She may
encounter unbelief, misbelief, ignorance, and indifference in
few, or in many; but these, deriving no support from the state,
which tends constantly to eliminate them, must gradually give way
before her invincible logic, her divine charity, the truth and
reality of things, and the intelligence, activity, and zeal of
her ministers. The American people are, on the surface,
sectarians or indifferentists; but they are, in reality, less
uncatholic than the people of any other country because they are,
in their intellectual and moral development, nearer to the real
order, or, in the higher and broader sense of the word more truly
civilized. The multitude of sects that obtain may excite
religious compassion for those who are carried away by them, for
men can be saved or attain to their eternal destiny only by
truth, or conformity to Him who said, "I am the way, the truth,
and the life;" but in relation to the national destiny they need
excite no alarm, no uneasiness, for underlying them all is more
or less of catholic truth, and the vital forces of the national
life repel them, in so far as they are sectarian and not
catholic, as substances that cannot be assimilated to the
national life. The American state being catholic in its organic
principles, as is all real religion, and the church being free,
whatever is anticatholic, or uncatholic, is without any support
in either, and having none, either in reality or in itself, it
must necessarily fall and gradually disappear.
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