Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1914-08-02

Here Father Zahm baptized two chill
dren, the youngest of large family of fair
skinned, light-haired small people, whose
father was Paraguayan and the mother an
Oriental or Uruguayan. No priest had
visited the village for three years, and the
children were, respectively, one and two
years of age. The sponsors included the
local commandante and married couple
from Austria In answer to what was sup
posed to be the perfunctory question wheth-
er they were Catholics, the parents returned
the unexpected answer that they were not
Further questioning elected the fact that
the father called himself "free-thinking
Catholic" and the mother said she was "a
Protestant Catholic" her mother having
been Protestant, the daughter of an inn
migrant from Normandy.
However, it appeared that the older chill
dren had been baptized by the bishop of
Asuncion, so Father Zahm at the earnest
request of the parents proceeded with the
ceremony They were good people; and,
although they wished liberty to think exact
ly as they individually pleased they also
wished to be connected of the majority of
their people.
very short experience of communities
where there is no church ought to convince
the most heterodoX of the absolute need of
a church. | earnestly wish that there could
De such an increase in the personnel and
equipment of the Roman Catholic church
in South America as to permit the establish
ment Of one good and earnest priest in every
village or little community in the far inter
Tor. Nor is there any inconsistency between
this wish and the further wish that there
could be a marked extension and develop
ment of the native Protestant churches,
such as, saw established here and there in
Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, and of the
Y. M. c.. Associations
The bulk of these good people who prefer
religion will continue to be Catholics, but
the spiritual needs of more or less consid-
cradle majority will be best met by the es-
Enlistment of Protestant churches, or in
places even of Postivist church, or Ethical
Culture society
A Liberal Government.
Not only is the establishment of such
churches a good thing for the body polite
as whole, but good thing for the Catholic
church itself; for their presence is con-
slant spur to activity and clean and honor
able conduct and a constant reflection on
sloth and moral laxity.
The government in each of these COM
monwealths is doing everything possible to
further the cause of education, and the ten
dency is to treat education as peculiarly
function of government and to make it,
where the government acts, non-sectarian,
obligatory, and free--a cardinal doctrine of
our own great democracy, to which we are
committed by every principle of sound
Americanism.
But no democracy can afford to overlook
the vital Importance of the ethical and spir-
itual the truly religious, element in life;
and in practice the average good man grows
clearly to understand this, and to express
the need in concrete form by saying that no
community can make much Roadway if it
does not contain both church and school,
We took breakfast-the 11-o'clocl< Bra
lillian breakfast-on Colonel Rondon's boat
Caymans were becoming more plentiful
The ugly brutes lay on the sand-flats and
mud-banks like logs always with the head
raised, sometimes with the jaws open. They
dIc soluSlIHSS dangerous 10 MAN ana 10 MS
domestic animals, and are always destruc-
tive to fish; and it is good to shoot them l
killed half a dozen and missed nearly as
many more-a throbbing boat does not inn
prove ones aim
We passed forests of palms that extended
for leagues and vast marshy meadows
where storks, herons, and ibis were gath
cred, with flocks of cormorants and darters
on the sand-bars, and stills, swimmers and
clouds OF beautiful swaying terms in the