I.—­Principles

The Kingdom of God comes upon earth through the Apostolate of the Church.  “As the Father sent me, I also send you,” said Christ to His Apostles, and to all who were to take their place in succeeding generations.  For, these words of Christ created the Catholic Apostolate and maintain it.  His words, indeed, are words of life.

The Apostolate of the Church is an absolute necessity, the very condition of Her existence and progress.  The Catholic Church Extension is one of the most beautiful expressions of that Apostolate, for its object is, as we stated, the conservation and propagation of the Faith in the Mission districts of Canada.

The principles upon which the activities of this Society are based may be reduced to two:  the doctrinal and the historic: 

1. Doctrinal Principle.—­All appeals for sympathy and help in the great cause of Catholic Missions rest on one of the most fundamental doctrines of our Faith, the Catholicity of the Church.  “The Church Catholic,” says the great theologian Suarez, “means the Church Universal—­Ecclesiam esse catholicam, idem est ac esse universalem” (Disput. de Ecclesia IX., sect.  VIII., No. 5).  This universality of Christ’s Church implies the idea of solidarity, whereby in her living and indivisible unity She is always and everywhere the same.  The Church, like a perfect vital organism, is a divine organic whole, solidly constituted, identical to itself, and in all its parts, throughout time and space.  The whole is reflected or rather found in each part, and each part reflects and possesses the whole.  The Catholicity of the Church is but the expansion of its Unity.  It stands therefore as its permanent and outward manifestation.  Should we now wonder why the Church of Christ is called Catholic?  We name things and persons by that characteristic feature which conveys to our mind the most accurate concept of them.  The very name of the Church is, as you see, an ever living proof of her divinity.  And of that name, we may well say what is said of the name of Jesus . . . signum cui contradicetur . . . it will be forever “a sign of contradiction.”

The moral aspect of this solidarity of the Church is responsibility.  The Church at large is responsible for each particular diocese and parish, and each individual diocese and parish is in return responsible for the Church universal.  This responsibility is to be shared by every Catholic.  And as by its Catholicity the Church overcomes the two great barriers to all human power, time and space, so also should every Catholic manifest in the affairs of the Church universal an interest equally as great as that he shares in his own particular parish.  “Co-operation among Catholics,” as Archbishop McNeil justly remarked, “is more than a means to a missionary end.  It is an essential part of Catholic life.  Boundaries of jurisdiction are conveniences and means to an end.  In the first century of the Christian era, it was centres rather than circumferences that marked divisions of work and jurisdiction; but in any case administrative divisions were never intended to be divisions of brotherhood.  The divisions of the Church into dioceses and parishes are to further increase, and not to weaken or destroy its Catholicity.”