ from these in so far as they have not been

instituted by Christ, and also because they do not con-
tain and communicate grace in exactly the same way.
The graces from Sacramentals depend partly upon the
prayers of the Church, and partly upon the good dis-
positions of the person making use of them. Thus the
blessing of the Church upon pious objects raises them
to the dignity of Sacramentals, and additional actual

graces are received from them in virtue of that bless-
ing. Holy water is an example. You must often have
been puzzled to see Catholics taking holy water as they

enter the church. Yet it has a deep significance when
it is done with proper dispositions. It is an act of

faith in the Church to which Christ gave His own
powers, and for which He gave His very life; it is an
act of faith in the presence of God on our altars, in
so far as, by the very act, we acknowledge we are un-
worthy even to enter the same building as Himself;

that it implies an act of true humility is evident; for

most of us, too, it is an occasion for an act of contri-

tion as we say whilst making the sign of the cross, “O
my Jesus, I am sorry for ever having offended Thee,
and I implore Thee to cleanse my soul from every
stain of sin.” So it is, on different occasions and in
various ways, with other Sacramentals,

There then, dear friend, you have the means of com-
ing into contact with the grace of Jesus Christ. You



48 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

are already baptized; you have yet to be confirmed;
Confession and Communion will be frequently at your
disposal; the Sacramentals still more frequently; the
power of prayer of course you carry always with you
—really the difficulty for a good Catholic is not how
to secure grace, but how to escape it! However, with
all these means of grace at our disposal you can be
sure that God expects not a little from us. He is very
ambitious for us—but just in what way I must leave
till our next session. With a good-bye in the God-be-
with-you sense of the word, I remain

YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

XI.

FRUIT

Dear Mountaineer,

So you are eagerly looking forward to the spiritual
program of all that God expects of you, prepared to
scale the very heights of perfection? Your good will
of course is most lovable in God’s sight, but remember
that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and what I am going
to put on paper may take many years and involve
many difficulties in its accomplishment. Virtue studied
is not virtue acquired, and it is the acquiring of Chris-

tian virtue that must be the outcome of our study of

Christian doctrine.

THE THEOLOGIES

I think I can best trace your path by running through

the various theologies with you. The first theology
supposes a man a pagan, and is called “Fundamental
Theology,” because it proves the foundations of the

Christian faith. It appeals to both intellect and will

by showing the historical truth and the moral beauty

of Christianity. Happily, in speaking to you I had no

need to cover all that ground, because you were already

deeply convinced of the truth of the Christian religion.

You were essentially a Christian and knew you could

never be anything else. However, I would advise you

to make a study later on of this branch of theology.
It will strengthen your conviction of the solid rational

basis upon which Christianity rests, and add a hun-

dredfold to your influence in a world which has for-

gotten what it is to be Christian. I am sending you
under separate cover a suggested course of study in

fundamental theology, or, as it is sometimes called,

apologetics.



FRUIT 49

DOGMATIC THEOLOGY
The second branch of theology is called dogmatic.

Here we come to a close study of all the doctrines, or
teachings or dogmas of Christianity. Jesus Christ came

to teach. He wrote no books, but established a Church
instead to tell us exactly what His doctrine is. During

our course we have made a general survey of the
whole of Christian teaching, save for a few truths
which I am reserving for the next and last instalment.
Now it is an act of Christian perfection to know and
accept whole-heartedly this collection of truths taught

us by the Catholic Church in the name of Jesus Christ.
That is why I mention the matter here. You wish to
climb the steps leading to holiness—here is one of the
first rungs of the ladder. Dogma leads to devotion,
but even if it did not, Jesus Christ paid such a heavy
price to bring these truths within our reach that we
should go to some trouble, make some effort to know
as well as possible the doctrines He prized so highly.

MORAL THEOLOGY
Christianity is not merely a collection of things to

be believed. It is essentially a rule of conduct. “Not

everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ ”—these are the words
of Jesus Christ Himself

—
“shall enter into the Kingdom

of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father.”

