The Apostolic see : a discourse


THE APOSTOLIC SEE

A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY

REV. THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D. D.

Professor of Church History in the Catholic
University of America

At the Episcopal Consecration of Rt. Rev. Denis

J. O’Connell, D. D., Titular Bishop of

Sebaste, in the Cathedral of

Baltimore, May 3, 1908

[Reprinted from The Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. xiv,
No. 4]

WASHINGTON, D, G.

1908





THE APOSTOLIC SEE. 1

i.

Our knowledge of the century that includes the death of St.

John the Apostle and the first establishment of the Christian

religion throughout the broad Empire of Rome is indeed imper-
fect, not to say obscure. But two lines of Christian thought and

action stand out clearly and are admitted by all, however various

and self-contradictory are the interpretations of the admitted

facts and documents. The infant Church, apart from her mem-

orable struggle with the civil power of Rome for the right to
exist, was all along engaged in a no less momentous domestic

conflict, first with the converts from Judaism and second with

the converts from Greek and Roman paganism. Too many of
the former looked on the new movement as no more than a fresh

awakening of the Old Testament life and polity, the anxiously-

awaited dawn of fulfillment of those promises that had so long

fed the courage of Israel, a glorious proselytism for the Temple

1 A discourse preached Sunday, May 3, 1908, in the Cathedral, Baltimore,
on the occasion of the consecration of Rt. Rev. Denis J. O’Connell, D. D.,

as Bishop of Sebaste, from Matth. xvi, 18-19

:

“ And I say to thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And what-
soever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and

whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”

1



2

and its institutions destined in this way to rise again from the
material ruin and moral humiliation that had fallen on Jeru-

salem. Too many of the latter saw in the new Christian
teaching and organization a kind of academic mixing-bowl into

which might be cast the Gospel of Christ, the idealism of Plato,

the erudition and logic of Aristotle, and the multitudinous

vagaries of the Graeco-Roman Orient, in other words the system

known as Gnosticism or the highest spiritual knowledge. The

first post-apostolic century of the Church is very largely nothing

more than a life and death conflict with these two movements,

as deeply antagonistic to the nature and calling of the true

Church as they were to one another. They were after all

not new movements, but activities of a much earlier time,
newly-quickened by the rapid advance of the religion of Jesus

Christ, or rather sharply challenged by the latter, which daily

swelled the ranks of its adherents at the expense of the old

Israel, of Greek philosophy and of a hundred forms of Oriental

worship and speculation from the Hile and the Orontes to the

Indus and the Ganges. Ho doubt there was reasoning
a-plenty against the narrowness and selfishness of the Judaizers

and the misty hallucinations of the Gnostics, but the records

of Christian antiquity are there to show that the victory was

won for the Christian multitude by a vigorous appeal to the

criterion of Apostolicity, i. e., to identity of Christian belief

with that of the apostolic age. St. Justin, himself a native

of Palestine, might dispute learnedly with the Rabbis of

Ephesus, and even after him we hear echoes of second and

third century disputes between the synagogues and the churches.

But when it was all well over, by the middle of the second

century, the figure and the teaching best remembered were

those of Hegesippus, himself a Jew and the first historian of

the Catholic Church. He had travelled widely through the
Roman world in search of a working criterion of the religious
truth taught by the Christian Society, and found it in the uni-

versal identity of doctrine with that of the apostles. Some

precious fragments of his description of the sub-apostolic period

Rave reached us, and from them we see that while on the one

Jaand he enumerates all existing half-Jewish, half-Christian



3

sects and gives the names of their founders, on the other he

praises the universal agreement of the Christian Churches

throughout the Roman Empire based on the regular succession
of their bishops from the apostles. Towards the end of his

life he spent a long time at Rome, and drew up from the

archives of the Roman Church the first known list of the
successors of St. Peter, some of whose names have reached us

(Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherus), though the rest of the docu-

ment has long been lost, perhaps not hopelessly. Quite cer-

tainly he looked on the succession of Roman bishops as a
guarantee that the apostolic doctrine had been preserved at

Rome in its virginal purity, and that no concept of the Old
Testament or of the role of Israel could pass for Christian

which was there condemned. It is indeed unique and per-

suasive when we meet this conclusion in the extant fragments

of the earliest history of the suh-apostolic period, in the mouth

of a man who, St. Jerome tells us, followed closely on the
Apostles’ own time and wiiose life covers the period from

about 120 (the death of St. John the Apostle) to about 180

when the Christian religion had fairly won its first hard

battle for existence. His sole aim in life was to assure him-

self that he was believing in all that the Lord Jesus had taught.

He travelled far and wide for that sole purpose, and believed
firmly that the true criterion of Christian faith was in the

unbroken succession of the properly appointed successors of

the Apostles (i. e., the bishops). He had himself collected
many principal facts and documents concerning the apostolic
times, and dying left in his account of those times, and as

a principal document, not the succession of bishops of Jeru-

salem or Antioch or Alexandria, but the full catalogue of the

bishops of Rome, as though satisfied that he had reached the

living centre of Christian truth where the new heresies, espe-

cially the Judaizing falsehoods, would certainly be cast out,

as indeed they were. The mass of Israel, however, was yet

no less carnal than in the time of its Redeemer and the

millions of its children, both in and out of the empire, long

continued to dream, and even to plan, a restoration of Sion

to political greatness and even supremacy. Our good Hegesip-



4

pus, as simple in heart as he was in style, belonged to the

race of Nicodemus, and they were ever few in Israel. Never-

theless, in the remote beginnings of the Christian religion he

is an important witness to an early and general consensus of

all Christians that in the succession of Peter and Paul was to

be found always genuine Christian truth, and that all teaching

which differed from theirs was the particularistic teaching of

sects and heresies, and offered no guarantee of a living contact

with the teaching and the will of the Divine Founder.

