Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1893-05-26
Miscellaneous.
Published By request.
ADDRESS
BY REV. THOMAS O'GoRMAN, d. ID.


ADDRESS
BY Rev. THOMAS O'GoRMAN, ID. ID.
The following address was delivered al
the laying of the corner stone of the new
Catholic Church, near Forest Glen on the
18th instant:
Text, Ecclesiasticus XLIV.l
The chapel, the laying Of the corner.
stone of which you have witnessed, is
"a memorial to the first Bishop of the
Catholic Church in the United States
the Most Rev John Carroll. The spot
where We are gathered is historic, re-
plete with memories dear to the Ameri-
can Catholic. Here lived and labored
for twelve years of his priestly life the
founder of our hierarchy here lies in
the grave, awaiting the day of resur-
rection, his venerable mother, here on
many tombstone within the church
yard you may read, uneffaced by time,
the names of sturdy Catholic colonists,
the makers of Catholic Maryland 1t
is fitting that in death they should en-
circle the memory of their great spiritual
leader with diadem of glorious renown,
as in life they stood about him with
their dauntless courage and devoted
support.
can find no subject more appropri-
ate to the occasion than to relate the
events in the life of Carroll come cted
with this spot. and then draw from tho
times in which he lived lesson of re-
ligion no less than history, to which
Providence has given a significance and
an emphasis worthy our most serious
meditation
1t was in the days that France was
exploring and occupying the interior of
the continent, aud English colonial
statesmen were viewing with alarm tho
thin, long line of French posts, gradu-
ally stretching along the lakes aud the
Mississippi from Quebec to New Or
leans it was on the eve of the long in
tercolonial struggle for the possession
of this country between France and Eng
land, Q struggle lasting over half century;
it was, | say, at this crucial period in
the history our land that John Carroll
was born ON the 9Th of January, 1875,
at Upper Marlborough. Prince Georges
county, about as far to the southeast as
this spot is to the northwest of Washing
ton. His father, native Of ireland, had
married Eleanor Darnall, woman of
most refined education received in
France, Of remarkable mental and moral
qualities, fitting her to be the mother
of noble children. At the time the
Jesuit Fathers had school at llermen's
Manor Of Bohemia in Cecil county /;
nothing of the building remains to indi-
cate the site Of the first seat of Catholic
education in the State save an old chapel
Thither, at the age Of twelve, the boy
was sent, and there he had for fellow
student another lad, a relative and name
sake, Charles Carroll, who became 10
the political sphere as great and illus
trious as John, in the ecclesiastical,
Charles Carroll, who gave to Carrollton
on the charter Of the nation a renown
as immortal as John gave to Baltimore
on the pages of Church history After
year spent in this school John Carroll
was sent abroad, for there was not yet
in this land any institution, at least
Catholic, in which higher education
might be safely obtained by Catholic
boy. Nor was there in England any
such institution; the Protestant reforma-
ton had turned into nurseries of Pro.
testantism all the glorious homes of
learning which Catholic faith aud gen.
erosity had set up in preceding centu-
ries But in France, Spain and Portu-
gal Catholic English refugees, secular
priests and religious, had provided
houses of education, where the sons and
daughters Of the prosecuted Catholic
gentry of England might receive, with
out danger to faith, that instruction
their country denied them--at tho great
price, however, Of exile from home.
Such was St Omer's College in France,
TO which young Carroll at the age of
twelve was sent He was not to see
again the beloved faces Of parents and
relatives, nor the green fields and fair
streams Of his Maryland, until he was
a man Of forty II was in foreign lands
that he spent the better part Of his life
student for six years at st. Omer
novice for two years 10 the jesuit house
of Watten; ecclesiastical student again
in the jesuit college at Liege priest
at the age Of twenty-eight; professor in
Jesuit colleges at Liege and Bruges for
fourteen years. In 1878 was given to
the world the famous bull Of Clement
XIV that suppressed and dissolved the
Society Of Jesus; CAROLS career, as
member Of that famous order, came to
an end. Invited by Lord Arundel to
make Wardour Castle in England bis
home for the future, he refused TO lose
himself in the refined and comfortable
life Of nobleman's palace. No doubt
bis American manhood demanded that
he should be the peoples, not the noble
mans priest, and at any rate, us he had
kept himself constantly 10 touch with
bis native land, he knew and foresaw
that the day was not far distant when
the colonies united should arise as one
people, and claim at the swords point,
If needs be, their national independence.
Stirring times we're ahead. freedom was
at stake; what might be the outcome
for country and Church was doubtful /;
it behooved him, like loyal American,
to DO on the field and share his peoples
fate, and give aid TO the nascent Church
Of America through the coming ordeal.
But. whatever CAROLS motives, God
bad His views, and was Loading him.
lie was destined TO be the providential
man Of Catholicity in our land rs Wash
ington Of Democracy, and in both these
representative men Catholicity and De.
mocracy were to join hands and give to
the Old World on this new field Of hu-
man life, wrested two hundred and fifty
years before by Columbus from the
terrors Of the ocean, the spectacle Of the
old faith and Of a new political form,
/ - l. Il r A