Seattle University - Aegis Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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FATHER PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE VER since the Divine Teacher of mankind sent forth His Apostles with the commission to teach all nations” men have attacked the moral and religious training of God’s Holy Church. The enemy has leveled with deadly precision the instruments of dc' struction at this strategic point—the education of our youth—and here the great Catholic Church has concentrated her attention and power and has built up, as a stout fortress, her educational institutions. It was but a short while ago that here, in our own State of Washington, the tocsin of warning was sounded in our ears to arise and do battle in the cause of Christ, when the very existence of our Catholic schools was threatened by hostile legislation. An educational campaign for our citizens of all beliefs was set afoot by the leaders of both dioceses, and when the smoke of battle was cleared away, it was found that for a time, at least, our schools were safe from utter destruction. Though there has been a lull in the battle for our constitutional right of liberty of education, still there appear dark clouds on the horizon that betoken a fierce encounter from another quarter. For over half a century the greater part of the youth of our land has been reared in schools without any religious instruction, so that today we find our times characterized by the caption The Revolt of Youth.” Not only do we see that many of our rising generation have cast off parental restraint, have thrown aside conventions of society and have stated that they will live their lives as they sec fit without reference to God or the moral law, but we even find those in high places on bench and in pulpit abetting the revolt without thought of the consequences that arc bound to follow. There has sprung up in our beloved country an association for the advancement of the teaching of atheism, and it is the proud boast of its members that every school in the land will have a local organization in direct contact with the parent association in New York. We can, therefore, see that the hour of ruin is casting its darksome shadow over the land, when men try to tear the eternal King from His throne and level Him in the dust, when they assail the great prerogatives of His creatorship and I lis consequent rights over His creatures and the duties that result therefrom. When men will blast away that anchor of hope, the immortality of the soul, and expel the light of Heaven with which it brightened and beguiled the life of man, when they tear from the hearts of society one of Heaven’s sweetest creations, the human family, they have wrecked the intellectual, the moral and the social life of our people, and the ship of state will be cast rudderless and helpless upon the sea of destiny. This, therefore, is the Herculean task that confronts our efforts at the present time: to so instruct our youth that, amidst a world of disorder and sin and crime, they may live with God's holy fear and love in their hearts; to put those shining fundamental truths deep down in their minds and hearts and to keep them there; to show them how to walk in the pathway that His Divine fingers traced for them, back through a world of wreckage and sin, back to the house of God, their Father’s home. This is the work of our Catholic schools today and the task that each one of us must set himself to accomplish. But we fight Heaven’s cause, and grace divine will energize our souls. Backed by the divine might. His great right hand will shield us and when the Lord of Hosts fights with us, who can prevail against us? Thirteen v