But while Israel long and fiercely opposed the divorce of

Christianity from its own too secular concept of the Old Tes-
tament religious life and organization, the new religion was
in even greater danger from the miscellaneous multitude that

thronged to it from the temple-spaces and the lecture-halls

of the philosophers. The rapid and compulsory unification

of the mighty Mediterranean state known as the Roman
Empire was not accompanied by any similarly thorough trans-

formation of the minds and hearts of its hundred million

subjects. The wide tossing sea itself was not more restless

and changing than the multitude of any Greek or Roman city,
especially in the refined and luxurious Orient, where freedom

of thought was as untrammelled as political servility was abun-

dant. The religions of conquered peoples, East and West,

had long been affecting to its detriment the rude and rather

austere pagan worship of Rome and the Latin peoples; with
similar hopes they approached the new religion of Christ

and sought alliance with it now in one shape and now in

another, but chiefly through curious speculations about the origin

of the world and man, the nature of evil, the relations of

spirit and matter, the future resurrection, etc. This is what

came to be known as Gnosticism or Scientific Religion. The

countless advocates of this antique “ Modernism ” assured the

Christian authorities of their orthodoxy, the compatibility of

their teachings with the Gospel, even of special secret revela-

tions of the Apostles and first Christian converts. Its propa-

ganda was incredibly active, widespread and seductive. The

yet extant relics of its religious literature are enough to astound

us when we think how little has been saved, let us say concern-



5

ing the earliest popes or many of the Roman emperors. It
was really responsible for the creation of what we call
Christian theology, i. e., a rational and scholarly defence and

illustration of the teaching of the Gospel and Holy Church.
The most vigorous opponent of this pseudo-Christianity

arose at Lyons in Gaul, a Christian bishop known as Irenaeus,
born towards the year 150, probably in populous Asia Minor,

itself a hotbed of Gnosticism. He had spent some years at
Rome as a Christian teacher, and was therefore well equipped
to produce his large Greek work “ Against All Heresies,” in

which he explains and confutes all the false forms of Chris-

tianity that were current before the end of the second century.

With extensive knowledge and much acumen he pursued the
hydra-headed Gnosticism of his day, and his book remains

forever a curious monument to the character of the Christian
Church, its constitution and its teaching, its aim and even its

history, also in some ways a valuable record of the age in

which he wrote. But against the heresies of his day, in par-

ticular Gnosticism in all its shapes, the chief line of argument

of this great scholarly bishop of the end of the second century,

this cultured and travelled and practical administrator of the

most important Western Church outside of Italy, this Asiatic

Greek in the See of Lyons, is neither scriptural nor theologi-

cal—it is the lack of genuine apostolic character. The true
sense of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he says, is easy to learn

and to use his own words “ it is within the power of all in

every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate
clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the

whole world.” It is visible in the unbroken succession of

bishops instituted by the apostles in the Churches founded by

them. 2 But he goes on to say that the apostolic succession is

2 The following words of his contemporary Tertullian ( De Praescr. eh.

39) exhibit with the legal precision peculiar to him the attitude of the
African Christians towards the apostolic office of the Roman Church.

“ Come now, thou that wilt exercise thy curiosity to better purpose in
the business of thy salvation, run over the Apostolic Churches in which the

very chairs of the Apostles, to this very day, preside over their own places,
in which their own authentic writings are read, echoing the voice, and
making the face of each present. Is Achaia near to thee? Thou hast



6

lodged principally in the succession of Roman bishops; he
enumerates the twelve successors of St. Peter and St. Paul from

Linus to the contemporary Eleutherus (and this is the oldest

extant catalogue of the popes, also the oldest history of the

popes, for he enumerates touching details of their lives)
;
he

insinuates clearly that they were especially honest, perfect and

blameless men, in whose ears the preaching of the Apostles

still echoed and before whose eyes their traditions were ever

supreme. Above all, this particular succession of Christian

bishops stands in a peculiar and pre-eminent way as a guaran-

tee of apostolic truth, a touchstone of un-Christian or anti-

Christian teaching, a shining light to both friend and foe.

His golden words deserve to be quoted in full

:

“Since, however, it would be very tedious in such a volume as this,

to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to con-

fusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-

pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble

in unauthorized meetings
;
(we do this, I say), by indicating that

tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient,

and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the
two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul

;
as also (by pointing out)

the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of

the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that

every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-

eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the

apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those (faithful

men) who exist everywhere.”

He then enumerates the list of Roman bishops, as one might
enumerate the list of Presidents of the United States, and adds

:

Corinth. If thou art not far from Macedonia, thou hast Philippi, thou

hast the Thessalonians. If thou canst travel into Asia, thou hast Ephesus.

But if thou art near to Italy, thou hast Rome, whence we also have an
authority at hand. That Church how happy ! on which the Apostles
poured out all their doctrine with their blood; where Peter had a like

passion with the Lord; where Paul is honoured with an end like the

Baptist’s
;

where the Apostle John was plunged into boiling oil, and

suffered nothing, and was afterwards banished to an island; let us see

what she hath learned, what taught, what fellowship she hath with the

Church of Africa likewise.”



7

“ In this order and by this succession the ecclesiastical tradi-

tion from the Apostles and the preaching of the truth have

come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there
is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved

in the Church from the apostles until now and handed down

in truth (Adv. Haeres

,

III, 3, 3).”

It would be hard, says an illustrious modern Church histo-

rian, to find a more concise expression of the doctrinal unity

then existing in the universal Church; of the sovereign and

unique importance of the Roman Church as witness, guardian
and organ of the apostolic tradition; and of its superior pre-

eminence in the group of Christian communities. 3

Through these three centuries the Roman Church had no
rival for its perilous pre-eminency, wThich was so marked that

the Emperor Decius, when about to undertake the extermina-

tion of the Christian religion, declared that he would rather

behold the rise of an usurper than another bishop of Rome.

The oldest Christian Churches, like Corinth and Antioch, recog-

nized its supreme dignity. Before the end of the first century

the former appealed to the Roman Church to heal a painful
schism, and while the second century was yet young, Ignatius

of Antioch addressed the Roman Church as the president of
the Christian Society and acknowledged with gratitude the

reception of its instructions and commands. During this period

the bulk of the Christian body was in the Roman Orient, yet
its supreme government, as far as we can now grasp it, was
certainly in the See of Peter. Thither came the heads of the

great heresies of Gnosticism, Marcionism, Montanism, Sabel-

lianism, asking for recognition, and rebellious only when they

fail to secure the authority and prestige of that ancient Church.

