A NEW REQUIREMENT FOR CATHOLICS.

Under this heading, the Chicago Herald of Sept. 1st says:

"With the re-opening of the parochial schools to-day a new policy is to be inaugurated by the clergy of the archdiocese in relation to children attending the public schools. Hitherto there has been comparative liberality extended in the admission of children attending public schools to the sacraments of confirmation and communion. A few months' attendance at the parochial school was all that was thought necessary to insure a child's being instructed in religion sufficiently to be admitted to the sacraments. And, in some cases, even attendance at Sunday-school was considered adequate. But from to-day all this is to be changed.

"Children will not be allowed to receive the sacraments without previously attending for at least twelve months a parochial school."

Can this be the fulfilment of prophecy of Rev. 16:4-7, when the third angel poured his vial into the rivers (universities and colleges of learning), and into the fountains (the common schools and lesser institutions of learning, and perhaps including the books and newspapers) of water (knowledge, pure water, the truth, or knowledge of the truly muddy water, the truth or knowledge of it obscured by traditions of men), and they became blood (symbolic of strife and perhaps actual war)? W. M. WRIGHT.

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