Assumption Preparatory School - Memini Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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T is good to note that you have chosen for your theme this year, What ' s right with youth. One hears so much about what is wrong with youth that it is encouraging to learn you are convinced that the picture is not all black. And, indeed, despite all that we see and hear of delinquency among many young people in our day, there is a brighter, though less publicized, side to the picture. The late Pope Pius XII evidently felt this way about our Catholic youth. This germination of youth from a generation which almost seemed doomed to extinction, His Holiness once said, is marvelous and charming. It is a youth new and vibrant in its freshness and vigor, with eyes fixed on the future and also with an unrestrainable impulse directed to the highest ideals. It is a youth determined to improve on the past and obtain more solid con¬ quests of greater value to the progress of man on earth. In my contacts with our Catholic young people, especially through our Youth Council, I have noted an awareness of the challenge which our prese nt world and society present to them. The importance of a good education, the attention and careful thought given to the selection of a college to fur¬ ther their education, and the sacrifices which many young people are willing to make in order to attain this goal are notable characteristics of modern American youth. I think, too, that there is a marked increase in the number of Catholic young people who recognize the implications and responsibilities of their membership in the Mystical Body of Christ. They understand that it is no longer enough to be just a passively good Christian, but that one must also be apostolic and on fire with zeal to bring the influence of our faith and moral standards to bear upon others who do not share this precious heritage. Wherever they have been given the op¬ portunity to assume positions of responsibility, ac¬ cording to their age, and to carry out cultural. spiritual and social programs aimed at extending this influence, our Catholic young people have risen to the challenge with admirable zeal and enthu¬ siasm. While I would naturally wish that there were many more Catholic youth who fulfilled this descrip¬ tion, I am definitely not among those who consider modern youth a lost generation. On the contrary, I am confident that with the direction and guidance being given to them by so many devoted priests and adult advisers, and with their own youthful devotion to high ideals, our young American Catho¬ lics will develop in increasing numbers into the better men and women needed to build the better world of tomorrow. With the late Pope Pius XII, I hold that, Today our Catholic youth is one of the finest forces to be relied upon. Sincerely yours in Christ, Bishop of Worcester

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Zke Senior Class Annual of Assumption Preparatory School Worcester, Massachusetts

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headmaster’s Message Dear Graduates of 1961: I have been asked to vindicate the reputa¬ tion of teen-agers. Upon reflection it seems best not to undertake the task. Rather should I leave it to you and your co-teen-agers, for your own actions will be your most objective judges and, we believe, your staunchest de¬ fenders. I will content myself with putting these unrelenting attacks in perspective: I will cut them down to size. This may help you to meet head on the challenge of these charges. Let ' s begin with the beginning: original sin. Common to mankind, original sin is nonethe¬ less rarely mentioned. Unknown to some, dis¬ regarded by others, this blight on all human ity explains, at least in part, many of the deviations in young and old. It accounts in some measure for the waywardness of youth whose fresh and unbridled passions wounded by this primeval sting are harder to check and to direct. Naive, indeed, are those who hope that universal education will eventually pro¬ duce the perfect teen age generation! History also aids in putting this matter in focus by reminding us that times haven ' t changed that much. Remember the quotations found in your Heritage of February 8, 1960? Youth is a lunatic. — Hindu Proverb, Ageless. Corruption, vice and laxity are the rule today. This is particularly true among our youth. Our society cannot endure, for the young men of our race are given up unto vain pleasures. They think n ot of tomorrow. They live in folly for the day. Woe, woe to our land, the land of our fathers. — Urukagina, King of Sumeria, 2545 B.C. The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palli¬ ate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. — William Pitt, House of Commons, 1741, A.D. And if the ancient teen-age problem has worsened are not the adults who are im¬ mediately responsible for the world your gen¬ eration has been brought up in somewhat to blame? Mustn ' t at least some of them share the responsibility for the accusations hurled at you? Isn ' t it through the vicarious though intense experience of smart adult American life that young people get their first ideas? Isn ' t it, as Bishop Sheen declares, because youth senses that too often adults have no true respect for Divine authority and law that it all too readily refuses to recognize parental authority and civil law? I am not exonerating teen-agers; I am merely striving to put the situation in its proper perspective. Youth maintains its re¬ sponsibility. Last, but most important, is the fact that you in a special way as young men of Assump¬ tion and all of youth because of the mercy of God, retain the power of doing good, of becoming or remaining virtuous. The words of St. Paul apply well here: For if by the offense of the one the many died, much more has the grace of God, and the gift in the grace of the man Jesus Christ, abounded unto the many. When in later years you return to these pages, may you discover, in all simplicity, that the seeds of the hard-earned virtues, the solid accomplishments of your maturity had been sown and cultivated during the teen-age years recorded in these pages. This will be the long awaited moment of vindication. For a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. (Matt. 7:18). s ' '