An atheist, I have said, may be a
politician; but if there were no God, there could be no politics.
This may offend the sciolists of the age, but I must follow
science where it leads, and cannot be arrested by those who
mistake their darkness for light.
I write throughout as a Christian, because I am a Christian; as
a Catholic, because all Christian principles, nay, all real
principles are catholic, and there is nothing sectarian either
in nature or revelation. I am a Catholic by God's grace and
great goodness, and must write as I am. I could not write
otherwise if I would, and would not if I could. I have not
obtruded my religion, and have referred to it only where my
argument demanded it; but I have had neither the weakness nor
the bad taste to seek to conceal or disguise it. I could never
have written my book without the knowledge I have, as a Catholic,
of Catholic theology, and my acquaintance, slight as it is, with
the great fathers and doctors of the church, the great masters of
all that is solid or permanent in modern thought, either with
Catholics or non-Catholics.
Moreover, though I write for all Americans, without distinction
of sect or party, I have had more especially in view the people
of my own religious communion. It is no discredit to a man in
the United States at the present day to be a firm, sincere, and
devout Catholic.
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