St Thomas More High School - Utopian Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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and failure, of joy and sorrow. As you enter it with high hopes I ask you to keep with you always the inspiration and example of our saintly patron, Thomas More. By all the standards of the world in which he lived, Thomas More was a great success. He became a successful lawyer, and later achieved a high place in the public life of England. He had great ability and used it to advantage. He wrote well and he spoke eloquently. Great power came to him and a goodly share of this world's goods. Yet he became a failure in the eyes of many because he considered his responsi- bility to God and to His Church of greater importance than anything in life. You may or may not become a professional man or enter into public life. But whatever you do, and however humble or unimportant it may seem to be, do it to the best of your ability. Whether you be a plumber or painter cr carpenter or garage mechanic--an oiiice worker or an insurance agent or a salesman- use all your talents to their best advantage as Thomas More did, and try to become the best in whatever career you choose. Undoubtedly some of you will enter the medical or legal professions, engineering, commerce and finance and industry. .lust remember that college train- ing for these fields not only prepares you to enter them, but should develop in you those qualities of leadership which were so much a part of Thomas More. Unfortunately, the world in which we live provides as great a test of faith as did the England of Thomas More. Money and power are still the standards of success, and sometimes these can be dearly bought by the sacrifice of personal integrity and of religious belief and practice. Many of the men and women with whom you will associate will have little, if any, religious conviction. The world of today too often forgets its dependence upon God if it does not openly deny Him. You will frequently find misunderstanding and even ridicule of the things you believe and practice as Catholics. You may find religion even a barrier to worldly success. St. Thomas More gives you a worthy example in this regard. He was a man of great principle, who realized that nothing in this world was worth the denial of his Catholic faith. So he chose death rather than betray it. You will find many things in life today that will tempt you to betray your Catholic teaching. You will meet many people who have no regard for any moral law. They will disregard in their own lives the commandments of God, truth, honesty, justice, and charity. They will be indifferent to prayer and will ridicule piety in you as a sign of weakness. They will make a god of science and of man's achievements and take very casually their responsibility to God and to their fellow men. It takes courage to live a Catholic life in the world of today. That courage you shall find where Thomas More found it-in devout prayer, in the practice of virtue, in the grace of the Sacraments. He went to Mass every day and received Our Divine Lord daily in Holy Communion. Every day his family gathered together with him in common prayer. Small wonder, then, that his memory comes down to us as a devoted husband and father- a man always conscious of his family duties and responsibilities-as a man of personal integrity, wl1o always refused to compromise with prin- ciple-as a Catholic gentleman, whose charity and thoughtfulness of his fellow men made him one of the most beloved men of his time-as a Catholic layman, whose zeal in the practice and defense of his faith carried him from the palace of the King to the scaffold at Tyburn. You may not be called upon to face death, but the world of today will provide many chal- lenges to your faith. There are evil forces abroad in the world which are dedicated to promote spiritual indiderence, to undermine in every way possible the work of the Catholic Church, and to oppose in every way the work of Catholic education. It is the earnest prayer of the faculty that you always be found worthy to meet the challenge even as did your patron, St. Thomas More. We send you forth with pride and hope. May God bless you always, and may His Blessed Mother protect and guide you. . . . . . . . THE CHELSEA REVIEW wn.uAM 1. cooks PUILISHING, mc. PHILADELPHIA rsNNsvLvANnA

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dead on the battlefield. No one took time to count the soldiers of the common rank and file who fell that day, but there may have been more than ten thousand of them. The total number of English dead was only fifty. The longbow had won the day with a decisive vic- tory. One reason for the longbow's tremendous effect was the inevitable speed of its passage. W'ith one smooth motion, the archer whipped the arrow from the quiver hanging in front of him, swept it to the bowstring, and let it go. Amazingly enough, he could get olf more than twenty shots a minute. Thus we are told that the English bowmen could darken the skies with clouds of arrows. And it would seem that there is more truth to this than fiction. The longbow shot its arrow farther and with more force than the old crossbow. There is one credible source that maintains that the arrow from the longbow can penetrate a door of solid oak four inches thick. But the real secret of the longbow's death-dealing magic was the English archer himself. No matter how hard they tried, the soldiers of alien countries never learned to shoot it with the same skill. This is due to the fact that it took a lifetime of constant practice to develop the strength of wrist, arm, and shoulderg a coordinated strength that was needed to pull the longbow with a sure and steady hand. The English went so far as to enact laws which stated that, when a boy reached the age of seven, he was to be taught how to shoot the longbow by his father. If the father failed to do so, he was fined. Some of the English archers still used their bows in battle, long after the invention of guns, because they could fire fifteen to twenty arrows in the time it took to load and shoot one musket ball. Wlien the homeland was not at war, many English bowmen were hired out as paid soldiers in the service of noblemen in other parts of Europe. Their fame had spread far and wide, and they were in great demand. For the first time since the days of the Roman legions, the foot soldier, the ancestor of today's infantryman, became a person of military importance. The world will not soon forget the fantastic power of the English longbow that enabled England to assume a position of indisputable prominence in the family of medieval nations. W. wwfezzaazzaqmewza 1 My dear Graduates: I think it most appropriate to preface this graduation message to the Class of 1953 by extending to each of you the sincere congratula- tions of the members of the faculty. They have dedicated their lives to the great and noble work of Catholic education. Their greatest reward and their only real recompense is the realization that their efforts in your behalf have resulted in the present successful completion of your high school course, and that their influence has molded in you a new generation of hope and promise for God and for His Church. In the days that are to come, you will turn many times in kindly memory to them and to the valued lessons they have taught to you. I hope that your gratitude to them will often express itself in your prayers. THE CHELSEA REVIEW . Your graduation is at once an ending and a beginning. For many of you it will be the end of formal schooling, of classroom discipline, of lessons that must be learned, of examinations and of books that must be mastered, of report cards, and yes, of such things as detention, too. For some who go on to higher education these things will be only the prelude to the greater and more concentrated interests of college life. For all of you it marks the end of those pleasant associations with fellow students, and of all the things which go to make up life at St. Thomas More High School. Likewise for all of you it marks the beginning of a new period in your lives-a time of greater personal responsibility -of putting to use the knowledge you have gained, both religious and secular. The future will hold for each of you its share of success . 87

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