The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-08-16
BISHOP SHAHAN'S SERMON

man and are inclined to measure by
him the claims and the power of our
holy religion.
His Americanism is that of George
Washington and the fathers of our
country, the Americanism which fas-
clnated the best minds and hearts of
Europe when first proclaimed, and
whose unexampled triumph shook to
its center the old political order of
Europe that felt itself doomed if the
new society by the Potomac could sus-
tain itself and demonstrate the via
bility OF the broadest personal liberty
IN union with the deepest respect for
constitutional law and order.
All Are Americans.
1t is to this Americanism that the
heart OF every true Knight of Colum-
bus cleaves, and not to any pale de-
natured travesty of America such as
too often presents itself these DAYS.
and asks for our allegiance, though
under honored names and forms it
conceals deadly political virus. and
would soon rob us of the political
faith in which we were born and
which has hitherto held together in
magnificent growth over a continent
our beloved country.
0 glorious land of divine predilec.
ton, on whose generous bosom mil
hons OF European men, poor, abused,
oppressed, have in one short century
been transformed into freemen, on
whose prairies and valleys and hill
sides labor has blossomed into COM
tort and prosperity, whose broad riy-
ers and vast inland seas bear daily
the rich argosies of mines and forests
and waters, whose few decades of his
tory seem to fair observer the pre-
lude of golden age, whose people
have been gathered from the ends of
the earth and worked over bv the
master-hand of God into a great social
mosaic, the human message and sig
n1flcance of which no one may hence
forth misinterpret! Exile is Gods
alchemy, says the poet,
Nations He forms like metals.
4HAAihS IHeh StIeHSLu anu tnelr tend
erness,
Timing their genesis to the worlds
needs"
Even so God called forth our faith
ers from a doomed Europe, that a
century ago was set headlong for the
abyss as the result of it's expressions
and injustices
Saved Europe From Vicious.
Let me add of it's public ingratitude
and 1nfidelity to the Divine Master
whose best handiwork it had been,
but whose honor and whose rights it
trampled on and whose glorious light
in the human armament it extin-
guished amid cries of blasphemy and
hate, one long crucifixion of religion
by European pharisees of wealth and
science and power from the French
Revolution to this hour. And 10, it is
the children of an earlier and a bet
ter, of once Christian Europe, who
swarmed back across the seas under
the Stars and Stripes to save Europe
from the consequences of it's own bad
principles and vicious errors, it's in
human PHILOSOPHERS and it's persecu-
tion of religion. In the name of it's
own false gods, it's own materialism,
it's own rationalism and secularism,
one of it's own peoples arose, smote
almost to death it's brethren, and pre-
pared for their necks a yoke of per-
it exulted in the fullness and rapidity
of its reception and in the certain
execution of its plans, God was sum-
moning across the seas, as once from
the ends of the earth He called His
man Cyrus, the saving American
reserve against this most fateful hour
in mankind's history. Oh, for the Wis
ion of Bossuet to grasp in all it's
fullness the meaning of this mighty
human movement as the great cur
rent of American man-power rolled
eastward in millions across the ocean
paths which their fathers had once
followed westward alone and sad, led
only by the Star of Hope that shone
ever through the night and the storm!
Falling in Mighty Tragedy.
( While you have gathered, dear
brother knights, around this holy
altar to ask the divine blessing on
your deliberations the curtain is fall
ing on the mightiest human tragedy
of all time, too near yet and too in
complete for any man to grasp it's
final meaning for the nations. and the
races of the world. But If the great
war be over in the sense of armed
conflict, that other great war in the
world of ideas out of which the
former arose, goes on with even
'fiercer intensity than before.
This is the war of paganism against
Christianity, no longer circumscribed
by political or racial lines, but dis
seminated through all mankind, and
choosing its own places and times of
battle, its own weapons and means
of offense, it's own diplomacy and sur
prises, it's own system of deceptions
and illusions and betrayals.
This war RACES through all the
strata of human society and none are
exempt from it's imperious call to
arms, none too old and above all none
too young or inexperienced to fall be-
yond its registration. Indeed, within
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