WHAT A CATHOLIC PAPER SAYS.
THIS is the way the New York Catholic News states the matter. There are some points well put, from which Protestants may learn a lesson, as, for instance, helping the poor. It is from an article on changing religions:— According to the figures furnished by Father Nugent, the most active propagandist parish in New York is that of St. Francis Xavier. During the past twelve months it has made no less than one hundred and fifty converts. Some of these were previously without any religious faith. . . . But the great body of them represented a distinct tide flowing from Protestantism into the elder church. “It is but one step from this to Rome.” To which the high churchman from St. Paul’s responded: “Ah! the Reformation was a mistake—the abuses should have been corrected without a secession of the reformers.” Among the converts which the Catholic Church makes from other communions, Episcopalians are in a large majority. Father Van Rensselaer, of St. Francis Xavier’s, is a conspicuous example. Both communions assert an apostolic succession, and, both historically and sympathetically they are drawn to each other more powerfully than any other denomination is drawn to them. But the Protestant who is attracted by the doctrines and ceremonies of the Catholic Church is to be found, it appears, in every walk of Christian faith, and this is largely due to its practical charity. A priest whose work has chiefly been in the tenemented districts in the eastern and western sections of the city informed the reporter that he had made more converts in one year by distributing bread than he had made by thirty years of pulpit talk. One morning a man came to the rectory and said to him: “Father, I cannot get work to do, and since yesterday I have not tasted a morsel of food. I do not ask for money or bread, but for assistance to obtain some employment. Can you help me?” The good priest did help him and promptly. He went to the proprietor of a dry goods store on Sixth Avenue, stated the circumstances, and begged as an act of charity that he would take the man into his employ. He was set to work unpacking boxes of merchandise, and is to-day regarded as one of the most diligent and faithful employees of the establishment. “Perhaps it would not surprise you to hear,” continued the priest, “that since the Briggs controversy in the Presbyterian denomination began the proportion of converts from that source is becoming greater.” The priest did not think that the conversions which take place from one body of Protestant worshipers to another were significant of anything except the spirit of restlessness and inquiry now so widely observed. The difference between Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, and Methodists he said are really differences of form not differences of things essential. Like all men, they want to know absolutely what the truth is. They realize that they can’t find it by sitting still. They must get up and hunt for it. So they move across one denominational line after another, and when there are no more denominational lines to cross, they still feel that they ought to keep on moving.