—

Matt. VII, 21. “If anyone love Me, he will keep My
word.”—John XIV, 23. It follows from this that every
Christian who even makes any pretense of serving God
must observe all that God has seriously commanded.
Now moral theology sets out for us very clearly every-
thing that it would be sinful for us to do. And as
Jesus Christ did not come to destroy the law of God
but to fulfil it, this branch of theology commences
with the Ten Commandments and shows by what
actions man violates them. After that it considers the
precepts or legislation of God’s Church which may also
oblige under pain of serious sin. Since the Church
speaks in the name of Jesus Christ, no one can pre-
tend to love Him who does not rigidly observe these
laws.

But even the observance of God’s commandments
and the laws of the Church does not constitute Chris-
tian perfection. That much simply means that you are
leading a “moral” life. The very title, “Moral Theol-
ogy” tells you that. It shows you how far you can
go without actually breaking your friendship with God.

But with such a wealth of grace at your disposal it
is ridiculous to suppose that that is all God expects
of you. If you assent to the teachings of dogmatic
theology and observe the rules of moral theology, you



50 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

will save your soul. But where and when did God
say that He intended you merely to “save” your soul?
He is much more ambitious for you than that. His
dearest wish is that you should not only save your
soul, but also that you should “sanctify” it; not only
that you should avoid sin, but that you should practice
virtue; not only that you should obey His strict com-
mands, but that you should also put into practice, as
far as possible in accordance with your state in life,
His counsel or advice. This leads us to a further

department of theology called “Ascetical,” which must

regulate the life of those who have the good will to
correspond with God’s higher aspirations in their

regard. But before I begin the analysis of this further

section, I will but mention a theology between moral

and ascetical, so that should you hear the name you
will know to what it refers. This theology is called
“Pastoral,” because it deals with the additional obliga-

tions of those who have accepted the invitation of
our Lord to labor in His vineyard with Him. But

they, too, must attend to the teachings of ascetical
theology if they are at all interested in their personal

sanctification.

ASCETICAL THEOLOGY
When we speak of an “ascetic” we are inclined to

picture some hollow-eyed, gaunt and wasted figure
whose owner has suppressed every natural feeling and
instinct, who has rigidly denied himself all the joys,
even the simpler ones, of human life, and whose whole
ambition seems to have been legitimately to commit
suicide. Now it is almost needless to tell you, that
this is a caricature which has arisen in history partly

from the simplicity of undiscerning Catholics, who
have seen the austerities of their saints without paying

attention to the interior principles which have led
them to a renunciation of all that is not God, and not
to austerity merely because it was austerity; and partly

from the misrepresentations of adversaries whose only

aim has been to make Christianity look absurd. Many
a Catholic biographer with great good will and little

power of historical criticism has given us as the “life”

of a saint simply a catalogue of extraordinary morti-

fications and astonishing external events. Many an
adversary has not failed to seize his opportunity and

make Christian spirituality appear as the science of
reducing the human frame to a skeleton, or the art
of producing a stream of mystifying miracles. How
far short this is of the truth we shall see. As a matter
of fact, holiness implies the cultivation of all the

virtues, and mortification is one of the least of them.



FRUIT 51

Certain it is that the man who voluntarily starves
himself is not therefore a saint, whilst it is equally

certain that not every saint went in for rigid fasting.

So, too, as regards miracles. Miracles may be a sign
of holiness, but holiness by no stretch of the imagina-

tion implies the working of miracles.

TRUE ASCETICISM

The word “ascetic” comes from the Greek, with the

sense of one who makes laborious efforts to perfect
his physical or even moral well-being. The word was
naturally chosen then to describe any Christian who
might make a serious effort to acquire spiritual per-
fection or holiness. Any Christian, therefore, who is
not content with a merely moral life, but wishes to

go beyond what is of strict obligation and progress in

the practice of the Christian virtues can be said to be

leading an ascetical life. There is nothing very terrify-

ing about it. It is not even a question of “being ex-

traordinary.” Our Lord wished that each and every dis-

ciple that would ever come to Him from the day of
the Incarnation till the end of time should lead not

only a moral life, but an ascetical one also. That is

why I am including in this course of instruction, even
for a person in the world, some notions of asceticism,
elementary though they be.

