It often appears as if the news media is interested in religion only when they have an opportunity to attack religious institutions.

Anti-Catholicism is not a relic of a distant past, it is as alive as it ever was, only now it is less recognizable.

How does it happen, that just at a time when prejudice is finally being rooted out with respect to every other identifiable group, mocking comments about the Catholic Church and her representatives are still seen as perfectly acceptable, even de rigueur in modern day Canada.

In spite of the increasing secularization of culture both in the West and in the world at large, I feel that the outlook for Christian culture is brighter than it has been for a considerable time -- perhaps even two hundred and fifty years.

In the victory of the American Revolution European liberals saw the justification of their ideals and the realization of their hopes. It turned the current of the Enlightenment in a political direction and infused a revolutionary purpose into the democratic idealism of Rousseau.

It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends.

The infant Church was born at a time when the greatest state that the world had ever seen was attaining to its full development. And yet the whole splendid building rested on non-moral foundations often on mere violence and cruelty.

Not the least difficulty in writing about Catholicism is the problem of isolating the subject. The history of the Catholic Church is so closely woven into Christian civilization that the one cannot be told fairly without the other.

Christianity is unique in the history of world religions.

In those times of chaos, it was extremely dangerous and difficult to organize rescue activities. The Nazi Gestapo and secret police were vigilant and quick to punish anyone who tried to save Jewish people. Aware of the terror and cruelty of the Nazi regime, the Catholic priests and nuns who engaged in rescue activities did so at the risk of their own lives.