Chapter XVI: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them (10)

The fall of France, notwithstanding the faith, piety, and charity of so large a portion of her people, will probably prove only a temporary injury to Catholic interests. France has fallen because she has been false to her mission as the leader of modern civilization, because she has led it in an anti-Catholic direction, and made it weak and frivolous, corrupt and corrupting. Providence is severely punishing her; but he has not, we trust, cast her off for ever. She has in her bosom still millions of Catholics, and these have only to come forward in the strength of their religion, displace the enemies of God, take themselves the management of the affairs of the nation, and show the wisdom and energy they did in 1848, when they put down the red republicans and socialists. They will then enable France, in spite of the grasp of the conqueror and the fierce opposition of the destructives, to recover, slowly and painfully, it may be, but nevertheless to recover, and to prove herself greater and more powerful than ever. When France becomes once more a really Catholic nation, the revolution will be extinguished, infidelity will lose its popularity, atheism will no longer dare show its head, and a reaction in favor of the church will take place, so strong and so irresistible 304 that the whole world will be affected by it, and the nations that have so long been alienated from unity will be brought back within the fold.

The only obstacle to this grand result which we see is in the timidity, in the lack of energy on the part of Catholics in the assertion and defence of their religion, or in their want of courage to confide alone in God for success. Adversity, we think, can hardly fail to reform and reinvigorate them, and to direct their attention to their true source of strength as Catholics or the children of God. They will learn from it to adhere more closely to the Chair of Peter, and to rely more on the internal direction of the Holy Ghost, and less on the aid of the secular order. No doubt, the present state of things imposes additional labors as well as sufferings on the bishops and clergy in old Catholic nations, and requires some modifications of the education of the priesthood now given in our seminaries. Our Levites must be trained for a missionary world, not for an old Catholic world; but this need alarm no one; for the greater the labors and sacrifices in the service of God, the greater the merit and the reward.

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A MEMORY.[77]

’Twas only a prayer I heard
In that vast cathedral grim,
Where incense filled the air
And vesper lights burnt dim.

’Twas only a woman’s form,
Kneeling with upturned face,
That looked through the pictured altar
Up to the throne of grace.

Clasped in her small white hands
An amber rosary telling;
While from her glorious eyes
Teardrops fast were weelling.

No thought for the world without,
No thought for the stranger near,
As pausing and sobbing she murmured,
“O Mother of sorrows, hear!”

And I, in a land of strangers,
Joined in the pleader’s prayer:
Praying for her that I knew not,
To Her who I felt was there.

[77] By one who is not a Catholic.

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THE HOUSE OF YORKE. 305