Proselytizing in the Catholic Press.

Proselytism is the sine qua non of the Roman Catholic Church. Americans, wrote minister George Higgins in the June 1944 issue of the journal "Catholic Action," the official organ of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, "would be foolish indeed, however, to think that this nation, or any other nation, can continue to escape the horrors of internal class warfare unless the full body of Catholic social teaching is given practical, concrete application as quickly as possible." In spite of an attempt to Catholicize the United States as a patriotic duty, the Catholic Church, according to the 1946 "National Catholic Almanac," is not making "satisfactory progress in winning non-members to the true faith. Though in the year 1944 almost 85,000 converts were recorded, this number is an insignificant proportion of the 110 million outside the fold." Moreover, there is a considerable Catholic "leakage." Birth control, intermarriage, the disintegrating effects of urban life on the family, about eighty per cent of American Catholics live in cities, and higher education in public schools, have been important factors in desertions from the Catholic Church.