University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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TIMOTHY T. O ' NEILL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF WILFRED J. CUNNINGHAM, BUSINESS AMNAGER ROBERT W. WIEAND, ASSISTANT EDITOR RICHARD J. QUINLAN, ACTIVITIES EDITOR PETER W. BERGER, SPORTS EDITOR ARTHUR W. LEWIS, ADVERTISING EDITOR KEITH H. STEARNS, PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR WILLIAM S. CHAMBERS, LAYOUT EDITOR ANTHONY P. SAUER, LITERARY EDITOR DENNIS J. DORSEY, CARTOON EDITOR JOHN S. DRYDEN, SJ., MODERATOR CLARA CALIFORNIA

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UNIVERSITY OF SANTA SANTA CLARA

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FOREWORD On the 14th of September 1566 a Spanish galleon drop- ped anchor off the shores of Tecatacura, the Cumberland Is- land off present day Georgia. She lowered a small boat with two Spaniards, six Flemish seamen and a priest called Pedro Martinez all of whom immediately set out for the shore. When Father Martinez leaped from the boat onto that foaming Geor- gia beach he became the first Jesuit ever to stand on American soil. But the Jesuit beginnings were inauspicious. That night a storm rose and forced the ship back to sea and left the nine lonely explorers to themselves. For twenty-one days the little band paddled, portaged, and camped in the country of strange looking, strange talking natives white Father Martinez ' s open love and daring did much to ease the fear when indians and white met. But on the twenty-second day they found themselves in Florida and on the lands of natives whose Hugenot alliances taught them to hate the Spanish Christian. By the St. John ' s River then, on the 16th day of October 1566, Father Pedro Martinez was clubbed to death by Alimanci Indians while attempting to save the lives of his Flemish companions. When he fell he became the first Jesuit to die on American soil. Many more Jesuits followed Father Martinez to America during those frontier times. Those were the times of explor- ation when the best roadway was a river. Joques and Goupil sailed the Mohawk to the Iroquois settlements and martyr- dom. Marquette explored the Mississippi and Father Du Pois- son was tomahawked and killed along its banks. Father Kino crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico to the south and in the north De Smet followed the Missouri and Columbia Rivers to the indians of the Northwest. Finally, when our frontier met the Pacific Ocean the Jesuits settled down with their fellow countrymen and like them began to grow in numbers and to inhabit the cities. Today scattered throughout the urban areas of twenty-two states stand fortyone Jesuit preparatory of high schools and twenty-eight colleges and universities. Twe nty-three of these universities have installed graduate schools and five have schools of medicine. The total number of living persons who have been or are being educated in these institutions is es- timated at well over a half-million. Most American Jesuits to- day are involved in the vast work of scholarship and education. It is a work not unlike the mission of Father Martinez for its aim is to baptize and breathe spirit into the pagan parts of our society and to touch upon those ugly areas of thought where Christ is given no admittance. Sociologist Fr. John Tho- mas has brought Catholic doctrine, a keen human under- standing and scientific fact to the marriage problems of pre- sent day American families. Theologian John Courtney Murray has shown by his writings that American democracy and American Catholicism are not the disparate systems that the enemies of the Church would have us believe them to be. At Creighton and Fordham, Jesuits have established schools of communication arts to bring the leaven of Christ into the fields of television and motion picture. Radio towers have risen over several campuses. Labor management schools have been grafted to the universities in answer to a need for informed Catholic labor and industrial leaders. There is a missionary spirit too that takes the Jesuit away from his work of education. Father William Dunne, former president of the University of San Francisco, now directs a mission station to the Novoho Indians in Utah. Along the rac- ket ridden docks of Philadelphia ' s waterfront Father Denis Comey arbitrates the disputes of shippers and longshoremen. Many more Jesuits are at work publishing their twenty-four national magazines, conducting retreats at their thirty-two retreat houses and caring for the souls in their one hundred and twenty-three parishes. Over and above all this there are a thousand American Jesuits on the foreign missions. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Company of Jesus, always called his order a little band, the least group of those grouped together for Christ. This is the way he wanted it. This is the way it exists in America today. The Jesuit universities are little things when set next to the mammoth state schools. Their American staffed missions in Japan and Formosa are weak and unprotected, nestled too close to the greedy giant of Chinese Communism. But so was the mission of Pedro Mar- tinez a little thing, insignigicant and hopeless and his mission grew seven thousand fold. Ma y God grant his successore a like increase.