We may then conclude with a French writer: "_A Congress is a sacrament of unity_." It will visualize to the modern pagan for whom unity of doctrine means nothing, the tremendous powers, the living influences that flow from that same unity on the world. And for the Catholics at large it will now answer to a widespread, deep-seated longing for a more effective national Catholic unity of action.
Yes, at all times, a Congress is a necessity for united action; but in the troubled periods we now face, after the war, it becomes a factor of supreme interest and of the most vital importance.
_Reconstruction_ is the world's watch-word as nations rise from the ruins a long protracted and universal war has accumulated around them.
The period of reconstruction, more than that of the war, will test our national fibre. The problems we face are in extent, in character, in complexity greater than at any other period of history. The strain will be greater, for the conflict is being lifted to a higher plane, that of ideas. And ideas are the supreme realities, the dynamic forces that rule the world, the fulcrum that shifts the axis of the world's civilization.
In these momentous times, the isolation of Catholics would be a _calamity_; their participation, a _blessing_, for Church and country. To stand aloof from the solution of the problems that stare us in the face and insistently demand attention and solution, to confine our efforts solely to parochial institutions and not enter into the broader field of public life is for Catholics, at this hour, nothing short of a calamity. The consequences of this abstention will be to limit our action to mere protestation and often useless defence, when our principles are assailed and our positions in danger, when a leakage, through the social activities of others, is but too manifest. Let us on the contrary, turn the energies we lose in mere defence to constructive work, and our positions will be safer, and our principles better appreciated. "_Our liberties are best defended when Catholics throw themselves into the stream of public life_."
And does not Catholic doctrine stand essentially for constructive forces in the social, political and economic life of a country? We possess the foundation, the plans, the material of all true and lasting social reconstruction. The Gospel and the natural law form the rock-bottom foundation; the definite and unchanging principles of morality are its structural lines; justice is as the steel girders and charity the fast-binding cement.