In all the domestic controversies of those centuries that Church

ever dominates the scene. It is not Rome that weakens during
the earlier controversies, but Asia Minor; not Anicetus who

visits Smyrna to confer with Polycarp, but that aged man of

8 Mgr. Duchesne, in Bulletin, x, 430. For a good commentary on this

famous passage of St. Irenaeus, and a refutation of various efforts made
to blunt its point, see L. Rivington, The Primitive Church and the See of
Peter (London, 1894), 31-38.



ft

80 years who comes to Rome to deal with the pope. And
later no bishop of the Orient, nor all of them, dared to order

all their episcopal brethren to meet in councils and report to

him as Pope Victor did; much less did they dare to excom-
municate, or threaten to excommunicate, entire provinces, if

they did not obey, i. e., to cut them off from the common unity
in Christ, as the same pope did, and as Pope Stephen did a little

later when the African churches clung stubbornly to their
narrow views on the re-baptism of heretics. In matters of

Christian faith it brought before its tribunal the highest Chris-

tian scholarship in the person of Origen, and it called for

explanation and submission from high-placed and saintly

bishops like Dionysius of Alexandria, while the supreme tribu-

nal of the empire recognized at the same time that in practice the

bishop of Rome was the judge of Christian life and discipline.
It is to the Roman Church that critical scholars, some of them
neither Catholics nor genuine Christians, trace back the most

solemn and far-reaching measures and institutions that con-

solidated the fluent elements of the earliest Christian life,

—

the closing of the canon of the Hew Testament and the diffusion
of its books

;
the formulation of the Apostles’ Creed or that sim-

ple and ancient rule of faith that each convert, Jew or heathen,
had to learn and accept as a sufficient catechism of the new

belief
;
the creation of a special religious code for Christians,

i. e., the beginnings of the canon law, which the oldest Greek

Christian texts with curious unanimity refer to a Roman origin.
I might add other grave considerations that place beyond a

doubt the unique magisterial office of the Roman Church in
the earliest and darkest days of the Christian religion, when

its bishops everywhere were in daily peril of their lives as con-

fessedly the sources and guarantors of the peculiar religious

obstinacy that maddened at once and appalled the governors

of the Roman world. I will mention but one more such illus-
tration. Out of the remotest Christian antiquity come reliable

statements that the Roman Church during these three centu-
ries was wont to exercise a truly imperial charity towards

multitudes of Christians in all parts of the Roman Empire.

From Greece, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia came pitiful cries



9

for help amid the ceaseless local persecutions of the brethren,

and it is no Latin writer, but a Greek, the great Church

historian Eusebius of Caesarea, who tells us that even to his

day, i. e., the first quarter of the fourth century, the Roman
Church still dispensed to the ends of the empire her rich and

immemorial bounties.

If I have dwelt at some length on these features of the pri-

mitive Roman supremacy among the earliest Christian
Churches, it is because, considered in their entirety, they repro-

duce for us at that early date not only the continuous fact of

the apostolic authority in its fulness, but also its original aim

and its genuine spirit, i. e., the practical effective unity of

the Christian ideals in belief and in life, and a permanent,

deep, transforming affection for the common welfare that was
like a tide of new blood in the veins of a decadent age and a

corrupt society. The history of the Roman Church in these
three centuries is in reality an enlarged Acts of the Apostles.

Feature for feature all the traits of the primitive Church

found in the inspired record are met with in the Roman
Church of this period—the conviction of responsible au-
thority visibly lodged in an organized body

;
a full and

sure and ready sense of all the Christian faith and an equally

reliable sense of religious falsehood; an adequate appreciation

of the universal interests and the common welfare; a large and
moderate view of the exercise of authority; an habitual con-

fession of a higher will, that of Jesus Christ, as the true source

of the new power over men’s minds and hearts. In faith, in

discipline, in government, in its public services, in its contin-

uous charitable solicitude for all the scattered brethren in Christ

the Roman Church was in those centuries truly an “ imago
primaevi saeculi,” a mirror of the apostolic age.

‘ 1 Thus,
’

’ says an illustrious historian, ‘ 1 the churches of the entire

world, from Arabia, Osrhoene, Cappadocia, to the extremities of the

West, experienced in everything, in faith, in discipline, in govern-

ment, in ritual, in works of charity, the incessant activity of the

Roman Church. It was everywhere known, as St. Irenaeus says,
everywhere present, everywhere respected, everywhere followed in its

advice. Against it there rises no opposition, no rivalry. Ko com-



10

munity entertains the notion of putting itself on the same footing as

Rome. Later, patriarchates and other local primacies will come into
being. In the course of the third century, one barely sees their first

outlines, more or less vague, in process of formation. Above these
organisms just forming, as well as above the collection of the isolated

churches, there looms up the Roman Church in its sovereign majesty,
the Roman Church represented by its bishops, the long series of whom
is connected with the two coryphaei of the apostolic chorus

;
the

Church which knows itself and declares itself and is considered by the

whole world to be the organ and center of unity.’ ’ 4

During all this time, moreover, its bishops were held in

peculiar veneration by all Christians. Many of them shed
their blood for Christ, and each of them was looked on in his

own time as St. Peter himself in all the fulness of his public
character. The individual pope might come from any part

of the vast Empire of Rome, but his family and personality

were ever of little account. Each one stood for the highest

and most attractive religious idea and the most efficient religious

organization that the world had yet beheld. And though he
usually perished violently (for Caesar was yet unwilling to

sacrifice his own religious authority), it was not felt that

his disappearance imperilled the precious interests committed

to him as to a spiritual dictator in face of the ignorance,

apathy, stupidity, malice, selfishness, and habitual vacillation

of too many minds and hearts in all that pertained to the life
of the spirit. Men spoke of them interchangeably as the See
of Peter, the Chair of Peter, the Place of Peter. The autho-

rity of the great apostle, granted him as a reward of his

faith, and for the preservation of the unity and efficiency of

the Christian organization both in its primitive growth and

amid the dramatic vicissitudes of later persecution and con-

flict, seemed even then solidly anchored, as it were, to a

mighty rock, was identical and equal in each successor,

identical and equal being the divine gift itself and the

necessity for it, the good accomplished, the evils averted.

