Life of Father Hecker

Then, too, casuists have incidentally done us harm. They will quote as our rule of social conduct in America what may have been tolerated in France or Germany during the seventeenth century, and their hair-splitting distinctions in the realm of abstract right and wrong are taken by some of us as practical decisions, without due reference to local circumstances. The American people pay slight attention to the abstract; they look only to the concrete in morals, and we must keep account of their manner of judging things. The Church is nowadays called upon to emphasize her power in the natural order. God forbid that I entertain, as some may be tempted to suspect me of doing, the slightest notion that vigilance may be turned off one single moment from the guard of the supernatural. For the sake of the supernatural I speak.