THE VIRTUES

You remember, dear friend, how I catalogued for
you in the ninth instruction the seven Christian virtues
infused together with sanctifying grace. Now these
virtues must not only be possessed, they must also be
developed. And they must be developed side by side.
There is no use in getting a passion for mortification,
which is a blend of temperance and fortitude, and
forgetting all about Christian prudence. No virtue can
be contrary to another virtue. Religion is a part of
the virtue of justice considered in relation to God.
But if an unbalanced religious zeal begins to interfere

with the obvious duties of my home life, it ceases to
be a virtue and becomes an excess. On the other
hand, if the claims of home or of recreation begin
to interfere with my obvious religious duties, they, too,
are an excess, and I must call on the virtue of tem-
perance of self-restraint to help me to keep them
within bounds. It is this constant adjustment of the

virtues one to the other and the simultaneous develop-
ment of them all which constitutes the ascetical life.
There is nothing mysterious about it; there is no Cath-
olic who is not called to it; there is no Catholic who



52 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

has not all the means necessary at his disposal. Grace
is needed, but an inexhaustible supply has been pur-

chased by Jesus Christ, and it can always be drawn
upon by prayer, the Sacraments and Sacramentals.
Discretion is essential, but God never refuses light
when He is asked for it, and if one is still in doubt,
there is always one’s confessor, who will quickly decide
in any apparent conflict where one virtue ends and
another begins. All that has to be done then is to

intensify each virtue within its own proper sphere of
activity, not for the sake of being virtuous—for that
would already spell the abandonment of prudence and
even perhaps humility—but for the sake of our Lord,
Who certainly did not infuse the virtues for nothing,
and Who wants to see me develop them to their highest
capacity in accordance with His grace, for the love of

Him, and to His greater glory in eternity as well as
to my own everlasting happiness.

THE THREE STAGES

The ascetical theologians map out three stages in
the spiritual life, according as one is but a beginner

in this higher Christian life, or has progressed some
distance in it, or is proficient in the practice of every

Christian virtue. In the first period, sometimes called

the “Purgative” way, a man does his best with the
help of grace to purify himself from all habits of sin,

whether mortal or venial. This sounds very like a

“merely” moral life, but it differs in this, that a very

definite fight is undertaken against those tendencies

in us which have impelled us to sin in the past; an

effort, sincere and constant, is made to sanctify our
ordinary actions by purifying our motives—doing them
more explicitly for the love of God instead of “just
doing them”; and we commence a systematic course
of spiritual reading, chiefly of the lives of the saints,

to build up a different estimate of the relative value

of things and to fill our minds with a thoroughly

Christian ambition, so different from that which the

world inspires. In this stage a man is still very far
off from perfection. God will send many sensible and
spiritual consolations to help him on his way. But

although he is filled with a burning desire for per-

fection, he finds himself in the midst of so many im-
perfections and defects that he soon gets over the

idea that he is a saint, should that most foolish of all

foolish notions ever cross his mind. Quickly realizing

that “correct views, high feelings, and devout aspira-

tions” do not constitute true spirituality, he begins

to mortify himself, renouncing his own will where he
might even legitimately follow it, cutting down his



FRUIT 53

merely worldly amusements without in any way de-
priving himself of necessary recreation, and seizing

other little opportunities of putting into practice the

first part of our Lord’s condition to His would-be

followers
—
“Let him deny himself . . But the rest

of our Lord’s sentence must also be observed: “and

come, follow Me.” Thus St. Peter said to Jesus, “Behold

we have left all things and have followed Thee . .
and our Lord replied, “Amen, I say to you, that you

who have followed Me . . not “you who have left
all”; for, as St. Jerome points out, the Stoics, the

pagan philosophers and many others have left all
uselessly, because they did not do it for the love of

God and in the spirit of a follower of Christ.