What wonder, then that long before the Roman Church emerged

4 L. Duchesne, Bulletin (1904), x, 448.



11

from the catacombs, its bishops were wont to claim, and at

Rome itself, an hereditary fulness of apostolic authority, and
to quote for their flock as early as the time of St. Cyprian’s

death that divine charter of the papacy, the memorable words

of St. Matthew (XVI, 118-19)

:

* ‘And I say to thee : That thou art Peter and upon this rock I will

build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. And
whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth it shall be bound also in heaven,

and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth it shall be loosed also in

heaven.
* ’

O fateful words! The pilgrim to the Fisherman’s Tomb
at Rome and the idle visitor lift up their eyes to-day and behold
them written in gigantic letters about the base of the dome

of St. Peter’s, heralding forever and consecrating, as it were

with befitting majesty, the incomparable genius that built for

them this pedestal thrice glorious among the works of human
imagination and skill. But far more glorious is the historical

career of these words of power from the day when they were

first uttered in remote Palestine to our own time. Xothing

but their sacramental efficiency can explain the influence they

have exercised in every century, in every form of civilization,

amid all kinds and manners of men. They have sundered

the spiritual from the temporal order, at an awful price, it is

true, nevertheless by no means excessive; they have shaped

the exercise of this dearly bought spiritual independence and

conditioned the framework of ecclesiastical authority, whose

dignity and serviceableness they have saved, while they pre-

vented it from degenerating into anarchy or becoming hopelessly

the tool of secular passion or purpose; they were ever and are

yet the sufficient instruction of the successors of St. Peter,

replete with freedom of action, hut also replete with terrible

admonition for men who believe in the divinity of Jesus
Christ, His tender affection for Holy Church, and His inevi-

table just judgment of those who sit in the place of Peter,

but do not the works of Peter; they have affected the growth

of great sciences, doctrinal theology, canon law, moral theology,



12

Church history, even of philosophy; they have fashioned effec-

tively the civil and social order, for there was a long and

troubled period when the average Christian mankind of Europe

looked to the papacy as a paternal power, and saw in each

succeeding pope a moral patriarchal authority, the only one

capable of dominating an arbitrary feudalism, of compelling

for the poor, weak, and helpless, some measure of justice,

of enforcing basic principles of the law of nations, and of

planting deeply in the heart of Europe those principles and

ideals through which the Western world put off its ancient

paganism and even yet stands out as fundamentally different

from and superior to the non-Christian Orient; they were and

are the divine source of the combined insight and courage which

have regularly distinguished the successors of St. Peter, even

when European society had reached the lowest ebb of its for-

tunes, and was everywhere dominated by a narrow and selfish

secularism that abused holy institutions for vile ends. Through

these divine and imperishable words the successor of St. Peter

is forever lifted above the ordinary course of human passions

and purposes, forever exhibited to mankind as the symbol of

Christian unity, the criterion of Gospel truth and life, the

witness and custodian of Christ’s teachings, the judge of the

brethren in all charity and equity, and therefore the natural

guide and adviser of Christian society in all that pertains to

religious faith and morality, and even in those large spheres

and phases of human life that are affected for good or evil by

our moral principles or rather by the lack or weakness of

them.

II.

An essential feature of the original apostolic office was its
witness unto Christ, not unto a portion of his life, but unto

all His public career. On the morrow of the Ascension, when
yet the Christian Church numbered about a hundred souls,

the Apostles met under the presidency of Peter (Acts, I, 14-26)

to select a successor to the traitor Apostle Judas. It may be

truly called the first General Council, presided over by the

first pope. “ Wherefore,” said the Prince of the Apostles,



13

“ of these men who have companied with us all the time that
the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us ... . one
of these must he made witness with us of His resurrection . . .

to take the place of this ministry and apostleship from which

Judas hath by his transgression fallen.” It is precisely this

feature of the apostolic office that stands out most strikingly

in the Homan Church during the thousand years of medieval
life. The other apostolic churches, like Jerusalem, Antioch,

and Alexandria, gradually decayed, or were involved in wretched

heresies, or became the prey of Islam. The brilliant civiliza-

tion of the apostolic age was soon obscured in the Mediterra-

nean world. The original monuments and documents, both

of Church and State, disappeared or became unintelligible.

Passionate new controversies killed off the interest in primitive

Christianity, and a new order supervened everywhere, rather

a total lack of order in those rude ages when the political,

social, and economic life of the Greco-Roman world was every-

where overlaid with crude barbarism freshly renewed in every

century by the eager sensual hordes that poured without ceasing

from the mighty womb of the North and the East. At Rome
itself a consul, that immemorial symbol of the Roman State, was
no longer named; the majestic Senate-house on whose floor were

debated the fates of kingdoms and provinces was closed and

dumb; the vast population shrank to a handful; the prestige

and power of the City men proudly called Eternal had passed
away, or rather were disputed by jealous Greeks, fanatic xirabs,

and proud and turbulent Germans. A little more and the
prophetic fear of Scipio Africanus had become a reality

;
Rome,

like Troy and Carthage would have passed into the realm of

shadows. It was a crucial time, whose true significance can

be read in Cardinal Newman’s Historical Sketches and in the

noble volumes of Mr. Allies. But graver than the decay of the

glorious city itself was the peril that threatened Christian

unity when for a while it seemed that for the future not the

Roman by the Tiber but the Byzantine Greek by the Golden
Horn would henceforth represent or dominate the apostolic
witness to Jesus Christ, that the ever-latent secularism of the

imperial office would strangle the hardbought spiritual indepem



14

dence, and soon Rome would be as Constantinople, and later as
Moscow, the seat of more or less venerable arch-chaplains of

an Oriental ruler, local custodians of dead magnificence, Grand

Lamas for the West.

But for the welfare of Holy Church and of humanity this

early crystallization of the spiritual forces of the Gospel was

not to happen in the West on the border line of the ancient

world and the new states of Europe whose last most hopeful

progeny even we of the Hew World now are. In the names
and the memory of the glorious Apostles Peter and Paul the

popes found always something sacramentally vigorous and resto-

rative, a lasting echo as it were, an undying image of the

“ praedicatio veritatis,” the fulness of Christian truth as it

had been made known by the great Apostles and ever preserved

in the Church founded by them and consecrated by their

labours and their blood. The apostolic office and apostolic

faith soon created their own monuments unique and wonderful,

eternally voiceful of the purpose that underlay them. There

stood, visible to all, the glorious sepulchres of Peter and of

Paul. There rose the old basilica of St. Peter, for a thousand

years the most venerable monument of the world, hallowed by

a thousand great events, itself the silent witness of the perma-

nency of the apostolic office, crowded with memories and proofs

of the tender gratitude to Christian Rome both of the ancient
world that lay dying and of the new peoples rudely surging

in to take its place, one day to bear its complex burden. In

the old St. Paul’s stood during all this period the evergrowing

series of medallions that exhibited in imperial mosaic the list

of the successors of the Fisherman, while throughout and

around the City were scattered venerable relics and evidences

of their sojourn, their apostolic activity, and the deep respect

that the Roman Christians showed their fathers in the faith
while yet a Hadrian pondered over the Gospel or in his immor-

tal memoirs a Marcus Aurelius with imperial melancholy fixed

its essence as an incorrigible resistance to the omnipotence of

the Roman State. To-day the genius of Catholic investiga-
tors and the pick of the new fossors reveal not a few incredibly

convincing proofs of this, as both scholar and excavator work



15

their way through such early Christian cemeteries as that of

Domitilla and that of Priscilla, where once were buried mem-

bers of Csesar’s household and foremost consular nobles, whose

names yet grace the pages of Tacitus and Suetonius, but who had

then caught the Gospel from the lips of Peter and Paul.

