And what about our mission to non-Catholics?  We have the truth; are we doing enough, not only to keep it among our own, but to spread it among others?  Are we aggressive enough?  And still I hear the Master say:  “And other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and shepherd” (Jo.  X, 16). We must bring them back; they shall hear our voice. . . .  On the strength of that command and of that promise should our policy not be more saintly aggressive?  What an immense field awaits the zeal of true apostles!  Nowhere more than in the West has absolute disintegration set in among the different denominations.  The universal desire for Church Union is, in our mind, the best proof of our statement.  The most elementary principles of Christianity, of a supernatural religion, have lost their grasp on the mind of the average Protestant Westerner.  Nominally, he belongs to a denomination, in reality he belongs to none.  And what are we doing to give them the faith?

A uniform plan of action, once adopted, requires for execution, an authoritative leadership, if desired results are expected.  In the Church of God the Bishops are our authoritative leaders—­Posuit Episcopos regere Ecclesiam Dei.  In the ordinary life of the Church this authority in matters spiritual is delegated to and operates through the parish priests.  The parish is with the diocese, the established unit of religious organization.  For the work in unorganized districts, which is here the special subject of our attention, could there not be in each Province or in each diocese, four or five “Free Lances?” [3] Let them be diocesan missionaries, priests chosen by the Bishops because of their special fitness for this great work.  They would be to the Church what the R.N.W.  Mounted Police have been to the Northwest Territories, or what the itinerant preachers are to certain denominations in sparsely settled districts.  Their mission would be to visit, preach, baptize, say Mass in the distant districts not visited by a parish priest.  They would be the advance-guard of the Church throughout the land.  During the winter months they could continue their work by attending to districts within reach of a railway.  The religious Orders,—­and they alone can more easily supply reserves and train subjects for this special work—­the religious Orders surely will be able to enter into this field of missionary activity, at the same time protecting their subjects with the safeguards of the Rule as also of paternal vigilance and guidance.  An itinerant “regional clergy” radiating from a centre where they are fortified by the advantages of common life, is one of the Bishop of Northampton’s remedial suggestions among possible “new methods devised to meet new needs.”  This suggestion is to be found in his Lenten Pastoral of 1920.