340 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



lege and the earnest teaching of your professors. There is an 

 obvious mission for the CathoHc college woman in the world, 

 even aside from her womanly duties and such vocation as she 

 may embrace. Her womanhood should be exulted in, and its 

 cultivation be the crowning thought and glory of her life. But 

 as she has received the light, so also should she dispense the 

 light around her path throughout the world. You are, even 

 more than the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome, the keepers of 

 the sacred fire, and you should ever guard that fire of learning 

 and faith and see to it that its flames mount ever higher and 

 higher. As you have received from your Alma Mater, so 

 should you in turn give to others. 



This very fact forbids you as graduates to stand still. 

 Simply that you have arrived at this day of triumph does not 

 mean that you should put any brake upon your forward move- 

 ment. I do not believe that one of you would for a moment 

 rest content to be merely satisfied in an easy, caressing manner 

 with the Baccalaureate degree, as though it were a particular 

 gem or curio, and therefore a sufficient possession for all time. 

 It must be turned to advantage, it must be added to, and it 

 must be made useful to the possessor and to those around her. 



As I have said, I believe there is an obvious mission for the 

 Catholic college woman, and I believe that just now the field 

 for the exercise of that mission looms larger than ever before. 

 It is particularly so, because just now there are, comparatively 

 speaking, so few Catholic college women, and so many places 

 where their learning and their womanhood combined can be 

 displayed to such advantage. 



Just now we are in the expansive age of the Church in the 

 United States, and it is precisely in this age that there is so 

 much. constructive work for them to do. It is in this niche of 

 the great fabric of the Church where they can nowadays fit- 

 tingly place themselves with the happiest results. 



Consider for a moment just what the history of the Church 

 in these United States has been within the more than a cen- 

 tury and a quarter of its active and actual existence. Begin- 

 ning at the close of the eighteenth century with a handful of 

 clergy and a few thousand of the laity — misunderstood, pos- 

 sessing but the most meager of civic rights, without learning, 

 position or wealth among their members, save a great name 

 here and there — they struggled on through difficulty and op- 



