DENTIST TO. Sisters of Notre Dame, New York Foundling Hospital, St. Joseph's Asylum and Christian Brothers DR. JOSEPH KUHN Member of Father Nicot Council, 253, C. B. L. Member Salve Regina, K. of C. ...DENTIST... Funeral Parlors: 245 East 90th Street, between 2d and 3d Avenues Tel. 2922-79th DRAFTS AND MONEY ORDERS ON IRELAND, ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND IRISH EMIGRANT SOCIETY 51 CHAMBERS STREET OCTOBER, 1908 MY GUARDIAN ANGEL Every ill and every harm, Guardian Spirit, can I offer Aught to ease this task of thine? Is there anything to proffer For thy love so like divine? Would the brightest gem of ocean Be an offering meet for thee? Or the loveliest pearl, or amber From the far-off Indian Sea? Could I wrest a star from heaven, To add lustre to thy crown: Naught so transient, gentle Spirit, If from sorrow's fount they spring. Souls that list thy gentle teachings Are the purest offering. -Gertrude. THE ROSARY During October the Church calls on us to pay our tribute of love and gratitude to the Blessed Virgin, the Queen of the Holy Rosary. The Rosary is not a prayer of senility or stupidity. It was the prayer of the greatest doctors and most distinguished saints. It is the great devotion of the Dominicans among whom we find the most profound scholar, the angelic doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Alphonsus, a doctor of the Church, never tired of saying the Rosary. We see the Rosary suspended from the girdle of many of our religious orders of priests and sisters. Every Catholic should have a Rosary, and it should be said every day, if not five decades, at least one decade. Join the Rosary Society and learn not only to love this form of prayer, but also to share in the great privileges and blessings of this great confraternity. WANTED-MORAL TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS Is the Reading of the Bible of any The lack of moral training in the education given by the public schools, is becoming universally recognized as a defect. The best friends of the common schools now openly deplore it. Teachers themselves admit it. The National Education Association, at its recent meeting in Cleveland, adopted this resolution: "We hope for such a change of public sentiment as will permit and encourage the reading and study of the English Bible in the public schools." In other words, they ask for authority to use a text-book of religion. They see in many of the children an absence of ethical home training and church training. They are aware of the increase of juvenile crime. They see daily instances of lying, theft, irreverence, disobedience, profanity, and impurity. They know that the most important work of the school is the formation of character-the training of the heart, the discipline of the will. Therefore they ask permission to have the public school children read the Bible as a daily exercise. This is a notable resolution on the part of the National Education Association. It marks an advance of the cause of religious education. It is a hopeful augury for the future-that the majority of the schools of the Republic may yet be Christian as they are now Godless. But the Association should take into due consideration two facts: 1. They petition for "the English Bible" as if that were a book accepted by all citizens and the use of which would do injustice to none. Do they Do they mean the King James version? If they do, they ought to know that that translation is crowded with errors, deliberately made to falsify the Word of God, and that it is regarded by Catholics in its mutilated and erroneous passages, as lying, sectarian and heretical. 2. The reading of the Bible, a chapter a day, is not sufficient to train the children in doctrine and good morals. Except for a story here or a text there, it will not cling to their memories. They cannot get from hearing it read bit by bit a systematic and thorough synthesis of the dogmas of faith on which Christian morality is based. Put it to the proof and you will find in places where the Bible is read, students in the High school, who have made the full course and listened to the reading of Scripture, a chapter a day, five days in the week, nine to ten months in the year, for nine, ten, eleven, and twelve years, who cannot recite the Ten Commandments. They don't know by heart the simplest elements, he fundamental obligations of • moral on luct. This is a fact that can e demonstrated. The reading of the Bible, a chapter a day is not sufficient to instruct the chi piety; an the reading of the Protestant version of the Bible is an injustice to Catholics, Jews, and many other citizens. The ublic ought to have religion in its schools. But it should have it in a way that will be fair to all its citizens. Make good use of your fortune during life Be not blind enough to depend on heirs, believing that, having forgotten yourself while on earth, they will remember you when you have departed, and give alms in your name. Now that you are able, do what lies in your power. GIVE THE BOYS A CHANCE Every year, towards the beginning of the autumn school-term the Monthly is wont to make a plea for the boysthat they may not be sent out to work before they are half educated; that, according to their capacity and the means of their parents, they may be given an academic, a technical or a collegiate course; that their sisters may not be educated above them, and they may have their Christian character thoroughly developed before they are thrust out into the furnace of the world, and that they may not be kept down as drudges through ignorance, but may by training be fitted to take a fair share of the high places in life. Only a few more years of sacrifice on the part of the parents concerned, are necessary. Then, for all time, they will get their reward. Their sons will be a credit to them and can do more for them than if the lads be sent out now to work at poor jobs. Even from the pecuniary point of view, the struggle is worth while. Give the boys a chance-send them back to school. THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE It was Huxley, we think, who compared the clergy of the Catholic Church to the soldiers in the regular army, while the Protestant clergy, he seemed to feel, were more like to the militia, or volunteer soldiers, not under real army discipline and in army order. We will not insist, to-day, on the latter part of his comparison. As to the other section, it will bear further development, and it is well worth development. The Catholic Church has a visible head, Christ's vicar, the Pope at Rome. He has under his eye, in his care, within his knowledge, every diocese and every Bishop throughout the world-wide Catholic Church. Each Bishop has in his constant care and oversight every parish and every priest in his diocese, and at any moment he must answer concerning the The condition of affairs in that See. priest goes where he is sent, and not where he chooses, although it is true that in becoming a priest he chose to For go wherever he might be sent. he does not go simply because the Pope sends him there. The soldierly, loval, ready obedience of a Catholic priest or of a prelate is rendered, first of all, to his Divine Master and Redeemer, Whose visible representative on earth is the Sovereign Pontiff at