it of Unitarianism, or Universalism, or the Episcopal Church, where
nobody seems to have to believe particularly in anything except the
beauty of its burial service, but I should think the very rigidity of
the Catholic creed would make it impossible. There everything is hard
and fast; nothing is elastic; there is no room for compromise."

"The Church is always compromising," explained the priest, "only it does
it so slowly that no one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the
trick. No; the great secret of the Catholic Church is that it doesn't
debate with sceptics. No matter what points you make against it, it
is never betrayed into answering back. It simply says these things are
sacred mysteries, which you are quite free to accept and be saved, or
reject and be damned. There is something intelligible and fine about
an attitude like that. When people have grown tired of their absurd and
fruitless wrangling over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking, are
all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to repose pleasantly under
the Catholic roof, in that restful house where things are taken for
granted. There the manners are charming, the service excellent, the
decoration and upholstery most acceptable to the eye, and the music"--he
made a little mock bow here to Celia--"the music at least is divine.
There you have nothing to do but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and
observe the convenances. You are no more expected to express doubts
about the Immaculate Conception than you are to ask the lady whom you
take down to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have said,
an intelligent and rational church for people to have. As the Irish
civilize themselves--you observe them diligently engaged in the process
down below there--and the social roughness of their church becomes
softened and ameliorated, Americans will inevitably be attracted toward
it. In the end, it will embrace them all, and be modified by them, and
in turn influence their development, till you will have a new nation and