Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/63

 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL-REFORM MOVEMENT 49

or less socialistically inclined majority. Such was the case with the International Conference of Berlin in 189O, the Con- gress of the Swiss Workingmen's Federation held at Bienne, Switzerland, in 1893 (in which the Swiss Pius-Vcrein, with its ten thousand members, and various other Catholic workingmen's societies, with nearly three thousand members, were repre- sented), and the International Congress for Labor Legislation, Brussels, 1897.

The present order of things is revolutionary and anarchical, from a Catholic point of view, and the liberalism which is everywhere dominant is of course conservative of its own work. In most countries on the European continent the "conservative" party represents the form of liberalism which is most irrecon- cilable with Catholic principles. The advanced wing of liberal- ism or radicalism usually tends to concur with socialism and Catholicism in those particulars in which the latter are agreed.

The Catholics of the United States usually look upon the church as holding a purely conservative attitude ; but the reason of this is that they are all, with a few isolated exceptions, liberals in politics, even those who, like a certain St. Louis editor, are most vociferous in their denunciation of liberalism in all its forms ; as there is almost nothing known on this side of the water regarding the principles, the history, or even the existence of the Catholic social reform movement, or any other feature of the prodigious Catholic Renaissance of the present half century. The few learned men who are to be found in the Catholic communion of this country are almost completely isolated, and therefore there is no such thing here as a consensus of Catholic philosophic thought or scientific opinion. Leaders of action are as conspicuous by their absence as leaders of thought, so that the Catholic body cannot be said to have any real coherence. This state of affairs results not only from a deficiency of learning, especially of distinctively Catholic learn- ing, but also from the race hostilities which the common bond of faith has not succeeded in overcoming. But it is inevitable that the "American church" shall, sooner or later, feel the thrill of the new life, and fall into line with its continental sisters.