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 XI A PICTURE OF THE CHURCH IN THE GREAT STATE

At last I came upon the Cathedral, as we must now call it, for every group of parishes has its bishop who is in more than name a "father in God" to his priests and people, and not, as too often in the past, a feeble person remotely overlording a vast area and following instead of forming public opinion, his mind a tangle of concessions and his days a round of trivialities. The people themselves are nowadays consulted in the election of the clergy, a custom which recalls the choice of Ambrose to the 303