All looks calm now, but so long as the causes that produced the sad outburst of twenty years ago continue unchecked, worse inevitably awaits us. I may be told. Look at the union of priests and people to-day; look at our flourishing sodalities and our beautiful churches. The union of priests and people was then tested by one strong wrench, and it snapped; and so long as the evil forces that caused the fissure continue to gnaw once more the bond that unites the hearts of priests and people, is it stronger you expect that bond to grow? With regard to our pious sodalities. Did the question ever present itself--How much of the average sodalist's piety is resting on sentiment and tradition, and how little of it on intellectual conviction? Transplant him from the hotbed to the ice-chills of infidelity in America or Australia, where the very air is electric with doubt and denial, and when the storm beats upon him, is his head armed to defend his Faith? Where could he get the necessary knowledge? Not from the book in his hand, for it is "Marie Corelli" or "Hall Caine" you find him best acquainted with. Not from the Catholic newspaper, for the question is--Do we possess one? It is a strange fact that while Irish Catholics abroad have founded, and support, splendid Catholic journals in every land where they have found a home, the mother Church from which they sprang is practically defenceless. He gets poor assistance from the pulpit; for while homilies and exhortations are admirable in their way, they fall far short of covering the needs of this questioning age. Our dogmatic treatises are permitted to lie entombed in dust on our top shelves, while clear and homely exposition of Catholic truth would be drunk in like honey by the people. You point to our beautiful churches, beautiful they are indeed. But to what purpose do we raise temples of stone if we permit the living temple of the soul to be eaten into by the poison mildews of evil thought. The Continent is dotted over with stately but empty basilicas, silent and mournful monuments to a Faith and a love long since departed. [Side note: Questions] Now that we begin to realise the danger and the extent of this evil, a number of questions naturally suggest themselves. [Side note: I] How is it that the master carefully scrutinizes the character of a servant before admitting her into his house, lest her influence in his home might be for evil, and that same man allows the author to pass in unchallenged? The author comes, not to minister but to master; to impress his thoughts on the minds and perhaps blast the virtue of the children. [Side note: 2] Since every parent is bound to provide that his children's apartments are well supplied with healthy air, is not the obligation far more serious to take care that the moral atmosphere of the home does not hold the deadliest poisons in solution? [Side note: 3] [Side note: Questions]