The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-24

conduct will forever be a potent encour-
agement to the children of his own faith.
lie was the first layman to contribute
notably to the cause of Catholic educa-
ton, and the native formation OF the
priesthood, by the establishment of col
lege for that purpose.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND EDUCATION.
We have done our best In these ten
decades to provide the best education for
our people and our priests. Intimately
convinced that general education without
religion is destined to be an evil rather
than blessing, we have created all over
the United States system of primary ed
ucation in parochial schools that has cost
us and yet costs US the gravest sacrifices,
and entails the heaviest solicitudes. Yet
we feel that we are serving the cause of
God and country by matchmaking our
Catholic youth with persuasions of the
existence of God and his holy attributes,
OF the true nature of vice and virtue, of
conscience and sin, of the spiritual and
the temporal. of the proper purposes of
life, of punishment and reward in an i'm
mortal life. We believe that Christianity
is better than pdganism; also that Christi
anity is something simple, positive. his
| torical, that can and ought to be taught
from the cradle to the grave, good for
all conditions, for both sexes, and for
every situation in life this side of the
common grave. Believing this, we have
| shaped our conduct accordingly, and trust
| to God for the issue. In such matters 1t
| imports more to be right in principle than
to be successful. Our secondary system
| of pfInca lion ta pOn. On from the found
Ing of the Republic. colleges for boys
and academies for girls have risen up
| in every State and Territory, have been
supported by the faithful people, and are
doing an incalcuable good. AS our means
| increase and other advantages offer, we
hope to improve them; Catholicism is no
stagnant pool, but field for every good
private initiative that respects right and
| truth. In the Catholic University of
America, founded in the last decade of the
century by Pope Leo XIII. and the Cath
ole hierarchy, after due and lengthy de-
| liberation. and made possible by the mag
nificent generosity of a Catholic woman,
we have centred our hopes of a system
| of higher education that shall embody the
| best traditions of our ancient Church and
| the approved gains of our own times.
| American Catholics have not disposed in
| the past of great wealth, inherited or
| earned; hence all these works mean an
| incredible devotion and intensity of good
| will and sustained sacrifices. Wherever
the Catholic Church has been strong and
successful, schools of every kind flourish.
/ need only recall the fact that the
idea, the constitution, the functions, the
influences Of a university were unknown
in the world until she created the type In
the Middle Ages, and gave over to man
kind new factor in civil and religious
life-the power of organized learning.
THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT.
| Through the whole century one line of
thought and action has been gradually
disengaging itself from all others and
dominating them. That is the social
movement. or the tendency toward
more evenly just and natural conception
of all the relations that arise from the
common dwelling of mankind in organized
society 1t has long taken the form of
Institutions and plans for the betterment
of the conditions of the people, of woman,
of all who suffer or think they suffer from
the actual organization of society. II
there is something Utopian in certain
plans or hopes, there is too much that
is justifiable at the root of other at
tempts to reorganize our social condi-
lions Not to speak of the undesirable
inheritances of the past, the neE, condi-
lions created for the common man by
the spread of industrialism and CONNER
cialism have often been painful in the
extreme. and have aroused both violent
protests and deep sympathy. By the help
| of God, we have abolished the reproach
of slavery in every civilized land, but we
hear from the laboring multitudes a
vague cry that they are already in the
throes OF a return TO that accursed in
stitution.
Here the doctrines of Catholicism are
eminently in accord with the right con-
ception of human nature, the functions
of authority and mutual help or charity
the duty to live and the right to all the
necessary means for that end. She Is
sympathetic, historically and naturally
to the toiling masses, who after all form
everywhere the bulk of it's adherents, ant
have been always the most docile and af
fectionate of its members. 1t is she who
created in the world the practical working
idea of a common humanity. the basis OF
all genuine social improvement. The trial:
of Catholicism have come more Otter
from the luxury and the sin of those II
high places than from the disaffection o
its great masses. AS this movement ha!
gathered force, and passed from theories
into the domain of action, the Catholic
Church, through her head has followed
it with attention and respect. The who'll
, pontificate of Leo XIII is remarkable 70
acts and documents which have passe'
into the history of social endeavor in tn
nineteenth century. His personal charities
! large and enlightened, are as nothing II
: comparison with far-reaching acts lik
; the refusal TO condemn the association o
| the knights of Labor. His encyclical OIL
: the condition of workingmer recalls tn
only possible lines of final concord be
D tween labor and capitalize spirit an
teachings of Jesus Christ, the best frien
our common humanity ever had. In tn
same way, his latest encyclical on Jesu
Christ, with which the religious histor
. of the century closes, emphasizes the tru
basis for the restoration of peace an
harmony and justice between the poo
and the rich, between the producers o
= capital and the capital that stimulates an
i regulates production. We may be conf
dent that the Papacy of the future wi
not show less enlightenment and sympa
n thy in its attempts to solve these delicat
and grave problems with the least injus
: tice and the greatest charity.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
? IT would be idle to deny or to palliat
r the many shadows that fall across tn
,,..ax,- ~ ratboIicisrr, I'm the century tina