Reconstruction is the great work of the hour; co-operation is a duty every Catholic owes to Church and country.  What definite and concrete form of co-operation will that responsibility assume?  There is the problem.  Our first duty, in the matter, lies, we believe, in a greater participation in public life.  Too long have we stood aloof from movements that aim at the social welfare of the community.  A false timidity and an erroneous conception of our responsibilities have estranged us, to a great extent, from the various activities of national life.  This isolation has been most prejudicial to our Catholic laity, for it has fostered in their ranks disinterestedness and often apathy.  “With regard to the necessity of Catholics to obtain positions on public bodies, Cardinal Bourne stated that very often Catholics were urged to take part in public affairs, by becoming elected to public bodies in order that they might safeguard Catholic principles.  That was a great good—­a very laudable object—­but it was not the highest object.  The great object was that out of the fulness of their Faith they might give to their fellow-countrymen the principles that flowed from that Faith, so that little by little there might be built up in the consciousness of the nation that belief in and use of those sound principles of the Catholic Faith which contained the only solution of the difficulties with which they were faced.”

“Too long have Catholics lived in isolation, allowing others to think and act for them.  It is indeed, high time that they felt the pulse of life that beats in the real statesman, as distinct from mere politician.  Duty demands that Catholics add their power of intellect and will to the similar power of other citizens anxious to help the commonwealth.  We are not aliens in this land, not aliens by birth or principle.  As to the latter, I may say with all truth, that no one has given clearer expression to the basic principles of democracy than the Catholic theologians, Suarez and Bellarmine.” [2]

This attitude of aloofness, during the coming period of reconstruction especially, would be profoundly un-Catholic.  Our active participation in public life will give us occasion to dispel prejudice, to offset subversive doctrines, to advocate in spite of failures and bigotry the principles of Christian sociology.  We are firm believers in the prevailing strength of ideas.  They are indestructible; they rule sooner or later.  They may take time to crystalize into convictions, but the force of mental gravitation must ultimately prevail.  And after all, Reconstruction, as Dr. J. J. Walsh stated, is more a question of remaking the map of man’s mind than that of remodelling the map of Europe.