The people on all sides are beginning to understand and assert themselves, because the scholastic culture of the last generation has been markedly improved, opinions of the world and man's task thereof have been promoted among peoples and the spiritual serfdom such as the churches forced on their believers during the middle ages has left only those of the preceding generation - the old men and old women whose minds are not capable of comprehending the new spirit in which the world moves. We see improvements of this kind going on in all churches, both Catholic and Protestant.

Here we want to refer to the movement being carried on toward the reform of relations of the people toward the Roman Catholic church, which began in Germany, was carried over to the Poles in America and is beginning to work among the Bohemians, not only in America, but in the land of their ancestors as well.

The Germans called this reform movement old Catholicism. They had a bishop consecrated as an old-Catholic for the purpose of acquiring apostolic succession from the Orthodox Bishops, and this old-Catholic Bishop now ordains priests and bishops with the same right of apostolic succession as the Roman Catholics do.

Old Catholicism has for its aim the retention of old time Catholic teachings with all the rituals, sacraments and religious dogmas as observed by the old Catholic church, but it does not accept the newer perverted versions, appendages, superstitions, evil orders and nuisances which in the course of time came into practice in the church and by which the people were spoiled or the more intelligent were driven away from religion.