Financial Sttppqrt for the Clmrcli in Texas
not strange to find that during the first eighteen years of the Extension Society, practically all of the moneys received went directly into home mission work, and, to a large extent, into building new churches and chapels. Unjustly the Society was charged with narrowness and selfish- ness in neglecting distant lands and peoples. Archbishop Quigley, the first chancellor and sponsor, reiterated the position taken, and the ultimate aims of the Society. "Keep your appeals for Home Missions," he said, but never lose sight of the fact that they are to educate us (the Catholics in the United States] to the needs of all the world.... When the time arrives we shall know how to obey the call that is sure to come; and we shall be ready. Today the need is here in America. Tomorrow it may be far away."" An official of the Extension Society said in 1930, "I am nqt afraid to make the claim that the Society did vastly more to make the Church in the United States the principal support of world-wide Catholic missions than all other work put together. Tt blazed the way. No honest student of the history of the Church in America will or can deny it... . Extension fought the fight for the 'missionary idea' and took the blows. ... It preached the great universal Cause...."" The Vatican, in approving the new organization, had itself limited the scope of the activities of the Society to the United States, a fact not generally realized by many. "It would be well for our brethren throughout the world to understand that the charitv of The Catholic Church Exten- sion Society is limited by the Holy See to the United States and its dependencies," declared Bishop William D. O'Brien, President of the Society in 1926. 35 No appeals for assistance outside this field may be considered by the Society. To clarify the matter further, the principal fields of home mission activity were carefully defined: "( 1) to help missionary bishops in the construction of churches in mission localities; ( 2) to help missionary bishops in the support of students for the mis- sionary priesthood; (3) to help missionary bishops in the support of students for the support of missionary clergy by subsidies and mass intentions; (4) to help missionary bishops to supply mission churches with necessary church goods; ( 5) to help missionary bishops in the building of rectories and mission schools and to sustain some of the latter; (6) to build up an endowment of six million dollars, the annual 33 Kelley, o-p. cit., 56-57. 34 E xtensifln Ma1:az;11e, Silver Juhilee Number, October, 1930, p. 70. lS/1,;d.., l I.
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