THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL-REFORM MOVEMENT 37
congress has a section of legal and economic sciences, and its monumental Comptes rendus constitute a triennial record of the progress of Catholic scientific thought. Several international Catholic congresses, devoted to special branches of practical economic and social reform, have already been held, such. as the Congress on Rural Banks, at Tarbes, and the congresses of Catholic workmen held at Salzburg and Tours in 1896 and 1897.
The leaders of the social-reform movement under the aegis of the church do not consider that the work of research, study, and organization has yet passed beyond its preliminary stage. It is their hope and expectation to establish centers of study and action in every parish in the world, and to federate these in diocesan, provincial, national, and ultimately international organi- zations, until the whole Catholic body throughout the world, together with that element of the non-Catholics which wishes to preserve society equally from the Scylla of liberalism, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of socialism, either collectivist or anarchical, on the other, shall have been perfectly mobilized, as it were, and the Christian ideals shall have the enthusiastic adhesion and engage the devoted services of everyone who calls himself by the name of Christ. This plan involves the separate organization, local, national, and international, of the persons engaged, in whatever capacity, in each several industry, trade, and profession.
It is not expected that so stupendous a work can be accom- plished without some loss. When the new movement shall have become everywhere dominant in the church, it is likely that some defections will occur among the irreconcilable element of Catholic liberals and socialists ; but the Catholic cause will doubtless be the gainer by the elimination of this factor of dis- union. At least two little currents of revolt are already flowing. A group of French priests of the liberal school have fallen away within the past two or three years, and in Austro- Hungary the dominant German Liberal party is threatening a wholesale secession of German Catholics, as a result of the growing power of the Young Czech party, which makes an uncompromising stand for Catholic principles, and especially for the restoration
