Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more
Image provided by: Oklahoma Historical Society
Newspaper Page Text
!gWgBBEJ, 1 J H BHM 80 THE INDIAN ADVOCATE. them interested in its contents, is the question that agitated the minds of the pioneer in the work of this Apostolate. Can wo get an attentive and respective audience, full of interest in religious questions, was douhtingly asked. We have but to consult the bulletins of the work, which are issued periodically, to convince even the most skeptical that now, if ever, is the time to put forth the most strenous efforts for the reclama tion of the best element of Protestant tism. The lectures have excited the curi osity and fixed the inquiring attention of the more thoughtful portion of every community thus far visited. Surfeited unto . nausea with one side and that invariably the dark side of the story, the public would now hear the other side, namely: the truth of the Catholic Church, and that from her own duly accredited organs, the priests of the Church. We have mentioned the favorable conditions attending the work of the Apostolate; but is it not matter for congratulation all around to know that our non-Catholic brethren also enjoy singular advantages in the sincere in vestigation of "Catholic Truth?" Men, now-a-days, have neither the time.to delve into the abstruse logic of the metaphysicians; nor have they the inclination to pursue the windy sus pirations of savants who would lead them through all the mazes of specu lative science from Plato and Aristotle down to St. Thomas Aquinas, and from Aquinas down to our own day. "Life is short," sings the poet; and the man who would succeed in this world must get up and hustle.. This is the electric age; the age when men do things with a rush; when the man with electric energy enough to accomplish the best results in the shortest possi ble time, is always on top; the age, in fine, when the ingenuity of man con spires with the very elements that he may continue the break-neck pace which marks the progress of our nineteenth century civilization. The Catholic Church, the so-called "enemy of progress," notes and feels the feverish pulse of the times. She knows that men will never be content to paddle tediously through a veritable 3aragossa of argument. She comes to the rescue, proving that she not only is not an enemy of progress but that she is its friend, by proposing that which has long been sought in vain, the "famous 'Royal road' to learning" which is a short cut to the Truth and the incomparable happiness which its possession inevi tably entails. Would not the earnest seeker after truth style that the Royal-road to lear ning which reduces the work to a minimum; and if by it the field of his investigation may be confined to a single question whose answer so ex presses or involves the solution of every other problem which his subject may present that it relieves him from all further danger of mistake; and from all further doubt as to the certainty of his ultimate results? To the student of the science of religion the Catholic Church presents this Royal-road to the knowledge of truth; while the "apos tolate" is calling public attention to it. The Catholic Church'aflirms that a universal fact exists That fact is this: In ancient times God, by divers mani festations of Himself, communicated to mankind a knowledge of spiritual facts and laws suited to man's needs and the exigencies of the times; that, in the fulness of time, as in the eternal councils it had been fore-ordained, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, vested with divine power and wisdom came to perfect what man by his own reason and observation could not ascertain; that he came as the teacher of all nations, to impart to them the fulness of spiritual knowledge; that in pursu- .