Rome. In a most true and exact sense the Pope himself is simply "the servant of the servants of God;" he is the mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost; he is not set apart to issue his command on his mere human will and idle wish; his duties, his burdens are much heavier, his responsibilities greater, his field of endeavor is the world; he must answer to God for what he does. The priest goes into danger, as a soldier goes, at duty's call. He will face powder and shot with the national army on the battlefield, he will walk into the pest-house, he will dwell with the lepers, he will scale the Alpine heights and face the torrid sun; but his struggles, his heroism, his warfares, are for the winning of souls to Christ. In little country villages he will spend a long life peacefully and joyfully among the poor, the lowly, the little children, as he will labor in crowded city streets and tenements, and for vast congregations, because he is seeking for souls, working for souls, and souls are everywhere. His banner is the cross, it is the Church's banner; his weapons are prayer and the Sacraments, and the preaching of the word; his family is his parish: his life is his work; nay, his life is Jesus Christ and His work, and the Holy Spirit of living flame is the strength and light of the priest's existence here. What, then, should the people be, the people to whom this God-given priesthood ministers in life and death? Theirs, too, should be a life of consecration to duty and to the Catholic. Church; a life of love for God, of loyalty to the true Faith, and to the Su preme Pontiff, to the hierarchy and the priesthood. In the Pentecost season, when the Spirit of God came down upon the Apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel in all lands, special prayers should arise for all priests and bishops who are treading to-day in their footsteps, as Christ's soldiers, whether at home or abroad. The Pentecostal Novena should be very specially for them, that every best blessing may be theirs, and, through them, may come also upon every soul they have in charge. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, CARDI- President Roosevelt and distinguished Catholic prelates have of late discussed Socialism and pointed out how visionary and impractical is the Socialists' Utopia as applied to the conditions that prevail in the United States. The President gave the socialist idea a hard jolt in. a speech which he made at the unveiling of the monument to Capt. John Underhill, an Indian fighter of the Colonial period, at Matinnecock, near Oyster Bay, on July 10 h. As usual, the President's speech was published in the daily newspap rs and now the Socialists, led by Mrs. Pose Pastor Stokes of New York are wearing out their pens writing letters to the newspapers trying to show tnt the President does not understan the basic principles of socialism. Be that as it may the President's speech is one that the average man can understand, and this is more than can be said of the speeches and the writings of the men and women who are now preaching socialism in the 'n te! States. This is what the President said on this subject: Sound American Doctrine "Now if there is one lesson that we here in America ought to keep continually before us it is our substantial oneness, our substantial unity as a people on one of the best ways to exemplify that is by just such a family gathering as this. If the family has been long enough in the land, why you will find its representatives in every walk of life; you will find them filling all kinds of occupations; you will find them as capitalists and wage workers, farmers, merchants, professional men-everything; and the essential point to remember is that each one is entitled to the fullest and heartiest respect if he does his duty well in the position of life in which he happens to find himself. "That is sound American doctrine. I should not much care to attend an Underhill gathering that was limited to capitalist Underhills nor yet one limited to Underhill wage workers, but I am glad to attend one where every one comes in on the basis of decent American citizenship, each standing ruggedly on his own feet as a man should. "The same thing that applies to you Underhills here applies to the rest of us who are not Underhills in the country at large. We have made this country what it is partly because we have measurably succeeded in securing in the past equality of opportunity here. "That is very different from equality of reward. I believe emphatically in doing everything that can be done by law or otherwise to keep the avenues of occupation, of employment, of work, of interest, open that there shall be, so far as it is humanly possible to achieve it, a measurable equality of opportunity; equality of opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him. But when it comes to reward, let him get what by his energy, foresight, intelligence, thrift, courage, he is able to get with the opportunity open. I don't believe in coddling any one; I would no more permit the strong to oppress the weak than tell a weak man or a vicious man that he ought by rights to have the reward due only to the man who actually earns it. "Very properly we in this country set our faces against privilege. There can be no grosser example of privilege than that set before us as an ideal by certain socialistic writers-the ideal that every man shall put into the common fund what he can, which would mean what he chose, and should take out whatever he wanted. In other words, this theory is that the man who is vicious, foolish, a drag on the whole community, who contributes less than his share to the common good, should take out what is not his, what he has not earned; that he shall rob his neighbor of what that neighbor has earned. This particular socialistic ideal would be to enthrone privilege in one of its grossest, crudest, most dishonest, most harmful and most unjust forms. "Equality of opportunity to render service, yes, I will do everything I can to bring it about. If the service is equal let the reward be equal, but let the reward depend on the service, and, mankind being composed as it is, there will be an equality of service for a long time to come, no matter how broad the equality of opportunity may be, and just so long as there is inequality of service it is eminently desirable that there should be inequality of reward. But in securing a measurable equality of opportunity let us no more be led astray by the doctrinaire advocates of a lawless and destructive individualism than by the doctrinaire advocates of a deadening socialism. "As society progresses and grows more complex it becomes desirable to do many things for the common good by common effort. No empirical line can be laid down as to where and when such common effort by the whole community should supplant or supplement private and individual effort. Each case must be judged on its own merits. Similarly, when a private or corporate fortune of vast size is turned to a business use which jeopardizes the welfare of all the small men, then in the interest of everybody, in the interest of true individualism, the collective or common power of the community must be exercised to control and regulate for the common good this business use of vast |