Excerpt from The Catholic Layman, Vol. 1

The originators were not satisfied with the prevailing tone and spirit of religious controversy in Ireland, and aimed at improving it and, while doing so, desired to facilitate the researches of the student or religious inquirer, by rendering more easy of access the learned writers usually referred to in such controversies, and by furnishing those who have not a ready access to extensive libraries with extracts and authorities, on the accuracy and honesty of which they might safely rely.

The conviction that some such work was needed was based upon the known facts, that good theological libraries are not everywhere accessible to general readers, and that the parochial clergy, even when themselves possessing the necessary col lection of books, are generally so much occupied by their laborious pastoral duties, that they have not the leisure needful to enable them to give their personal assistance in guiding religious inquirers to the sources from which an accurate knowledge on such subjects can alone be derived.

It was thought also that it would be more easy to render such subjects generally interesting by treating of them in a monthly periodical, than by publishing at once the same amount of matter, in a more elaborate and systematic form, in a volume which would, from its very bulk, have been more likely to deter than attract the general reader.

It also occurred to the originators of the work that the novelty of the experiment of opening the pages of such a periodical freely to the best writers on both sides of the questions in dispute, without any restriction, except that the combatants should preserve a kindly tone and Christian temper, would tend not only to secure a fair and accurate discussion of the great ques tions at issue, but to excite attention and public interest, without rousing bad passions or sacrificing Christian charity.

In these expectations they were not disappointed. The work attained such extensive popularity that, (had the object partaken in any degree of the nature of a pecuniary speculation, ) it might have been profitably continued at the very time of its voluntary termination; inasmuch as for, the year preceding it had attained the almost unparalleled circulation of copies monthly. As the writers, however, had accomplished, to the best of their powers, the task they had imposed upon themselves, the success and popularity of the periodical afforded no inducement to them to continue it; and they deemed it more consistent with the character of the work to close its pages while its popularity and success were at the highest, than to wait until either failing health on the part of the Editor, or satiety on the part of the public, might compel its termination with a more questionable success.

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