Every Catholic should be interested in this vital issue.  The call of the West for a Catholic is the call of the Church, the call of a Mother to a loyal son.  She has a right to a hearty response from every Catholic throughout our broad Dominion.  It is, therefore, a duty of conscience for every son of the Church in Canada to come to the assistance of his mother, to take her honor to heart.  At the present hour this duty is most imperative, this obligation most pressing.  There is nothing in the wide sphere of our Catholic social duties so immediate in its urgency or so far reaching in its consequences.  The Church depends on the loyalty of her children.

To bring this call of our Western missions to the attention of every individual Catholic, to make every soul a co-operator in the extension of God’s kingdom in Canada, to develop that sense of responsibility which makes one consider the Church’s business his own business, to rally our disbanded forces, to unite our sporadic efforts around the great work of the “Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada”—­such is the object of these few pages.  To place facts before the reader, and suggest remedies; to sound the call of the West, loud and sonorous as the bugle pealing a great “reveille,” strong and clear as the trumpet blast that stirs the blood; to prompt a timely and generous response in the East, by uniting the Church of Canada in a crusade of prayers and sacrifices for our Western Missions:  this is our aim and hopeful ambition.

The Call of the Catholic Church in the West

The call of the Church in the West is a cry for help.  Great indeed are the pressing needs of the Western Church, for numerous and various are the difficulties with which Catholics have to contend on the prairie and in the small towns.

The first barrier to surmount is distance.  The very layout of the country is to a great extent a hindrance to the efficient working of a parish.  The survey of the land has been made from a strictly economic point of view.  Large farms,—­vast wheat fields—­were the final object of the survey.  The social, educational, and religious phases of the situation are in the background.  This renders church and school problems particularly difficult to solve, as was outlined in Dr. Foght’s report of the educational survey in the Province of Saskatchewan (1918).  This difficulty—­let us not forget—­will persist for years to come in Western Canada.  According to competent authorities wheat growing, being essentially a large unit undertaking, demands extensive farming.  This statement is very important, for its consequences in Church organization are far-reaching.

The planless settling of the Catholic homesteaders here and there on the prairie, has also created for the Church one of its greatest difficulties.  Living often 30, 40 and 50 miles from a Catholic chapel, these settlers drift away from the authority, teaching and sacraments of the Church.  To form self-supporting parishes in the sparsely settled districts is often an impossibility.