e truth is, the Catholic party, yielding to the sovereigns, lost, to
some extent, for the eighteenth century, the control of the mind of the
age, and failed to lead its intelligence--they who should always be
first and foremost in every department of human thought and activity.

That the struggles in Europe have an influence on the Catholic clergy
and laity in this country, cannot be denied. As yet many of our
Catholics, whether foreign-born or native-born, seem scarcely to realize
the fact that they are freemen, and possess, in this land of freedom,
equal rights with their fellow-citizens of every other denomination.
They have so long been an oppressed people, that their freedom here
seems hardly real. And unhappily even some of the clergy seem to be too
timid and backward in defending boldly and publicly those doctrines of
our holy faith which are opposed to the popular errors of our infidel
age. So far we have, thank God, been enjoying full religious liberty;
but it will depend mainly on the Catholic clergy to maintain this
liberty, by upholding the religious principles upon which all true
liberty is based. In order to maintain these principles they must defend
liberty of education to the utmost, and must not cease to remind the
State that it is its solemn duty to govern a free Christian people in a
Christian manner, and according to the Constitution of the Republic; and
that, under no pretence whatever, can it violate this Constitution in so
vital a point as is the education of our children; and that it is a
constant and crying injustice to tax Catholics for the support of
godless schools. We must not yield any of our constitutional rights; if
we do, the Church will be implicated, by degrees, in the same kind of
struggle which is now becoming so serious in Europe.

Now in order to meet with success, let us take up the press. In our
country, unfortunately, an unchristian press is guaranteed the fullest
liberty, and the evils that flow from that liberty are widely spread. It
is certain that this unrestricted freedom of the press, which every one
is ready to abuse, and which allows every one to constitute himself a
teacher of the public, can be defended neither on principles of reason
nor of faith. It becomes, therefore, not only our privilege, but our
solemn duty, to combat the unchristian by a really Christian press--a
matter on which the Church, and the Head of the Church, have spoken in
an unmistakable manner. If C