For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain
thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the "Messenger
of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New York, the issue for
October, 1917. There are pages of advertisements of schools and
colleges with strange titles: "Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross
Academy", "Holy Ghost Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child
Jesus". The leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the
Apostleship of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa"
writes a poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a
story called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us about
the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July, 1917, it
distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of 57,714 hours
of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form of letter which
they are to write to the Honorable Baker, Secretary of War, imploring
him to intimate to the French government that France should withdraw
from one of her advances in civilization, and join with mediaeval
America in exempting priests from being drafted to fight for their
country. And then there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst
newspapers, only instead of asking whether she should allow him to
kiss her before he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks
what is the Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is
Robert a saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy Communion.
(No, I am not inventing this.)

I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any squeamishness in