The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-08-21
BOY SCOUTS
 ENDORSED BY CATHOLIC BISHOP
Hours Away From Home, School and Church Are
 Useful.

Catholic troops of Boy Scouts have now passed the experimental stage and are an assured fact. During the period when they were still in the ex- perimental stage and were watched with great interest by priests and gave the best that was in them from their Catholic teaching and Scouting principles.
 The Catholic Church has always followed the example of her Divine Founder in using the familiar things around about us to raise the thoughts of the people to God. Her liturgy and the external splendor with which she surrounds the great feast days of the year are but the material means she used to bring home to the hearts of the people the lessons taught by her Divine Master.
 In the Boy Scout Movement there is an element that appeals most strongly to the boy nature. He loves to get together with other boys of his own age, to either organize or be part of a visible organization, to exercise his inventive powers and to see the primitive principles in his code carried out. The Boy Scout movement gives him ample oportun- ity to do all this The desire to or ganize leads in undirected boys to the gang spirit and all that that might mean.
 The pastor of a large parish with his multitudinous duties cannot all ways give that individual attention to the boy problem as it confronts him with the boys of his parish. He can control them during school hours, he can give them the lessons in religion and morality that will establish fixed principles by which they can learn to govern their lives and above all he can do and does extort them to go to the sacrements frequently so that they might receive Gods supernatural grace to help them in the struggle they must wage against the temptations that befront the adolescent boy.
 But the hours the boy spends away from school, home and church-the three really great and powerful fn- fluences in shaping a boys chara cter and life-are in most cases beyond his control and that of the parents.
 If a boy joins a Boy Scout troop many of these hours are provided for as they are filled with Boy Scout activities and the gang instinct is satisfied because he is with an or ganized group of boys with a set pur- pose.
 The natural virtues that are the basis of the principles guiding the Boy Scout movement in the hands of the pastor and by his teachings can be so inculcated that the supernatur- al virtues can be taught. Honesty purity and kindliness can be further l impressed upon the boys mind by re. l minding him that these virtues should be found in every Boy Scou | because of his promise and alsc because they are the virtues Chris 1 taught
 i Many pastors find that it is a won 1 derful help to have their Boy Scou 1 troops in connection with their Junior i Holy Name Society. No boy is eligibl, | to a Boy Scout troop of their pari | shes unless he is also a member O. the Junior Holy Name Society. Mem | bership in the one helps the boy tC | be a better member in the other. 1 All efforts at establishing success | full Boy Scout troops in the parishes i will fail unless we can secure the | right kind of young men for scout masters. We need to have young men who are thoroughly imbuet
 with Catholic principles, whose every day lives are examples of Catholic
 teaching in practice and who will bt able to lead the boys in the Cath
 olic Boy Scout troops to that whicl
 is best. in the Scout movement and 1T
 the ideals of the Catholic Church.