"I would not believe in miracles unless I saw one."

   Such a declaration, said I, is not reasonable, as you no doubt believe in many things you never saw. "What have you in mind?" said he. Nothing in particular, said I. Well, let me see, you no doubt believe that Moses was in the wilderness, even if you refuse to believe the miracle he performed there. Perhaps you read, or saw the play, "Quo Vadis" which graphically tells the story of the Christian martyrs. At least, you believe that Christians were thrown "to the lions" in the Arena at Rome on account of being faithful to their religious convictions. "Yes," was his reply, "because history proves those things to have occurred."
   He was calmed down a little, when told, that history also tells us about the great miracles that took place in the ages gone by, and even in our present generation. Belief in miracles is often rejected on the ground that they are deemed impossible, but not so often because they were not seen by the persons rejecting belief in them. Though I did not convince the doubter, he was silenced by being challenged to name histories of great events that are better authenticated, set forth by more reliable persons, than the miracles of Lourdes, recorded by physicians and surgeons of all creeds and nationalities, in the printed volumes of the "Bureau des Constatations Medicales."
   Continuing, I said to the gentleman, what I say now to other deniers of miracles: If you insist upon seeing a miracle, look at the Catholic Church. This miraculously instituted Barque of Peter is a great living, visible miracle. She has weathered the greatest storms that have ever raged against any spiritual barque that has attempted to carry humankind through life into a haven of eternal happiness. She has not only had to battle against storms from without, but also against attempts of her own crew and passengers to turn her off the proper course, and to scuttle her. On a dozen and more occasions, her pilot and crews have suffered from ten of the severest persecutions in history. She has been denied the right to function; her property has been confiscated; millions of her children have been put to death, imprisoned, been deprived of ordinary civil rights, and expatriated. Paganism, Albigensianism, Arianism, Protestantism, and Modernism (now raging) have dashed over her like waves of the roughest of seas. But she has weathered the gales. Her Pilot, the Vicar of Christ, kept her ever true to the course that Christ, the Divine navigator, mapped out for her. Though checked in her course, she has been strengthened doctrinally, morally and organizationally by the storms that raged against her from without and the battles within, until today she is the most, one may say the only sea-worthy Spiritual Barque afloat. She is prepared for the storm now raging, and others expected in the future. That is why Dr. Emil Hirsch of Chicago could say,

"But 'Peter' means 'rock,' and upon this foundation stands the Catholic Church - stands and laughs at the waves that woo and the billows that threaten it - stands untouched and unharmed."

   The reason for all this is yet to be appreciated by the non-Catholic world. The wells of information have been positioned to such a degree that rarely does one come across non-Catholics who have not in their minds, and hearts false historic concepts, misdefined Catholic doctrines, and vicious stories about the "Roman Catholic Church," with an emphasis on the "Roman," as if there is any other universal Church with a continuous history as she has,from the days of the Apostles. That is why converts to the Church have to unlearn many things religious, moral and historical before they get things Catholic straight. They are simply amazed that they ever were so lacking in intelligence as to sincerely believe the things they did believe about her.
   Great though the obstacles have been in the path of the Barque of Peter, she sails on serenely, being greater in numbers, doctrinally more stable, and more firmly united than she has been since Christ set her afloat. She is a veritable "Rock of Ages." St. Augustine called her the "City of God," Cardinal Mercier, the great Christian patriot, designated her "the spiritual glory of Christendom." There she stands,

"Time-hallowed Church, whose truth divine Endures unchanged from age to age."

   The Catholic Church is a living, visible miracle, not merely because she has the greatest number of communicants in her history, but because of her oneness in doctrinal belief and spiritual governance. She is one in the understanding of who Christ, her Founder, is, and being in harmony with Him in spirit as well as belief. And why is this so? Because Christ abides in her; because she is the Mystical Body of Christ. She is Christ in the world, though not of the world. In the world she will remain, destined to continue in the future, as in the past, to be loved as intensely as Christ is loved; to be as intensely hated as Christ is hated.
   Of course, if one's "imagination resembles the wings of an ostrich," to use Macauley's figure of speech, he can run away from the fact that the Catholic Church is an ever-present miracle, in the broad sense of the term, and thus keep from soaring into the realm of truths that are mystical, yet within the ken of man. The Jewish comeback to such a statement is most likely to be, "If the Catholic Church is a miracle, then are the Jews a greater miracle, for they have existed long before Christianity and its Catholic Church."
   The Jews are an enigma rather than a miracle, for while the Jewish Church existed before the Christian era, the Jews have not existed as an organic religious, authoritative group since the end of their priesthood, sacrifices and Temple. The Jews live on as a people, just as the Egyptians, Greeks and Chinese live on, though they seem to have a providential reason for their existence that the other people have not. They are held together by persecution, not by religious principles. That alone accounts for many among them being called "Jews" by Jews, even when they go so far as to utterly repudiate belief in God.
   Jews seem destined to live on all over the world as witnesses of the Law fulfilled in Christ that they as God's chosen people had in their keeping. They seem destined to live on, as a persecuted people, until their minds are illumined and their hearts mellowed by the recognition that their inheritance is Jesus as the Son of David. The Catholic Church holds with St. Paul (Romans 2), that "God has not cast off His people"; that the day will come when there will be a general conversion of the Jews, which will mark the time of a final triumph of Christ and His Church throughout the world.
   Doctrinal unity, which does not exist in Jewry, is one of the marks by which the Church God established is identified, be it Jewish or Christian, a question that was dealt with in a former letter. Only by the miraculous power of God is it possible for a spiritual society, such as the Catholic Church to maintain its doctrinal integrity, to exist for over nineteen centuries, holding strictly to every article in the Creed of the Apostles. I refer to oneness in faith and in moral standards, and not to political oneness, economic oneness, oneness of judgment as to how the present world conflict will end, or whether the "new world order" contemplated on both sides of the firing line will stabilize international relations any better than did the Versailles Treaty that was "to make the world safe for democracy." The miraculous nature of the Catholic Church was noted by St. Thomas of Aquin in the following words,