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CATHOLIC IRELAND.

JULY, 1873.

OUR AIMS AND HOPES.

N the Feast of the Adorable Heart of Jesus, to which

sion Sunday of this year of grace 1873, this Irish Monthly Magazine of religious literature enters on the discharge of its holy functions as a memorial and remembrancer of that national Consecration.

If a human soul were in the first instant of its existence conscious of that existence and capable of understanding all the momentous issues involved therein for time and for eternity, how sublime and how awful would be for such a soul that first thrill of life! To-day "CATHOLIC IRELAND" begins what we hope and pray may prove a long and useful life devoted to the service of the Faith and the Fatherland after which it is named; and those who are responsible for its career feel deeply and intensely the importance, nay the holiness and solemnity, of the work before it. It begins its work, however, with great confidence in the sacred power of the name it has dared to assume, and of the objects it aspires to promote; with great confidence, also, in the rich, unused resources of many kinds which Catholic Ireland can devote to such an enterprise.

Catholic Ireland! The phrase has been used often, and will (if God bless our endeavours) be henceforth still more "familiar in our mouths." It is a glorious boast, but, thanks be to God, it is not a false or an empty boast—it is a boast put forward now in no vain or idle spirit—that no

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