It is always more easy to tone down than to brace up; there must fist be something to moderate, before moderation can be a virtue; there must be strength before gentleness can be taught, as there must be some hardness in material things to make them capable of polish.

And these are qualities which are specially needed in our unsteady times, when rapid emancipation of unknown forces makes each one more personally responsible than in the past.

It is an impatient age: we must learn patience; it is an age of sudden social changes: we have to make ready for adversity; it is an age of lawlessness: each one must stand upon his own guard and be his own defence; it is a selfish age, and never was unselfishness more urgently needed; love of home and love of country seem to be cooling, one as rapidly as the other: never was it more necessary to learn the spirit of self-sacrifice both for family life and the love and honour due to one's country which is also "piety" in its true sense.
All these things come with our Catholic faith and practice if it is rightly understood.

Catholic family life, Catholic citizenship, Catholic patriotism are the truest, the only really true, because the only types of these virtues that are founded on truth.

But they do not come of themselves.