From all parts of the world, despite the wretched anarchy
of the times, long armies of pilgrims never ceased to visit

the sepulchres of Peter and Paul and to acquire within their

shadow both the letter and the spirit of the Gospel. This

pilgrimage to Rome was the most unifying institution of a
period when the entire West had scarcely a city worthy of the

name and function. It is to-day as important as ever in the

regular visit of every Catholic bishop to the source of apos-

tolic authority, but its origin is lost in the dim beginnings of

the papal succession, while at the same time it is one of the

most irrefragable evidences that Christian Europe at least

always saw in the succession of Peter the only divine guaran-

tee that it was receiving an uncontaminated gospel, and not

the conclusions of Arius and FTestorius, or the secular make-

shifts of court-bishops and ignorant soldiers.

And in as far as the successor of Peter could not behold the
entire Christian world, his letters, issued always by the authority

of Peter and Paul, went far and wide every day of this thousand

years, and brought home, for example to the most lonely priest of

the Orkneys or the Faroes, a sense of union and communion with

the entire Christian world and a conviction that the Christian re-

ligion held its way continuously, that Christ was not preached in

vain nor was faith in Him a vain thing both for priest and peo-
ple. The countless missionaries who in those ages went forth to

conquer for Christ the surrounding moral darkness held their

work but weakly done, if it was not begun with the approval

of the Apostolic See, like that of Saint Patrick, or if it was

not soon placed under the saving direction of the same like

that of Saint Boniface. Well indeed for all those strong but

uncultivated races that they were so soon in touch with the

Eternal City, for thereby they not only secured easily and per-

manently religious unity with the rest of Europe, but they

also obtained the first elements of civilization. May they
2



1C

always be thus divided for the benefit of Rome, says the pagan

Tacitus, describing the internecine quarrels of the Britons under

the stern generalship of Agricola, that perfect apostle of the old

order. Nay, rather lay aside your wasteful warfare and he

united in Christ Jesus, and learn the arts of a higher and a

better life, said the missionary to the Angles and Saxons, those

rude men of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland who soon drove

out the Britons from their pleasant home. And they were

united, and with the Christian faith that they received from

Pope Gregory, whom they ever revered as their special apostle
in Christ Jesus, they soon also entered on a higher culture,

learned of an alphabet and of the preservation of the most

useful thought, of written law and fixed judicial procedure, of a

better warfare by rational argument, of the refinement of the

spirit as more desirable than the gross pleasures of violent

passions. And as the missionary worked in union with the See
of Peter his efforts were never in vain, for he was only the

far-flung pioneer in the great system of Christianity that

centered at Rome, and knew that when he fell another would

come to take his place. The obligation of the metropolitans

to obtain the pallium from Rome came soon to remind the new
churches that they were offshoots of a great trunk, and that

only by close contact with the parent stem could they be

protected at once against themselves and against the forces

of secularism that too often they did not recognize, and when

they did were too weak to resist it or cast off its yoke. They

owed it to the Apostolic See that they kept for a thousand years

that beneficent unity of faith which was the basis of all their

spiritual advancement and of their growth in all the arts of

civilization. Indeed, whatever monuments they have left, like

their beautiful old cathedrals, are the products of Catholic

faith and still cry out for its once majestic exercise.

We need not wonder therefore that in the thousand years
which elapsed from the Fall of Rome to the invention of print-
ing, the successor of Peter was universally known as the apos-

tolic man par excellence, the “ Apostolicus,*’ the “ Domnus
Apostolicus,” the Apostolic Chief, or that men spoke less
frequently of Rome and more often of the “ Sedes Apostolica,’’



17

the apostolic seat or centre of Christian religious authority

visibly identical with its divine origin amid the vicissitudes

of the ages as they came and went. Nor ought we forget that

if in the more refined East a subservient episcopate had not

soon sacrificed the Catholic doctrine concerning the divinity,

person, and natures of Our Lord Jesus Christ, it was chiefly

owing to the courage with which at all times the Homan church
set forth its testimony to the truths handed down by its apos-

tolic founders. From the fourth to the seventh century, in
popes like Julius and- Damasus, in Celestine and Leo, in

Martin and Agatho, the Eastern bishops and the great Eastern

Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople are domi-

nated by the traditional authority of the Apostolic See, which

in all this dogmatic strife ever appears not as an equal, but

as head and judge, as a sure and only witness to the original

Christian truth.

III.

But if the Apostolic See has been at all times and among

all other peoples the indispensable and indestructible centre

of religious unity and the root of spiritual progress, it has

been all that in our own beloved land, and in a very eminent de-

gree. Without question the Catholic Church in this United

States owes to the successors of Peter its existence, preservation

and progress, to such an extent that without their power and in-

fluence steadily exerted in every year of this “ saeculum mira-

bile ” the majestic unity of religious sense and forces and in-

stitutions that we call American Catholicism would now be

a series of weak and divided factions and parties, or submerged

in an undistinguishable mass of rationalism and naturalism.

We have only to recall hurriedly the conditions in the Old
World and the New out of which our Church arose.
One hundred years ago this world of ours went through

a chain of crises such as it had never experienced since the

dissolution of the civil power of Rome. Men have agreed to
call these crises by the name of the French Revolution, because

Erance was the principal scene of these mighty overturnings,



18

and because she has never ceased to maintain the results and

to propagate the spirit and the aims of these marvelous decades.

Her children were the philosophers, prophets, poets and gen-

erals of the Revolution, as well as its law-makers and executors.

