Many facts are
brought forward in support of this criticism from schools, from
newspapers, from general surveys of our national life at present. And
those who study more closely the Catholic body say that we too are
sharing in this extreme, and that the Catholic body though small in
number is more responsible and more deserving of reproof if it falls
from its ideals, for it has ideals. It is only Catholic girls who
concern us here, but our girls among other girls, and Catholic women
among other women have the privilege as well as the duty of upholding
what is highest. We belong by right to the graver side of the human
race, for those who know must be in an emergency graver, less reckless
on the one hand, less panic-stricken on the other, than those who do not
know. We can never be entirely "at play." And if some of us should be
for a time carried away by the current, and momentarily completely "at
play," it must be in a wave of reaction from the long grinding of
endurance under the penal times. Cardinal Newman's reminiscences of the
life and ways of "the Roman Catholics" in his youth showy the temper of
mind against which our present excess of play is a reaction.
"A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully
about, as memorials of what had been.
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