The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1916-10-07
BEST SOCIETY ON EARTH.

Everybody nowadays wants to be-
long to some good society. There are
all sorts of societies catering for all
sorts of men. There are the insur-
ance societies, with many tactful rep
resentatives, suave, eloquent takers
who drop in during leisure moments
and enroll us on their books before
we know it. There are societies for
the promotion of women's rights, and
societies for the promotion of the
rights of labor, and fraternal societies,
with aims that appeal to different peo-
pie. Each of these societies owes its
existence to some need. Man is a
creature of needs. His intellect is
ever in search of truth, his heart is
ever seeking happiness. Individually
man recognizes that the search for
truth is difficult, and the pursuit of
happiness elusive Comfort comes to
him in the belief that what he fails to
find individually, he may find when
enrolled in a body of members with
similar aims to himself. Thus socie-
ties arise, each with some claim to
satisfy the thirst for truth, or the de.
sire for happiness, or sometimes the
two together.
The worth of a society is to be
judged by the actual benefits which it
can confer upon it's members, and also
by the duration of these benefits. A
society that can confer benefits last
ing a lifetime would certainly rank
higher than society which restricted
it's benefits to the period of year,
while a society that could confer bene-
fits that would last for all eternity,
would surely be a society worth join
ing in the view of every reasonable
man. s..
Judged by the above standard, the
best society on the face of the earth
today is the Catholic Church. She is
not society that confines her sole at
tention to the things of another world.
She was instituted by her Divine
Founder not merely for the purpose
of guiding men safely to the unseen
world, but to put them in the position
to understand truth and to enjoy hap
piness on earth.
No man can enjoy happiness unless
he knows his destiny and lives for it.
What this destiny of man is has
puzzled countless philosophers, and
unless they believe in God, they had
no sure solution to offer. Many a
philosopher without belief in Cod has
perplexed himself and his readers
through countless pages of speculation
over question that he could have
solved in a moment by reference. to
one of the briefest and trnest books
that was ever written-Butler's Cate
chism.
For what end did God make us?''
asks Buffers Catechism.
ITO know and serve Him here on
earth and afterwards to see and enjoy
Him forever in Heaven is the reply.
Now the Catholic Church exists to
illustrate the attributes of God That
was why God founded the Catholic
Church-to show men what He. is
Himself and what He wants them to
be- The holiness of the Catholic
Church is a necessary mark of a
church which can claim God for its
founder Not that all Catholics are
holy. In His parable of the cookie
and the wheat, our Lord Himself
warned us that there would be good
and bad in the Church to the end of
time. The Church is not vast body
of saints, but of saints and sinners.
She is, as it were, a mandatory of
saints, sometimes out of very poor
material. In her fold are people in
many stages of spiritual development,
from the unconverted wording to the
saint living close to God. But the
holiness of the Church will always be
sufficiently conspicuous to afford proof
of her divine character to those out
side the fold. Her holiness will al.
ways compel the notice of fairsminded
non-C Catholics Thus the Protestant
historian Parkman wrote of the Nuns
of the seventeenth century at. is
difficult to conceive a seIf-abnegatiDn