From Syria to Drontheim, from Paris to San Domingo,

wherever the tricolor waved and the drum beat out the Mar-

seillaise, there rose from the throats of countless men of France

such a protest against the existing condition of things in this

world as had never yet been heard by any ill-fated shepherds

of men. The oppressed everywhere sympathized with this

wild outburst of a whole people. Their rulers in vain tried

to curb the new power that had broken its bonds like a vol-

cano and was vomiting on all sides death and destruction. All

know the story—that awful “ Night of the Gods ”—the un-
paralleled decade from 1790 to 1800, the glorious shame and

the shameful glory, the injustice of men and the long-delayed

justice of God, the tottering and engulfing of thrones and

altars and the upbuilding of new social foundments, the final

passing of old and decayed social strata and the consolidation

anew of rank and class, the golden roll of the world’s greatest

victories and the unspeakable groanings and agonies of

a whole society, slaughtered apparently for ambition’s

sake,—more truly as an enormous providential blood-let-
ting for a fever that was running in irresistible paroxysms.

Behold now the deepest mystery of it all! These millions,

drunk with license and triumph, free from all restraint, clamor

once more for a master. On the blood-soaked soil of France,
under the shadow of a thousand guillotines, in an atmosphere

of savagery and blasphemy, they are building anew the throne

of a king,—nay, of a king of kings, an emperor, and will lift
upon it the figure of the Little Corsican! Marengo, Auster-

litz, Jena hallow it with more blood than was poured out about

the throne of Alexander or Caesar. In the wake of this great

consecration, law and order, peace and humanity come timidly

back to their places. Time mends again her shattered loom
and spins anew the usual web of life. Man had wanted to
see by what original processes and vicissitudes society was

formed; he had wished to penetrate those ancient and awe-



19

some secrets of God and history that were well forgotten. One

brief hour of Marat, Danton, Robespierre, and the thousand

human monsters that he had loosed from their cages, was

enough. Let there be one chief henceforth, and let men shud-

der no more before these fatal

“ Dragons of the prime

That tear each other in their slime.”

But it was on the head of the Church of Rome that this

storm broke with the utmost violence. In all those wonderful

years two popes, Pius VI and Pius VII, walked a dolorous
way and were the broken-hearted witnesses of the deepest

humiliation that had yet befallen the See of Peter. Out of

the revolt of Martin Luther, but after incredible exertions,

the popes had saved the Mediterranean world. How the Latin
genius itself seemed to apostatize and was calling loudly for

the crucifixion of the mother which bore it, nursed it, raised

it to manifold greatness, and when its original empire was

lost gave it a new world for the exercise of its gifts. The

so-called Catholic States of Europe vied with one another in

attaining over religion within their domains the same free

hand that the non-Catholic States had acquired, and as we near

the end of the eighteenth century, and the first wild mutter-

ings of the Revolution are heard, Gallican and Jansenist, Eebro-

nian and Josephist agree with the apostles of Deism and Ration-

alism that the See of Peter must cease to exist, must perish

amid every evidence of contempt and injustice. And as for
more than a thousand years the Western Churches were mo3t

intimately dependent on the See of Peter, it followed logically

that the fall of the queenly mother would entail the overthrow

of the daughters
;
nor was it otherwise, as is known to all.

Amid these circumstances were formed the first Catholic
Churches in the United States, timid and insignificant, almost

purely spiritual entities, with nothing but a doctrine and some

memories, disheartened beyond measure by the contemporary

wreckage of the stately churches of their European brethren.

All other Christian bodies were historically antagonistic to



20

them, and tolerated them often only for their pitiful helpless-

ness. They were without traditions or customs, without litera-

ture or art or schools, without monuments or institutions, for

the most part scattered groups of exiles driven hither by poverty

or civil oppression or religious persecution. If the great Catho-

lic Churches of the Old World lay then in the dust, those of the

New World were in the beginning all but invisible. Happily
for them a series of providential circumstances had made the

new state a land of religious freedom and in this new State

the Catholics had been generally foremost in patriotic con-

viction, toil, and sacrifiqe, for the establishment of the new

republic. They could say, as Melito of Sardes once said to

Marcus Aurelius, that their religion and the new republic

had arisen at the same time and that an equal prosperity of

growth had been vouchsafed both, as though an index of their

mutual sympathy and service. With blood and counsel and

treasure they had bought the right to worship God freely accord-

ing to the dictates of their conscience, had anchored deeply

in every Catholic heart the holy passion of patriotism, and had

secured it forever by an inextinguishably grateful memory of

religious equity and peace, written into the fundamental law

of the people, and destined one day to repay a thousandfold

the noble confidence which prompted a law surely indispensa-

ble at that time for the development of the Catholic religion.

The perils of American Catholicism were not therefore from

without, but rather from within. How should the new Church
be governed? Who should appoint its bishops, its ministering
clergy ? Where should their support come from ? Who should
own and administer the ecclesiastical property? What should
be the limits of authority and obedience between the laity and

the clergy? How should ecclesiastical justice be administered?
In a word how should the constitution of the Catholic Church,
partly divine and partly an ancient historical growth, be made
to work in circumstances that on the one hand were truly

favorable, on the other extremely difficult ? It must be remem-

bered that out of the eighteenth century anti-ecclesiastical and

anti-papal conflicts and discussions some Catholics, both ecclesi-

astics and laymen, had brought with them to the New World a



21

certain menacing Liberalism, principles and views concerning

ecclesiastical government not easily compatible with an imme-

morially hierarchical church. Then, too, the Catholic popula-

tion was almost at once fed by an ever-expanding volume of

immigration, men of various nations and tongues, likewise of

divergent civil and religious training, of unequal social advan-

tages, as different in mentality as they were in racial traits

and temper. Uor could they be kept within easy reach and

control of such toil-worn clergy as existed. Tempted by the

vastness and freedom of their new lives the immigrants roamed

far and wide over the boundless extent of the new state,

wherever opportunity tempted or fate bore them, so that even

the most elementary influence of religion was often foreign or

rather unattainable to these children of untold generations of

Catholics. The Catholic Church in the United States was con-

fronted, at once and over half a world, with the most delicate in-

ternal problems and the commonest calls of justice and charity.

And as though to render more difficult the adaptation of an old
historical religion to such new and extraordinary circumstances

human nature itself, the average social capacity, seemed sudden-
ly to experience an incredible uplift. The native genius of the

new republic attacked with vigor its chief obstacle, distance, and

in a brief time had endowed humankind with the beneficent

inventions that render forever famous the name of the United

States. Space seemed at once to roll up and disappear, while

time was so multiplied in value that the individual man seemed
now to dispose of a quasi-eternity. In this new state the plain
common man rose rapidly in dignity and self-respect. Ho
law of caste, no tradition of hereditary government, no ancient

privilege barred the way of the most lowly. Equality of citizen-
ship, vastness of opportunity, and abundance of all natural

resources so conditioned and developed human personality that
often there wTas almost the force of an antique state in each
superior man who arose to grapple with resisting nature or
to forge into a working organism the raw political material

that lay about him. The poor immigrant, usually from the

humblest strata of European life, ignorant of the uses of

political freedom and the solemn responsibilities of self-govern-



22

ment, was suddenly clothed with the dignity of a ruler in a

very complex governmental system. Moreover, his fathers be-

fore him had been modest tillers of a few worn acres, and

now he was given an abundance of virgin soil, with every
advantage of climate, cultivation, demand and transportation

!

