If it be true that the rhythm of parish life should be accepted as the Church's normal means of bringing her members to their vocation of holiness, the danger of a false mystique must yet be faced and avoided. It is easy enough to envisage an idyllic order in which social circumstances and personal integrity alike encourage the growth of the Mystical Body as manifest in a local congregation of the faithful. But the facts are often painfully otherwise, and an appeal to a high achievement may trickle away into the lowest common denominator of what is customary.

The immediate difficulty springs from the fragmentation of parochial life, reflecting as it does the broken unity of social life everywhere. The crowded congregations at Mass may deceive; they must certainly be related to the crowds who have fallen away. And even the faithful, so often pitifully unaware of the deep resources of the faith they cling to, have largely ceased to be conscious of the God-given bond that brings them together. There can be no substitute for what is essential in any organism, and the Church is animated by the Holy Ghost himself.