Americans. The human mind, among the best of us, inclines to narrow
limitations, and certain Catholics, aware of the comparatively
greater importance of the supernatural, partially overlook the
natural.

Then, too, casuists have incidentally done us harm. They will quote
as our rule of social conduct in America what may have been tolerated
in France or Germany during the seventeenth century, and their
hair-splitting distinctions in the realm of abstract right and wrong
are taken by some of us as practical decisions, without due reference
to local circumstances. The American people pay slight attention to
the abstract; they look only to the concrete in morals, and we must
keep account of their manner of judging things. The Church is
nowadays called upon to emphasize her power in the natural order. God
forbid that I entertain, as some may be tempted to suspect me of
doing, the slightest notion that vigilance may be turned off one
single moment from the guard of the supernatural. For the sake of the
supernatural I speak. And natural virtues, practised in the proper
frame of mind and heart, become supernatural. Each century calls for
its type of Christian perfection. At one time it was martyrdom; at
another it was the humility of the cloister. To-day we need the
Christian gentleman and the Christian citizen. An honest ballot and
social decorum among Catholics will do more for God's glory and the
salvation of souls than midnight flagellations or Compostellan
pilgrimages.

On a line with his principles, as I have so far delineated them,
Father Hecker believed that if he would succeed in his work for
souls, he should use in it all the natural energy that God had given
him, and he acted up to his belief I once heard a good old priest,