Up to the time of the Parnell crisis the priests imagined their feet were planted upon a solid rock; they discovered they were standing on a pie-crust.  What a startling revelation was in store for them.  Small wonder they rubbed their eyes and asked in bewilderment, Are we in Catholic Ireland?

The ground broke; the fiery breath of hell belched forth.  We saw the devil spitting hate through the lips of politicians, the columns of the Press, and the resolutions of the schoolmasters.  Terrible as was this outward exhibition, it revealed but a fraction.  The spirit of revolt and infidelity that raged within the breasts of young men and darkened their conversation was awful.  The writings of avowed freethinkers and libertines were devoured, and if any young man had the heroic courage to remonstrate, his words would be drowned in derision.

God permitted that warning to come, but have we taken it as a warning?  What efforts have we made since to secure the entrenchments?  The danger passed, and we sank back into the old, dreamy lethargy, and left the field open to the devil to sow his tares anew.  Our greatest danger to-day is our apparent safety.  We wrap ourselves into a false security, while a dry rot is permitted to stealthily corrode the pillars of intellectual conviction that must uphold all.  Unless this is fought, and fought effectively, the structure of our Catholic life will topple like a house of cards.

[Side note:  Objections answered]

All looks calm now, but so long as the causes that produced the sad outburst of twenty years ago continue unchecked, worse inevitably awaits us.  I may be told.  Look at the union of priests and people to-day; look at our flourishing sodalities and our beautiful churches.

The union of priests and people was then tested by one strong wrench, and it snapped; and so long as the evil forces that caused the fissure continue to gnaw once more the bond that unites the hearts of priests and people, is it stronger you expect that bond to grow?

With regard to our pious sodalities.  Did the question ever present itself—­How much of the average sodalist’s piety is resting on sentiment and tradition, and how little of it on intellectual conviction?  Transplant him from the hotbed to the ice-chills of infidelity in America or Australia, where the very air is electric with doubt and denial, and when the storm beats upon him, is his head armed to defend his Faith?

Where could he get the necessary knowledge?  Not from the book in his hand, for it is “Marie Corelli” or “Hall Caine” you find him best acquainted with.  Not from the Catholic newspaper, for the question is—­Do we possess one?  It is a strange fact that while Irish Catholics abroad have founded, and support, splendid Catholic journals in every land where they have found a home, the mother Church from which they sprang is practically defenceless.  He gets poor assistance from the pulpit; for while homilies and exhortations are admirable in their way, they fall far short of covering the needs of this questioning age.  Our dogmatic treatises are permitted to lie entombed in dust on our top shelves, while clear and homely exposition of Catholic truth would be drunk in like honey by the people.