THE ILLUMINATIVE WAY
In the second period, sometimes called the “Illumina-

tive” way, the soul under the inspiration of God’s grace

has begun to understand, besides the spirit of true

Christian self-restraint, the nature of generosity in

God’s service, continuing independently of prosperity

or adversity to imitate Christ. It profits by the dry-
ness of spirit that now quite often takes the place of
former sensible devotion to abandon self-love, and to
labor for the pure love of God. Prayer, above all in

the form of aspirations or ejaculations, comes more
frequently into the scheme of things. The penalty of
sin becomes less and less a motive of well-doing, and

whilst the soul does not fail to appreciate all that our

Lord has prepared for those that love and serve Him,

it finds that “the preference of the Heart of Jesus” has

grown to be almost its one law of conduct. However,

even with all this, the heights of virtue are not yet

attained. There is still a good deal of imagination,

self-complacency, inconstancy and high desire rather

than perfect action to be met with. And the price of
proceeding further will not be light, though God’s

grace is always there if the good will is not wanting.

THE UNITIVE WAY
In the third period, sometimes called the “Unitive”

way, the soul, as it were, practically comes up with
God, is united to Him as far as it is possible on this
side of heaven. To rid the soul of remaining imper-
fections, God sends a series of drynesses which deprive
the soul of all consolation, yet strangely increase the

desire of heavenly things. It becomes a question of
walking by pure faith and with an invincible will. A
deep contrition for past sins becomes an almost abiding
disposition, yet never in such a way that one’s own
misery obscures the Divine Goodness and Mercy. There



54 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

is no question here of visions or extraordinary con-

duct externally. There is simply an extraordinary

interior fidelity to God whatever He may seem to do
or not to do. It is but the perfect conformity of the

human will with the Will of God, not only in the things
necessary for salvation, but also in all that is required

for sanctification. With a humility and temperance that
knows how to waive all claim to what could hold it
back from God, with a fortitude that fears no trial,
however severe it may be, with a sense of supernatural
justice which can refuse God absolutely nothing, and
a prudence which is nothing less than a reflection of
the Divine Wisdom Itself, the soul stands on the im-
pregnable foundation of a magnificent faith, radiant

with hope in its highest development, transfigured by
a burning charity or love for both God and man. And
there is the Catholic saint, there is the true ascetic,

whether he be fat or thin, tall or short, married or

single, layman or priest, secular or religious, wise or
simple as natural knowledge goes. Into every Catholic

child that has ever been held over the baptismal font

have been infused all the principles necessary for the

attaining of such holiness, though, of course, as I have

said, it means the work of a lifetime unless by the
very special intervention of God. It is the ideal of

dutiful, dry-eyed devotedness.

MYSTICAL THEOLOGY
Mystical Theology deals with the extraordinary ex-

periences which occur sometimes in the lives of very
holy people. I have mapped out above what are known
as the ordinary ways of perfection. Our own activity
can never go beyond them, and any “experiences” that
we strive to attain to by our own efforts will be only
the outcome of our own imagination and self-love, and
will prove very detrimental to our spiritual life. God
has sent certain mystical experiences into the lives

of some of the saints; but the saints themselves have

had nothing to do with the production of these things,

beyond the remote preparation of being holy enough

to deserve them. Often they have occurred almost in

spite of the will of the saint who has been the subject
of the phenomenon. All anxiety for such happenings,

however, soon disappears when we learn that these
extraordinary favors do not give any additional holi-

ness nor add to one’s merit.

Now I have been longer than usual, and I must close.
From the very beginning I have kept on asking you to
make the truths put before you your own. Yet I ask
you to master this month's instruction even more

thoroughly than anything you have previously received.



