According to a recent enquiry there is reason to believe that perhaps as few as five per cent of Catholics in this country can be said to relate their religion to their lives.

I am not altogether certain about what is meant by the relation between religion and life in this context. I presume what people have in mind is the type of regular church-goer whose ordinary business and home life shows no outward sign of Catholic activity or whose behaviour is even known to be lax and irregular. Yet of course, it may be that there is real spiritual life unperceived by the observer, and it may also be that the irregularity and sin stimulate an intense, if painful, spiritual preoccupation. On the other hand, constant church activity with membership of many a society and sodality is compatible with a life, both in its religious and secular outlook, that is spiritually very shallow. It is always yery hard to judge what is really going on between God and any individual soul.