t sinners to
repentance." He was the Friend of Publicans and Sinners that He might make
them the friends of God. And they clung to Him, knowing His compassion for
them.

The Church, walking in the footsteps of her Divine Spouse, never
repudiates sinners nor cuts them off from her fold, no matter how grievous
or notorious may be their moral delinquencies; not because she connives at
their sin, but because she wishes to reclaim them. She bids them never to
despair, and tries, at least, to weaken their passions, if she cannot
altogether reform their lives.

Mindful also of the words of our Lord: "The poor have the Gospel preached
to them,"(45) the Church has a tender compassion for the victims of
poverty, which has its train of peculiar temptations and infirmities.
Hence, the poor and the sinners cling to the Church, as they clung to our
Lord during His mortal life.

We know, on the other hand, that sinners who are guilty of gross crimes
which shock public decency are virtually excommunicated from Protestant
Communions. And as for the poor, the public press often complains that
little or no provision is made for them in Protestant Churches. A
gentleman informed me that he never saw a poor person enter an Episcopal
Church which was contiguous to his residence.

These excluded sinners and victims of penury either abandon Christianity
altogether, or find refuge in the bosom of their true Mother, the Catholic
Church, who, like her Divine Spouse, claims the afflicted as her most
cherished inheritance. The parables descriptive of this Church which our
Lord employed also clearly teach us that the good and bad shall be joined
together in the Church as long as her earthly mission lasts. The kingdom
of God is like a field in which the cockle is allowed to grow up with the
good seed until the harvest-time;(46) it is like a net which encloses good
fish and bad until the hour of separation comes.(47) So, too, the Church
is that great house(48) in which there are not only vessels of gold and
silver, but also of wood and clay.

The Fathers repeat the teaching of Scripture. St. Jerome says: "The ark of
Noah was a type of the Church. As every kind of animal was in that, so in
this there are men of every race and character. As in that were the
leopard and the kids, the wolf and the lambs, so in this there are to be
found the just and the sinful--that is, vessels of gold and silver along
with those of wood and clay."(49)

St. Gregory