THE FINAL REALITIES 55

For I have put before you today the things which will

make all the practical difference to the whole of your

eternity. What “Eternity” is we shall see next month.

May God give you the grace and courage to fulfill His
highest aspirations for you, and may our Lady lead
you along a way she herself has followed. Ask these

same graces for
YOUR FRIEND AND FATHER.

XII.

THE FINAL REALITIES

My very dear Friend,
I could not refrain from laughing on reading your

letter of last week, and my reply is: “Yes, even you can
attain to the very heights of asceticism.” I admit that

it will involve difficulties, but nothing worth while has

ever yet been easy to obtain, and holiness, believe me,

is very much worth while. This month’s instruction
will spur you on to a greater earnestness. For today we
are to give the answer to the question, “What is it all
for?” We are to consider the last great realities in the
light of Catholic doctrine.

WHAT HAPPENS AT DEATH
Death, as we have seen, is a punishment for sin which

God saw fit to leave even after restoring us to grace.
By putting us into a state of grace, He robs death of its
terror, provided we keep in that state. The only thing
in death to make us tremble is the thought of having to
face God in a state of mortal or serious sin. Then in-
deed there is cause to tremble. But apart from this,

death is but a physical illness which separates us from
this world and ushers us into the next. Now, what does
actually happen after death? Very few seem to know,
the reason being that most people won’t listen to what
God Himself says about it, preferring to puzzle it out
for themselves, chiefly with the imagination rather than

with intelligence.

TIME CEASES

Now, the Church knows exactly what happens at
death. You see, she alone has heard the account from
God’s own lips, and He alone it is Who can really know
for certain just what occurs to each soul from the
moment it leaves the body. And the Church passes on
the information to us. It saves us a lot of trouble, and
frees us from the necessity of bothering with spiritism,

materializations, and the planchette. Immediately after
death, the soul enters eternity. It has left the body,



56 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

which, from the moment of its birth till the moment of
its death, linked the soul with time. Henceforth there

is duration without end. It may be a duration of
happiness without end, or it may be a duration of
misery without end; or again, it may be that this dura-
tion without end will be first of misery, and then
change and continue in happiness. But there can be no
question of death or destruction. Were you to count
millions and multiply them again and again till your
head is confused and your eyes swim and your tongue
falters, you are no nearer exhausting eternity than
when you began. It is a sobering thought.

THE SOUL IS JUDGED

Immediately after death each soul is judged. “It is

appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the
judgment.”—Heb. IX, 27. When the doctor says, “The
man is dead,” we can say, provided the doctor be
correct, “The man is judged.” And at that judgment
our life will appear just as it has been in reality.
There nothing can be added, nothing got rid of.

Whether we think of it or not, by the mere fact of
living we are running up accounts with God, and a
settlement will have to be made. And the result of
that judgment can be summed up in three lines:

—

The soul is in a state of Christian perfection, or in
venial sin, or in mortal sin. The result, therefore, will
be, if the soul is: Quite lit, heaven; not quite fit, purga-

tory; quite unfit, hell. A very practical thought sug-
gests itself from these considerations. There is no sense

in living as if life were never to end, and we never to
be judged. Luckily, if we have serious sins, we may
free ourselves from them now by confession, if we will.
They are good things to be free from. As a matter of

fact, there is a way, too, of diminishing, if not alto-

gether destroying, the purification we shall most of us
need for our venial sins in purgatory—but of that in
a moment. Let us first ask ourselves what the Church

teaches us about all three places.

HELL

There is scarcely need to tell you that many nowa-
days are trying to persuade themselves that there is

no hell. You read the comments made by popular
writers in almost every newspaper. They seem to dis-

like the place intensely. Of course, for that matter, so

do I. The only difference is that I cannot persuade

myself that my dislike for the place makes it cease to
exist. Well, let us have a look at it. I begin with hell,

because I prefer to finish these instructions with

heaven, the place where, please God, we are going.



