The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-08-16

taught it the first lessons of unity of
origin and redemption and destiny,
filled its young heart with ideals and
showed it the heaven where they were
realized, made it see in all men broth
ers and in God common father, and
in the ten commandments and the
gospel the eternal moral truths on
which human happiness stood four
square and unassailable.
Knights Are Crusaders.
Dear brother knights, so years ago
a great Catholic man cried out in
Paris, I'VE are the sons of the cru
saders and we shall never surrender
to the sons of Voltaire." The Knights
of Columbus are themselves crusaders
and will never abandon the holy cause
of Christ and His church in the face
of the new paganism, i. e., the new
secularism and materialism which
| dominate our modern political and
social and economic life. You repre-
sent today in the United States the
flower of our Catholic laity, whether
we consider your great numbers or
the 4S states you represent, or the
vigor of your manhood, or the SINGER
ity of your faith, or the distinction of
your character, or the variety of your
lean life. You have set your hands to
some great religious works and have
accomplished them in fiawless way.
And now, as you enter the second gen.
| Grafton of your existence, an imper-
ishable national honor entwines it's
laurels with your other great deeds
and assures your name and your place
forever in the glorious annals of the
greatest of the worlds republics.
Your collective influence, in particular,
is one of the great religious assets of
American Catholicism and has an in
| calculab!e reach in combating the
ubiquitous and active and growing
pasanism of our daily life. You are
strong in numbers and in faith and
devotion. You are influential in all
ranks of our society But your
strength and your influence are chiefly
moral and social and are rooted deeply
in the religious unity and the fraternal
charity which bind you all together as
one family within the widespread
material arms of holy church.
From what other source could arise
the convincing sense of security and
destiny which fills every heart, a sense
at once peculiarly Catholic and pecu-
liarly American, and prophetic of
great deeds yet to be accomplished
under your banner for religion and
! country. One word more: During
the last five years it has been borne
| in upon us that if a nation would de-
fend itself successfully against aggres-
sion it must indeed have faith in it's
cause, and unity and courage in it's
defense. But it must have more, it
must have the largest modern scien-
tific knowledge, and trained officers to
apply it, and endless ingenuity to ov-
ercome the skill and the wiles of the
enemy. Nor is it otherwise in the
warfare of Ideas, of mental tempers,
OF those moral, and social notions
which influence at all times, and new
er more profoundly than now, the
laws, the administration, and even the
economic life of nation. Here, too,
it is question of preparedness at long
hand and carefully and generously
planned, in palmer words, of an edu.
cational policy and outlook which shall
aim at making of every Knight of
Columbus an adept in the nature and
history of the great spiritual conflict
| have too feebly outlined. Catholic
man well-armed against all the soph-
isms and falsities, all the deception
and Illusions of this un-American phil
osophy of secularism and materialism,
under which names the old paganism
is most easily recognized.
Intensive Training Urgent.
Very fundamental, however, and
Immediately urgent is an intensive
| training of our Catholic manhood in
the great truths of our holy religion,
truths which have created all that is,
booI III SiflIlLdllOll, duu OA WuOS0
practical acceptance rests every
bright hope of our country's future
These great basic truths are God,
Jesus Christ, the soul, sin, future life,
rewards and punishments; in other
words, the very foundations of the
Christian religion. Incidentally, the
warfare against the mere idea of a
living personal God grows with incred-
ible rapidity, overf1ows every province
OF the intellectual order, and lends to
the new and violent atheism all the
conquering exterminating ardor of
some ancient world-religion, some new
Islam, at whose sword-point legisla-
tion institutions, customs, the arts and
sciences, the whole mentality of man.
kind, must be made over and our
Christian world come very soon to
hate what it has SO long loved and to
love what it has been so long taught
to hate.
These few great truths are the basis
OF our common religious faith and life,
but they are. also the sources and the
ouarantaa of tho highest and nohlocf