The subject-matter covered by this title is so wide in extent that we are in danger from the outset of being lost in generalities. For this reason I propose to explore one corner only of its extensive field, by confining myself to the parochial apostolate. I think you will find that the more general principles will emerge.

Let us begin with a quotation:

Is that statement true or fanciful? You may have your own ideas about that. There are however one or two incontrovertible facts about this new situation.

Recently I was given the new H.M.V. issue of Chaliapin singing excerpts from the opera Boris Godunov. A copy of the Russian text, with a line-by-line literal translation, is provided with the record. Chaliapin's wonderful voice and artistic sense make a whole of the music and of the words, so that even if one were quite unable to follow their meaning, some of the highly-taut emotions would be received by the listener.

I put the record on for a friend one afternoon and gave him the text. At a first hearing it is not easy to follow. For twenty minutes we listened to a great dramatic performance. When it was finished, I asked what he thought of it. ‘He had a wonderful voice; and he was putting his whole heart into it, but I couldn't follow why he sang just as he did.

The picture is of a medium-sized church, well filled with mothers and fathers and children of all ages—a baby probably intent on also being heard, and dozens of very small children, restless, crawling about, biting father's ear and being shushed by mother. Besides the family groups there are young men and young girls, more or less aware of one another and the show they are putting up. As with the family groups, the old and the young may or may not have missals, a prayer-book, their rosary-beads. While one would hope that those who have come to Mass, armed with nothing more than their offering, are contemplatives who have passed beyond the stage of actually saying prayers and wondering whether mental prayer or the prayer of quiet is best suiting their spiritual progress, it is not, I think, uncharitable to assume that a high percentage are in church simply because Sunday Mass is an obligation under pain of mortal sin, because it is the custom to which they have been brought up, or because of some more or less clear conviction that bodily presence at Sunday Mass, with an attempt now and then to remember what they are in church for, is an act of religion.

You have asked me, brother Deogratias, to write you something useful about instructing candidates for the catechumenate, for you tell me that at Carthage, where you are a deacon, those who receive their first instruction in the Christian faith are often brought to you, because you are supposed to have great facility in catechizing with your thorough knowledge of the faith and your charm of style.

Much has recently been written in the popular press about that vast army of women who live on their own. Following the publication of such articles, a number of these people hotly denied that they are lonely but many others admitted that their loneliness is so great that it is the overwhelming aspect of their lives. Let us hope that no Catholic women were amongst those who made this sad admission: there is certainly no need for them to do so.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, to be lonely is to be ‘solitary, isolated, unfrequented, companionless'. What an impossible situation for the practising Catholic! Frequent reception of Holy Communion and a thoughtful pondering over the doctrine of the Indwelling must immediately prevent sucn abysmal loneliness. The woman who lives alone has perhaps more chance than many others to think frequently how the whole of her life is a partnership with Christ.