To readjust our methods to conditions as we find them means efficiency with the least waste of energy.  Therefore, we claim that a “survey” of membership and conditions of the Catholic Church in unorganized districts is an absolute necessity.  It is the only logical basis for true knowledge of conditions and for development.  This “survey” will bring us into immediate contact with the fallen-away Catholics.  As it is now, are we not too often waiting for the fallen-away to come to us?  If the survey has proved essential in the solving of educational and social problems, why should it not commend itself in religious matters?  Proselytizers—­especially the English Biblical Society, with headquarters at Toronto and Winnipeg, have the survey of the West down to a science.  Their map room in the Bible House of Winnipeg is a perfect religious topography of Western Canada.  We are firm believers in what we would call the “Catholicization” of modern methods that have proved beneficial to any cause.  “Without this survey and the grasp which it yields of the relative proportion of things, a vast waste of matter and energy alike is inevitable.”

This Catholic survey of unorganized districts may appear to some as “a dream,” a desk-policy of apostleship—­as too modern, etc.[2] The only answer I can give are the facts and figures of the American Catholic Church Extension, whose work along similar lines proves their efficiency and high value.

The specific and ultimate object of the survey would be to keep Catholics who live out of the radius of parish life, in constant touch with the Church, its teaching, its sacraments and its authority.  The mailing of Catholic literature pamphlets, devotional and controversial, and newspapers, the teaching of catechism by correspondence, as is practised in certain districts of Minnesota, the selection of teachers for foreign districts and of boys for higher education, the establishment of a central Catholic Bureau of information in each Province, which could serve as a clearing house and centre of Catholic activities, and other means of apostleship, these would be the natural consequences of the survey.  Who cannot see what a help this would be to our scattered Catholics?  A great help to keep the faith among the scattered home-steaders.

The service of an auto-chapel would bring them also, at least once a year, the benefit of the sacraments and the blessing of the priests’ visit.  For, let us not forget it, one family now lost to the Church means several families in the coming generation.  This absence of contact with the Church has been for our scattered English-speaking Catholics especially, one of the great causes of the loss of faith.