The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-07-15
THE REPREsENrATIvE CATHOLIC.

A great responsibility rests upon the shoulders
of the representative Catholic. When a be-
comes so we'll known to the public through his as
ISOLATION with Catholic societies and Catholic move
ments of public kind in general as to be known as
prominent in Catholic affairs his conduct begins
to be judged by both Catholics and others from a
new and higher standard than it did before. His
good deeds and charitable actions are taken al
most as matter of course, while his faults and
even his smaller failings are criticized in public
because they are not expected from a representa-
tive Catholic For this very reason after man
reaches certain height i'll the estimation of the
public because of his Catholic associations he be
comes in very large measure responsible to the
people he is taken to represent for his conduct.
They may not be as good as he is nor half as able
but they have right to demand that his conduct
shall be of such a nature will at least do them
and the Catholic Church no harm.
The conduct of the socalled representative
Catholics i'll many high places is at times one of
the greatest burdens that the Church has to carry
l often wonder if not too quick to claim
man who hobs up unexpectedly into public notice
and herald him throughout the length and the
breadth of the land as a practical and represent
ative Catholic If man is elected to high Office
if he performs some heroic deed upon the field of
battle if he writes book or if he does anything
else which makes him praised by the tongues of the
public, how quickly do we see short paragraphs to
the effect that So and So the great governor gen
eral or author representative Catholic and that
the Catholic people may we'll feel proud of such
name. Perhaps we do not know that the great
Catholic governor does not go to church, that the
famous Catholic warrior is whisky soak and that
the celebrated Catholic author is a man of very
questionable moral character? How often. lust
about the time one of these representative Cath
olcs gets all the free advertising that the Catholic
press can give him, do we have to begin to whisper
the name, because of some escapade which has be-
come public property and Catholic disgrace?
Representative Catholics are few They do not
bob up suddenly They are not men whose names
are unknown until they become representative Cath
ohcs. They are men whose rise into prominence
III Catholic affairs has been so gradual so slow so
lifting that it did not attract particular attention
1t was taken as a thing naturally to be expected.
But these men do not lay any claim to being rep
resentative Catholics; they do not make their
prominence in religious affairs part of their stock
IN trade, but part of their religious life
The men who claim honors in the political and
social world, and let me add that know some which
do because they representative Catholics are in
all the instances that it has been my lot to meet,
anything but what they pretended to be. Their
conduct at public gatherings where they were
Judged as representative Catholics was a refec-
ton upon the Catholic people at large
Let us, then, be less ready to claim as repre-
sentative Catholic man who once was Catholic
or whose parents are Catholic simply because he
has attained public prominence. Let us measure
him by another standard. Let us first investigate