The times., 1901-03-24

| conuuCt VIII forever be a potent encOur-
agement to the children of his own faith.
| He was the first layman to contribute
/ notably TO the cause OF Catholic educa-
| tion, and the native formation OF the
priesthood, by the establishment of a 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 a 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 indoctrinating 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 inn
mortal life. We believe that Christianity
is better than paganism; 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 it
| imports more to be right in principle than
to be successful. Our secondary system
of education has gone 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 incalculable good. AS our means
| increase and other advantages offer, We
| hope to improve them; Catholicism is no
stagnant pool, but a 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
| olic hierarchy, after due and lengthy de-
| liberation, and made possible by the mag
nifcent 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.
i 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
Hfe-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-
tions Not to speak of the undesirable
inheritances of the past, the new condi-
tions created for the common man by
the spread of industrialism and CONNER
ciaiism 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
$hroes of a return to that accursed in
stitution.
Here the doctrines of Catholicism ar'
eninently in accord with the right con
ception of human nature, the function:
of authority and mutual help or charity
the duty TO live and the right to all th'
necessary means for that end. She il
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 az
fectiOnate of it's members. 1t is she wh'
created in the world the practical working
idea of a common humanity. the basis o
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
l gathered force, and passed from theorie
| into the domain of action, the Catholi
| Church, through her head, has followe
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 i
comparison with far-reaching acts lik
the refusal to condemn the association Q
= the knights of Labor. His encyclical o
the condition of workingmen recalls tn
only possible lines of a 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 {
= 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
II thy in its attempts to solve these delicat
e and grave problems with the least injus
: tice and the greatest charity
! LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
p It would be idle to deny or to palliat
r the many shadows that fall across tn
Z h