“The Catholic Publication Society has the unanimous consent, and sympathy, and co-operation of the entire episcopate and clergy.  Every year there is a collection to be taken up in the principal churches for its support.  I have drawn an elephant, but I do not feel like the man who did not know what to do with him after he had got him.”

“It is good in God to place me in a position in which I can act efficiently.  The disposition towards me is, I know, most pleasant and favorable.  I have been placed where I shall be at liberty to act and direct action.  Quietly pray for me as the Holy Spirit may suggest.  On my part I will also seek the same guidance.  How good God is to give it!”

The Council had hardly adjourned when it began to be plain that in legislating for The Catholic Publication Society the prelates had been over-stimulated by the zeal of Archbishop Spalding and the personal influence of Father Hecker himself, who was present in his capacity of Superior of the Paulists.  He went among the bishops and pleaded for the Apostolate of the Press with characteristic vigor, and with his usual success.  Aided by the archbishop, he lifted the Fathers of the Council for a moment above what in their sober senses they deemed the exclusive duty of the hour.  This was to provide churches and priests, and schools and school-teachers, for the people.  Already far too numerous for their clergy, the Catholic people were increasing by immigration alone at the rate of more than a quarter of a million a year.  Every effort must be concentrated, it was thought, and every penny spent, in the vast work of housing and feeding the wandering flocks of the Lord.  And certainly the magnitude of the task and the success attained in performing it can excuse the indifference shown to the Apostolate of the Press, if anything can excuse it.  But it seemed otherwise to Father Hecker, as it does now to us.  For the Catholic people could have been better and earlier cared for in their spiritual concerns if furnished with the abundant supply of good reading which the carrying out of Father Hecker’s plan would have given them, and that at no great expense.  What substitute for a priest is equal to a good book?  What vocation to the priesthood has not found its origin in the pages of a good book, or at any rate been fostered by its devout lessons?  And all history as well as experience proves that the best guarantee of the faith of a Catholic, moving amidst kindly-disposed non-Catholic neighbors, is the aggressive force of missionary zeal.  The Publication Society, if brought into active play, would have done much to create this zeal, and would have supplied its best arms of attack and defence by an abundance of free Catholic reading.  It would have helped on every good work by auxiliary forces drawn from intelligent faith and instructed zeal.

A closer view of the case shows that antecedents of a racial and social character among the people had something to do with the apathy we have been considering.  To a great degree it still rests upon us, though such organized efforts as the Catholic Truth Society of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Holy Ghost Society of New Orleans indicate a change for the better.