502 FRA OMENTS V 8CIKNCK. 



their spiritual pastors and masters. It expresses the pro- 

 foundest dissatisfaction with the curriculum marked out 

 for the students of the University; setting forth the extra- 

 ordinary fact that the lecture-list for the faculty of science, 

 published a month before they wrote, did not contain the 

 name of a single professor of the physical or natural 

 sciences. 



The memorialists forcibly deprecate this, and dwell 

 upon the necessity of education in science: "The distin- 

 guishing mark of this age is its ardor for science. The 

 natural sciences have, within the last fifty years, become 

 the chief est study in the world; they are in our time pur- 

 sued with an activity unparalleled in the history of man- 

 kind. Scarce a year now passes without some discovery 

 being made in these sciences which, as with the touch of 

 the magician's wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly 

 deemed unassailable. It is through the physical and natural 

 sciences that the fiercest assaults are now made on our 

 religion. No more deadly weapon is used against our faith 

 than the facts incontestably proved by modern researches 

 in science." 



Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable to a 

 number of gentlemen who, trained in the philosophy of 

 Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the unquestion- 

 ing submission of all other sciences to their divine science 

 of theology. But this is not all: " One thing seems cer- 

 tain," say the memorialists, viz., "that if chairs for the 

 physical and natural sciences be not soon founded in the 

 Catholic University, very many young men will have their 

 faith exposed to dangers which the creation of a school of 

 science in the University would defend them from. For 

 our generation of Irish Catholics are writhing under the 

 sense of their inferiority in science, and are determined 

 that such inferiority shall not long continue; and so, if 

 scientific training be unattainable at our University, they 

 will seek it at Trinity or at the Queen's Colleges, in not 

 one of which is there a Catholic professor of science." 



Those who imagined the Catholic University of 

 Kensington to be due to the spontaneous recognition, on 

 the part of the Roman hierarchy, of the intellectual needs 

 of the age, will derive enlightenment from this, and still 

 more from what follows: for the most formidable threat 

 remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding 



