"Come unto Me''

This week-end many a California Catholic business man will cross the threshold of El Retire San Inigo, putting a spiritual wall between himself and the cantankerous world. San Inigo, founded by Jesuits, is the latest unit in a fast developing chain of "retreats," which soon may gird Catholic America from coast to coast.

The pattern for these Catholic retreats is Mount Manresa, on Staten Island. For years this lay-monastery has provided spiritual haven for the harassed souls of business men. But already a Philadelphia institution, the Men of Malvern, has perhaps surpassed it in favor. The Philadelphians have consecrated to spiritual re-creation 100 acres just outside the city. They have improved a choice suburban landscape with a magnificent chapel, a large comfortable retreat house. The genius of inauguration was supplied by Father Terence Shealy, first director of retreats in the U. S.

"The widespread desire for a deeper life of the spirit," "the instinct for interior discipline," the privileges of faith will be safe-guarded," "a spiritual inventory", such are the phrases which the Catholic Commonweal uses in praising the week-end retreat idea, in advocating its extension.

And Pope Pius XI has heard with gladness of this American contribution to Catholic forms of spiritual culture: "We wish earnestly that the making of the spiritual exercises should daily spread wider and wider abroad."