The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-04-17
Continued page IL 4
THE LIVING TEMPLE

commissioned body of teachers to
whom our private Judgment is sub
jected in faith, proclaim that we are
built on the foundation of Christ and
the Apostles into a living temple
wherein dwells a teacher who through
them shows to us the way of truth,
grace and salvation. This Cathedral
is a wonderful book. There are SER
mons in it's stones, inside and outside
it tells the chief fundamental truths
of Christianity; monumental witness
to the word of God, loud as the thun-
ders of Sinai, awakening as the
trumpet of the Archangel.
But have not exhausted the truth
am dealing with. st. Paul goes a
step further. The Church, he says, is
the body of Christ, of which we are
members, Christ the head, the Holy
Ghost the soul. In the living man the
| soul is the source of life. 1t is the
soul that lights up the countenance,
flashes through the eye, speaks
through the lips. The soul is mistress
and queen within her realm. The soul
gone, there is no power to hold the
body together which then loses all
it's qualities and dissolves into the
primal elements that compose it;
death and dissolution are the absence
of the soul. Do you wonder now that
we claim for the Church Unity, since
her soul dominates all antagonistic
elements of the body and make
| it one; that we claim for the
Church Holiness, since her soul
is the spirit of sanctifcation; that
we claim for the Church Apos-
tolicity, since her soul seized the Apos-
tolic body on Pentecost; that we claim
for the Church Infallibility, since her
soul speaks through the head, the
visible and audible head the Pope
representing the invisible head Christ;
that We claim for the Church indie
fectibility, since her soul is the i'm
mutable God dwelling within her until
| the contamination of time? Hold this
truth firmly, and you will understand
the Church, her notes, her preroga-
tives, her wonderful position in his
tory, her prosecutions, her trials, her
life throughout the ages. Reject or
forget this truth, and like the Sphinx
she will stare you into hopeless Won
der. Aye she has her riddle, her chill
dren know the answer, and those who
will not accept the answer cannot
silence her or drown her in the sands
! Of fIn 6ncnrt Che Sc n ckV1hhn1sT1 nh
everlasting fact, she haunts you, you
cannot shake her off, you must stand
up to her and account for her. AS we'll
bury from sight this Cathedral as
put an extinguisher on the Church of
Christ. Know you not that you are
the temple of God and that the spirit
of God dwelleth in you
SIS
On the steps outside ascending to
the front doors of this building are
two pedestals awaiting their statues.
One Father Galtier the first priest
who three quarters of century ago
built on the river bank log chapel
and called it st. Paul whence the name
of the city. The other Bishop
Cretin whose appointment placed
Saint Paul on the glorious roll
of the fifteen hundred episcopal
sees in the world. From the
very beginning the name marked this
city to be a Catholic city, its growth
continued and confirmed that charac'
ter. Today the twenty parochial
churches and fifteen private chapels
a cluster of fair daughters around this
queenly Cathedral, the Catholic insti
tutions of education and charity, the
eight suffragan dioceses represented
this morning by their Bishops in
the Sanctuary, are proof beyond
all possible mistake and bubble
that the name has been made good
that the City of st. Paul is, in this
country and in the world, center OF
! Catholic life and activity. Yonder
graceful dome at the head of Wabasha
Street proclaims this city to be the
capital of a great state, the head and
heart political, commercial, industrial
financial of an empire to the West
of us. This greater dome on St
Anthony hill proclaims that the city
is the head and heart of religion in the
Northwest This dome, lifted UP
above the marts of commerce and the
smoking chimneys of industry, the one
picture in the sky line that attracts
and holds the eye, the Imagination and
the heart, stands for religion, for the
elevation of man to ideals higher than
commerce and industry. If this build
ing shall ever fall, if its dome shall
collapse and its walls crumble and its
shrines be turned into deserted
ruin, it shall not be, safe as it is in
the heart of this continent, because en-
gines of war shall breathe their fire and
hurl their shots upon it, but because
we and our children shall have for
gotten and rejected the lessons that 1t
teaches and have gone over to the
1 q