THE FINAL REALITIES 57

Anyway, the notion of hell will help us to be grateful

to God if only for what He has enabled us to miss. All
who die in mortal sin are cast into hell. Whether we
like it or not, that is simply the teaching of Jesus

Christ, the Son of the Living God, Who created hell
to punish the devil and his angels. If you ask me why
I believe in hell, there is my chief reason. The God
Who made me and all that exist has told me that it is
there—surely a very good reason. And I am fearful
of the place—again because our Lord Himself has said,
Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able
to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy
both soul and body in hell.—Matt. X, 28. Since both
body and soul eventually go there, the sufferings will
include both the consciousness of our loss and the pain

of sense. The sinner dies rejecting God; throughout
eternity, his will remains fixed in its rejection of God.

And the soul realizes that, by its own continuing hatred
of God, it is excluded from His presence for ever. It
sees that it has missed the one thing for which it was
created, and the one thing which could have made it
happy, the one thing it will never obtain, because it

will not turn with love to God. No man in an open
boat, driven mad by thirst could want water as the
lost soul will feel the radical need for God, only to

realize ever more intensely that it is excluded from
heaven by its own unchanging wickedness. Lost souls
will suffer, too, the pain of sense. To satisfy their
senses they abandoned God’s commands, and their

senses will be tormented in some dreadful way, for the
description of which our Lord had to fall back on the

image of unquenchable fire.—Mark IX, 42. The gentle
Christ made the rich man cry. Send Lazarus to dip the
tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I am
tormented in this flame.—Luke XVI, 24.
There then is the Catholic doctrine. We saw in the

eighth instruction that if a man die just the opposite of
all that God is, he cannot but go to some place where
is the very antithesis of that wherein God resides, and
the place which is the opposite of heaven from every
point of view we call hell. In any case, one has only
to look upon a crucifix to realize that hell must exist.
It would simply be absurd for the Son of God to come
down and go through all that suffering if there were
no eternal misery to save us from, if it were all going
to be the same in the end whether He died or not, if
we were all going to get to heaven in the end. The
only way to abolish hell, then, is to abolish our own, by
avoiding the only thing that can take us there—sin.
Now, the Catholic Church has no connection with hell.
Her one business on earth is to stop people going there.



58 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

If she insists on the doctrine, it is to make her children
all the more determined to avoid it and all that leads
to it. Not that she wants us to serve God from fear.
We should do so from a motive of love. Yet Scripture
says: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
And if the fear of hell prevents us from committing
mortal sin and so saves our soul, it is a fear well worth

having. No one goes up to a man who has just saved
his life by a fraction of an inch by leaping out of the
way of an oncoming express train, and says to him in
a tone of withering scorn, “You did that from sheer
fear.” The man would reply without a blush, and as
if to a lunatic, “Of course I did, and I would do so
again from the same sheer fear in the same circum-
stances.” The same sheer fear of hell, which is a far
worse disaster than being smashed to fragments by an
express train, is an “emergency brake” in my own life,
and would certainly block me from mortal sin should
all other motives fail.

PURGATORY
I said that the Church has nothing to do with hell.

But she has a very intimate connection with both

purgatory and heaven. There are three great divisions

of the Catholic Church—the Church Triumphant (in
heaven), the Church Suffering (in purgatory), and the

Church Militant (on earth). The intercommunion be-
tween these three sections is asserted in the Apostles'

Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.” The
Church Suffering consists of all those souls who are in
purgatory. All who die the happy possessors of habitual
grace, yet still owing something to Divine Justice

because of their venial sins, must undergo a certain

purification before being admitted to God’s presence.