He had lived as a rule close to nature in a simple, frugal and
obscure way, and now he was thrown by thousands into the

most active, ambitious, and productive urban centres that the

world had yet seen! His pleasures had hitherto been few and

innocent, and the means of satisfying the higher and more

violent passions had been to him, happily enough, unattainable.

But now he was mightily solicited on all sides by a superb and

manifold joy of life and action that knew no bounds, and was

the exact opposite of the patient and gentle humility of senti-

ment, timidity of thought, and habitual self-repression that

for long ages had been natural to him ! Finally, he had lived

under a paternal absolutism that looked with immemorial jeal-

ousy on all political freedom of thought and speech, especially in

the plain multitude, holding it by nature and history incapable

of political sense or wisdom. And now he was daily witness
to an incredible universal frankness of criticism, a freedom

and fulness of individual judgment on all subjects, an untram-

meling of the mind scarcely imaginable to one brought up to

respect the existing order and institutions of life as a little less

than divinely ordained, certainly in practice unimpeachable

or unimproveable by the majority of mankind

!

IV.

Therefore whether we consider the vast scandal of the ap-

parent failure and undoing of Catholicism in Europe, one

hundred years ago, or whether we reflect on the dubious con-

ditions and circumstances amid which the Catholic life began

to organize itself in the United States, or whether we recall

the contemporary universal discredit of all institutions that bore

the stamp of antiquity and the huge pride of a new and free

life that was everywhere in evidence, or whether we remember



23

that Catholicism, which from time immemorial counted the

State itself and civil institutions as friendly and protective,

was now as poor and insignificant as the lowliest of its members,

the outlook for a rapid and orderly growth of its churches was

not then encouraging to prudent men who properly appreciated

at once the true nature of the Catholic Church and the character

of the new times and new surroundings. Could she seek once

more her origin in the womb of time and be truly born again ?

Could she renounce all but the essentials of her being, and

recommence the toilsome and perilous and uncertain conquest

of her own children, forget the glory of the past, the reverence

and fear of kings, the admiration of entire peoples, the habit

of motherly domination without close regard to the exact limits

of the temporal and the spiritual ? In other words, was a gen-

uine Catholicism possible in the United States ?

The answer lies in a century of unequalled growth, during

which all the internal forces of Catholicism have had free play

and after which it stands demonstrated to the world that in

the United States the deepest religious sentiment and the

most ardent civic loyalty find an equal shelter in every Catho-

lic heart. We have all rejoiced these days with the populous
and progressive dioceses of Hew York and Philadelphia at
the rounding out of a century of vigorous religious life, nor is

it necessary to point to the material evidences of the vigor

and solidity of the faith and generosity of the three generations

which have made possible the wonderful Catholic monuments

of worship, education, and charity that grace these noble cities

and exhibit publicly the true spirit and the real uses of the

Catholic faith. In such matters these two dioceses are only

foremost among a hundred others equally zealous according

to their population and their means. But infinitely greater

for our nation’s welfare than all the external works of this

century of Catholicism is the undeniable evidence of the fun-

damental sympathy and harmony that have always existed

between the genius of the American Commonwealth and the

Catholic Church. By their fruits ye shall know them. As
a rule great working ideals that are widely shared by an epoch

or a people create for themselves strong and bold personalities



24

in whom these ideals are forever embodied and consecrated.
And it has been even so with us in the short span of one
hundred years. As long as our Catholic people can remember

the names of such prelates as Archbishops John Carroll and

John Hughes, and such citizens as Charles Carroll and Roger

Taney, so long will they remember that the most glorious con-

quest of Catholicism in the Hew World is its unbroken moral
cooperation with the Constitution and the institutions of this

United States, and that if in the future men’s souls should again

be tried in some consuming furnace of public peril, the response

from the children of the Catholic Church will never be unworthy

of their famous ancestry.

And where could this assurance be more strongly felt or
more justly proclaimed than in this mother church of our relig-

ion in the United States? Its prelates from the first to the

latest have ever been men of strong and pure Catholic faith,
but likewise men of equally ardent and enlightened patriotism.
Its clergy and its laity, inheritors of a sturdy Catholicism that

began nobly in the Ark and the Dove, have ever been conspicuous

for their religious zeal, their generosity, and their civic devo-

tion. From this pulpit, as from its native place, has ever
issued a high and solemn appeal for the love of this glorious

fatherland, for a perfect service of it, above all for lives that

shall perpetuate it to the end of time in keeping with the

ideals that were shared and proclaimed with equal earnestness

by our First President and the first archbishop of this See.

The world to-day looks on with astonishment at our rich devel-

opment in fullest freedom of all the forces of Catholic life.

But it ought never to be forgotten that to the prelates of

this primatial See, and by reason of its very antiquity, its promi-

nence, and its proximity to our seat of government, is largely

owing the ample and well-justified confidence of the public

authority in the devotion and fidelity of the entire Catholic

body to the welfare of the nation. The fair daughters whose

joy this venerable See shares these days went forth from her,

but they went forth well equipped for their splendid career,

indoctrinated with admirable principles of true religion and

true patriotism, each in turn provided with a sum of experience



25

and insight that in those early days were invaluable, and each

confident that here were wisdom and courage, affection and

charity, tact and sympathy.

On the other hand, dearly beloved brethren, any outline of
our Catholic life and progress would be at once unreal and un-

just that did not take into consideration and acknowledge with

gratitude the share of the Apostolic See, its constant solicitude,

its wise direction, the benefit of its secular experience, and the

guidance of the Holy Spirit that in the administration of the

Church is ordinarily vouchsafed most abundantly through its

head, the Yicar of Jesus Christ on earth. Since the division

of the first diocese, the venerable See of Baltimore, one hundred

years ago, some ninety dioceses have been created, about one-

tenth of the actual Latin episcopate, so that a new diocese has

arisen in our Church for nearly every year of the last century.

