It was not so common among us
here [it is just as common], but there were countries in Europe in
which the spirit of infidelity and the absence of supernatural
faith had been increasing for many years. Men were coming to think
they were quite sufficient in themselves for the working out of
their own destinies, but the war had come, and it was humbling such
men."
Archbishop Carr is not adduced here as a representative type of clerical
culture. On what grounds the Roman Catholic authorities select men like
him and the late Cardinal Moran to preside over the destinies of their
Church in our great and promising Commonwealth is not clear. In the
course of this important sermon, in which he is delivering his very
personal and mature conclusions on the greatest issue of the hour, the
Archbishop observed that "the Roman Empire had been attacked by Attila"
and "Attila scourged the Romans for the crimes of which they had for a
long while been guilty." One is surprised that he did not add the pretty
legend of the awe-stricken Hun retreating before the majestic figure of
Pope Leo I. However, most of us are aware that, as a student in any
college of Australia ought to be able to inform the Archbishop, Attila
never reached within two hundred miles of Rome, and that the Pagan
Romans, whom the Archbishop obviously has in mind, had been extinguished
long before the monarch of the Huns was born.
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