Sacred Scripture says, Nothing defiled shall enter

heaven.—Apoc. or Rev. XXI, 27. So, too, in the Old
Testament: It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray

for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins.
—2 Mach. XII, 46. As it is no use praying for those
who are in hell, and there is certainly no need to pray
for those who are safely in heaven, it is obvious that
there is a place of temporal suffering, or purification,

or purgation—purgatory. It will be a great misery. To
be so close to God, yet separated from Him, will be

dreadful suffering—far worse than anything we can
experience in a world where everything conspires to

distract us even from our miseries. Still hope will

always remain. I think we can best put it this way:
By mortal sin a soul renounces God; justice then de-
mands that it be renounced. By venial sin the soul, as
it were, “keeps God waiting,” only to find that it too



THE FINAL REALITIES 59

must, in its turn, “be kept waiting” for all that can

alone make it perfectly happy. After all, to be purified
will never be an easy matter. But it is easier for us

to purify ourselves here by frequent Confession and
Communion, by many acts of contrition and by the
gaining of indulgences, than to wait for purgatory to

do it. And this brings me to another famous Catholic
doctrine.

INDULGENCES

Everybody in heaven is a Catholic. Everybody in
purgatory is a Catholic. Good Protestants are saved,
not because they are Protestants, but because they are

good. They become Catholics the moment they die
and see the truth. And between Catholics on earth and
those in heaven or in purgatory there flourishes a most

intimate relation. We ask each other’s prayers on
earth; we do not believe that our holiest and best lose
their power to pray for us merely because they have
been transferred to heaven, so we often ask them to
continue so doing. And as the Church Triumphant
assists the Church Militant, so the Church Militant
assists by its prayers the Church Suffering.

But our chief means of helping the souls in purgatory

is by gaining indulgences for them, even as we may
gain them also for ourselves. An indulgence is not a
permission to commit sin. It is not even the forgiveness

of a sin, mortal or venial. It is the remission of the

temporal punishment due to sin. God Himself forgives
sin without always remitting the punishment due to it.

He said to David by the prophet, The Lord hath taken
away thy sin—thou shalt not die. Nevertheless, the son
that is born of thee shall surely die.—2 Kings XII, 13.
So, too, our sins are forgiven if our sorrow for them is
as great as their malice demands; but in the measure

that our sorrow falls short of what is due, God, in His

mercy, allows us to make up by suffering here or in
purgatory. To diminish that suffering, the Church from
the very earliest times has imposed penaces even in

this life, and in a spirit of generosity, relying on

Christ’s promise that whatsoever she might loose on

earth would be loosed in heaven, she has remitted those
penances for those who would do other good works,
and offer prayers for the well-being of the Church
Militant. Owing to the doctrine of “Communion of
Saints,” the faithful are in the habit of securing the

indulgences by doing the good works prescribed, and
then in a spirit of generosity inspired by that of the
Church herself, of handing them over to the souls who
are actually undergoing the sufferings due to their sins.
An indulgence of “three years” means the remission of



60 MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA

suffering bearing, in the Church’s mind, some relation
to that which would have been expiated by three
years of the canonical penances imposed in the early

Church. A plenary indulgence is the remission of all
the suffering due to sin. Even if you give all the
indulgences you gain during life to the suffering souls,

you will not be the loser, as your act of charity makes
you very lovable in God’s sight, and the Church herself

will be all the readier to grant you a plenary indul-
gence at the moment of your own death, which if you
are in very good dispositions, will spell heaven for you

without delay.

*

“MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA”

INDEX
Page

I. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 1

II. THE SACRIFICE 4

III. CONFESSION 8

IV. EVENING DEVOTIONS 13

V. FAITH 17

VI. GOD 22

VII. ANGELS AND THE WORLD 27

VIII. MAN 32

IX. THE GOD-MAN 36

X. CHANNELS OF GRACE 42

XI. FRUIT 48

XII. THE FINAL REALITIES 55



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Booklet No. 12
MINUTE MEN CATHOLAGANDA Follow-Up Convert
Correspondence Course

(Additional charge for this 64-page booklet

)

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RUMBLE AND CARTY
“RADIO REPLIES”

ST. PAUL, MINN., U. S A.

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