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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 188

188 OBJECTIONS WHICH MAY BE ANTICIPATED CHAPTER 32
machinery which has elsewhere demonstrated its capacity to
do that work. How quaint would sound the same objection,
put as follows: “There is no need to import the aeroplane.
There is already too much mechanism in this place. Let us,
instead, develop the motor-car so that it will fly!”

8. “This is a small place. There is no room for the Legion
here”
It is no uncommon experience to find these words spoken
of places which, though not large, yet have an unenviable
notoriety.
Again, a village may possess a routine goodness and yet be
stag nant: stagnant in moral qualities, and stagnant in human
interests, so that the young fly from it to the populous
centres, where they lack moral support.
The trouble arises from the absence of religious idealism,
follow ing upon the spectacle of none doing more than their
essential duties. With religious idealism gone, a religious
desert remains (and villages are not the only such deserts). To
make that desert bloom again, reverse the process: create a
little apostolic band which will cast abroad its own spirit and
set up new headlines of conduct. Works suitable to the place
will be undertaken, life brightened, the exodus stemmed.

9. “Certain of the works of the Legion consist in
spiritual activities which, from their very nature, belong
to the priest, and which should only be allotted to the
laity when the clergy cannot under take them. As it is, I am
able to visit my flock several times in the year with
satisfactory results”
This objection is answered generally in chapter 10, The
Legion Apostolate, also more particularly in what follows, but
in advance, it is pointed out that no work deemed undesirable
need be undertaken.
The intimate knowledge of what is unquestionably one of
the holiest cities in the world, reveals there vast multitudes
sick with sin and worldliness, and seething with the terrible