THE CATHOLIC PART IN CIVIC PROGRESS 275 



history, in morals and in civilization — viewed merely as a 

 factor in the record of the world — cannot be ignored. If the 

 principles of revealed religion, morality and right living and 

 thinking which overcame the pagan world of Greece and 

 Rome, and which subdued the fierce barbarians of Northern 

 Europe and converted them into the pillars of the civiliza- 

 tion of to-day, and hurled back the Moslem from the devasta- 

 tion of Europe, and lit the flame of learning at hundreds of 

 university shrines throughout the ages, have not lost their 

 force — and we believe them as potent to-day as ever they were 

 — it is our bounden duty above all others not to ignore the 

 splendid tradition of Catholicity and its part in the better- 

 ment of the world. Others should know it, but we are bound 

 to do so. 



We have had in the past and in the present down even to 

 to-day the splendid records of what whole-souled and high- 

 minded Catholics have done in the various fields of political 

 life, humanitarian service and common welfare. But mere 

 record is not enough. There are the great treasures of 

 thought, philosophy and experience for the past twenty cen- 

 turies which can be utilized by us in the solution of the prob- 

 lems of to-day. There should be a translation and adaptation 

 to our present-day needs, of the formulas which healed the 

 nations in the past. Occasionally some professor or some 

 earnest student of the past discovers, to our shame and con- 

 fusion at our own neglect, the method and the practice which 

 the Church inculcated in some temporarily forgotten age and 

 applies it to the solution of present-day difficulties. That 

 should be preeminently our task, and it is one of the many 

 things we can do for our part in the civic progress of to-day. 



As a part of the great population of this still greater land 

 of ours we should lend a commensurate aid in solving the 

 problems which vex it and in smoothing the ways which real 

 progress takes. Not merely in political life or in municipal 

 stations should Catholics be found ; there should be no problem 

 to be solved, no question to be discussed, no remedy sought 

 for existing evils, no improvement or reform in governmental, 

 moral or educational lines without Catholics being represented 

 on the body or association engaged in such work. The repre- 

 sentation should be commensurate with our importance in the 

 population of our country. We shall not have grown to our 



