Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1911-07-22
President of Brooklyn College
Talked to His Many
Pupils.
Pointed Out Errors of Those
Who Made Our Schools
Irreligious.
URGED ALL TO KEEP The FAITH

Recently the President of Rrook-
iyn College, Rev. Father ]. f. X.
O'Connor, celebrated his silver jubi-
lee, and at the college Night" re-
ception he addressed the students in
a paternal manner. What he said to
the boys of Brooklyn might be said
to every boy attending a Catholic
school or college. Among other
things Father O'Connor said:
mot turrets or high walls make
a city, but men, high-minded men.
Not spacious halls and stocked in
tellects make college, but Christian
boys, high-minded boys with faith in
their minds and the love of Christ in
their hearts. These make a college
alone worthy of the name. The great
Joy to me in this jubilee, with the
glory of the spiritual Joy of twenty
tive years of priesthood, is the
thought that God has given to me
this year 400 boys. Four hundred
boys with the faith OF the Christian
IN their minds, the love of Christ our
Lord in their hearts, the beauty and
the morality of the law of Christ in
their lives, which can be brought
there and kept there only by the
dogmatic teaching of the Christian
faith.
''This you will not find in the other
universities of the land who DO not
or can not enforce dogmatic teaching
Of the Christian faith because there
the President can not control the pro-
tessors il he willed, and the profess
sors will not accept the control Of
Christian faith, and the pupils turn
away from God. Their minds are
plunged into a chaos of doubt and be-
wilderment and their college career
leaves them agnostics or infidels, and
has robbed them of the Christian
faith of their childhood, But this is
uot so with you, my boys. You be-
lieve in God, in the teaching of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, in the teach
lngs, the dogmatic teachings of the
church founded by Him. You know
eight from wrong and wrong in the
moral life what you have to do, and
what you have to avoid, and you
know this is the command of God,
which has the sanction of the eternal
law of heaven. That is, that God will
punish evil and reward good, and
that you must answer to the
Almighty for every thought and word
and deed of your lives, from the be-
ginning to the end of life. If you
nave served God according to the
conditions He has laid down, you will
have eternal life, II not, eternal
death. There is the greatest lesson
of your college life-with it you are
men, high-minded men; without 1t
you become cultured criminals whose
only law is their passions, the desires
of their hearts and the Holy Ghost
says, He that giveth his heart its
desires will become joy to his
enemies
This is why the cry goes up in
the land for religion in the schools,
In our colleges and universities-and
from all men who have not lost their
Christian faith. And the only ones
who are satisfied with other condi-
tions are those who have lost their
faith in God--whether so-called
Protestant, Jew or Gentle, who have
become practical infidels, whether
they choose to themselves a name OF
better sound, whether II be agnostic,
materialist, nationalist, socialist,
treethinker, liberated from the op"
preston "f creed or dogma. But 1t
matters not what they call them
selves, their faith is dead, they have
turned aside from God, they have
rejected Christ and embraced their
self-made and self-taught religion,
and have cast their Joy and happiness
In the material things of time and
life, in pleasure, passion, ambition
and for them beyond there is no
eternity, no heaven, no God.
at is this appalling state of
things that chills the heart of the
man that has a vestige of Christian
ity, II Is the awakening to the
knowledge of this fact that brings to
every earnest and sincere Protestant,
lew or man who values faith, the
realization that he must have his
faith and religion and in some form
In education, outside of the faithless
education that has set its grasp upon
public and private education OF SC
many of the schools of the day. II
Is your faith, my boys, more than
your intellectual or scientific
knowledge that will make you
worthy leaders of men in life, and
help you TO battle against the Zoe
lrreligion that threatens to sap the
fifa ~ our great nation"