When we reflect, on the one hand, that the diocese with its
bishop is the original living cell of the Catholic organism, and

on the other hand that the formation of each diocese means

long and careful study, the exercise of prudence and equity,

tact and conciliation, it must be at once evident that we are
deeply indebted to the Apostolic See for what is on the whole

an admirable repartition of our religious capacities, duties

and resources. To this we must add the constant and imme-

diate control of religious and ecclesiastical observance, the exe-

cution of the public laws of the Church, by frequent reports to

the Apostolic See and by frequent visits of the bishops to the

same immemorial source of Catholic wisdom. Within the same

period three national councils and many provincial synods have
been held, in all of which the Apostolic See has been imme-

diately helpful and has brought the organization of the Catholic

Church in the United States into full harmony with the inten-

tion and the general principles of universal canonical legislation.

The same venerable See has never failed to insist on the edu-

cation of a native clergy, and it is very largely to this that we
owe to-day the system of provincial and diocesan seminaries

and the novitiates of the religious orders out of which in no

small measure have come the 16,000 priests who now minister
to the needs of the American Catholic people.



26

It has been ever intent on diminishing and removing all

causes or occasions of friction within the ranks of this clergy.

We owe to it the harmony of action that exists to-day between
the secular clergy and the religious orders working in the

same territory and subject to the same wise general laws.

To it also we owe the high degree of reverence and

obedience that to-day everywhere marks the practical re-

lations of the bishop and his clergy. Jn the Apostolic

See the Catholic people of the United States have always

found a final court of appeal, at once accessible, equitable,

independent and powerful, which no unrighteous influence could

easily deceive, or deceiving hope to maintain what it had gained.

In a very particular manner we owe to the Apostolic See the

practical and considerate legislation that in the course of a

hundred years has enabled the Catholic Church in the United

States to assimilate gradually and affectionately many millions
of immigrants speaking many languages, formed differently
by immemorial institutions and history, broken off with vio-

lence and often with hard injustice from their parent stem,

cast across wide seas into a new and strange land.

ISTor ought we forget that in all this legislation the Apostolic

See has always been thoughtful for the public welfare of

the Republic, the closer harmony of all its citizens for the

common good and growth, an increase of respect for the
public authority, and a larger and more intelligent co-

operation for the knowledge and practice of those poli-

tical virtues without which no State has hitherto managed to

exist with peace and progress. In all these and other forms

of beneficent direction the habitual instrument of the Apos-

tolic See has been for us the Congregation of Propaganda.

Amid these centenary feasts of rejoicing it seems certainly
proper to pay just tribute to the wisdom and equity of its

prefects, the learning of its canonists, the administrative skill

and vigor of its secretaries, and the habitual devotion of its

officials. Through this body the ancient legislation of the

Church has been constantly revised for us and adapted to our

needs, or new provision has been made for our new circum-



27

stances and conditions. It has borne the brunt of responsibility

in all the larger activities necessary to safeguard the unity

of Catholicism in the United States, to protect its dignity,

to maintain its intrinsic strength and health, and to keep it

in harmonious contact with the civil order.

If now I add that by sending an immediate representative

to the Catholic Church in the United States the Apostolic See

has recognized the full dignity of the latter and has provided

for a more expeditious and satisfactory administration of its

general interests, I shall have omitted no important step of the

central authority in favor of the welfare of Catholicism in

our beloved fatherland.

Dearly beloved brethren ! It seems to me that in the sacred
ceremony of this morning, the most solemn in all the rich

ritual of the Church, we have a remarkable illustration of

what I have been trying briefly to set before you, namely,

the union of civic spirit and religious zeal. In the Catholic

priest who has this day been raised to the fulness of the

episcopal order devotion to his native land has ever been a

prominent trait. In the high and responsible offices that have

been entrusted to him he has never failed to make it plain

that he was a profound believer in the fundamental principles

that have always regulated the relations of the Catholic Church

and the United States, principles of mutual respect and coope-

ration, a large and kindly amity that recognizes fully the

nature and history of each society and emphasizes particularly

all those points of contact that make for a deeper intelligence

of one another, a fuller sympathy, and a more efficient promo-

tion of the great beneficent aims that are common to both.
In his long and successful career in the Eternal City as a repre-

sentative of the Catholic Church in the United States he

was called on more than once to render highly prized services

to whole classes of our citizens, while an army of individuals,

bishops, priests, and laymen, still live to thank him for in-

numerable courtesies and benefits conferred on them during

the same period. If we consider that the Catholic life flourishes



28

particularly where good order, venerable tradition, sure and

rapid justice, and a general wise equity prevail, it is not too

much to say that no priest has contributed more to the welfare
both of our clergy and of the Catholic laity in general. Let

a partial witness of this be his acknowledged service to the

Third Plenary Council of Baltimore and his share in the estab-

lishment of the Apostolic Delegation at Washington. The chief

merit, however, of this priest’s life is the service that he has

rendered to the education of the clergy, always a matter of

primary importance in the Catholic religion which is kept

alive, taught and administered, protected and illustrated chiefly

by the ministers whom it selects from its own members and
trains with exceedingly great affection and earnestness as the

guardians and representatives before God and man of its spirit,
its honor and its dignity. As Rector for many years of the
American College at Rome he brought that beloved institution
to a high degree of academic efficiency and placed it on a sound

economic basis whence it has arisen regularly to its present

high status. The unification of all our teaching in the annual

assemblies of the Catholic Educational Association and the

increased interest in the work of the Catholic teacher in the

United States are largely due to his intelligent zeal and in-

fluence.

Finally, as Rector of the Catholic University of America

he has won the support and approval of his superiors, has guided

faithfully and successfully that institution amid peculiarly try-

ing and even disheartening circumstances, and has received

from the Apostolic See the highest note of recognition that

can be conferred on a Catholic priest. More than this it would

be unnecessary to say, did not the present magnificent assembly

of Catholic prelates, probably the largest ever gathered in this

country for an episcopal consecration, demand from us an

expression of gratitude. While they have come from far and

near primarily to honor the distinguished ecclesiastic who this

day enters their high rank we cannot forget that their imposing

array, for numbers and dignity, is almost a council of the

Church, and that their assembly adds one more title of just



29

pride to this venerable Cathedral and is one more well-merited

joy for the eminent prelate who, more than any one else, rejoices

in the happy culmination of the life that he has this day

irrevocably consecrated to an absolute service of our Common
Master.

Thomas J. Shaha^.

»