The annual conference of the Catholic Trath Society was opened
at Stockport an Monday with a long and eloquent speech from Cardinal Vaughan, on which we have commented elsewhere. Its essential drift is that the Catholic Church is the Church of the poor, and that to be rich and Protestant is to be callous and egotistic. We fear that callous and egotistic men exist in all creeds, but it is an odd commentary on the speech that on the final day of the conference Dr. Barry complained in a thoughtful paper of the abstention of the Catholic laity from good works. "Neither in the working classes nor the leisured classes was there the sense of duties to be undertaken during their spare hours which had created in England and America that immense net- work of non-Catholic associations so distinguished for their encouragement of the higher life and their attempts towards social amelioration." This opinion was generally en- dorsed by the meeting, and by some speakers even more plainly expressed. It would seem, therefore, that in this respect the Catholic laity who are shown the right path do not follow it, while the Protestant laity do follow it out of their own heads. May it not be that the great authority claimed by the Catholic priesthood deprives the Catholic, laity of initiative ? Or does the great admiration bestowed by Catholics upon charity rather discredit efforts one greet object of which is to render charity needless.
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