NEW ROCHELLE ADDRESS 343 



growth of the past century was made without the material, 

 intellectual and moral assistance which a keen, alert and splen- 

 didly educated womanhood could have given. I do not intend 

 to underrate the magnificent qualities and services rendered 

 by the members of the devoted sisterhoods whose efforts in the 

 past made possible the founding of colleges like this. At any 

 rate, they were in the minority among a vast lay womanhood 

 whose strong weapons were their prayers and their unswerv- 

 ing Faith. But now that we have the college woman, her 

 field of duty — aside from her direct duty to herself and her 

 family — lies straight before her. She can make the future 

 even more glorious than the past. Her mental equipment, her 

 training and her environment render her capable of doing so. 



When a young woman goes forth from a Catholic college, 

 where the Faith has been taught as well as the binomial theo- 

 rem or conic sections, where physics and Christian ethics have 

 not been kept apart, where the Latin of Cicero has been min- 

 gled with the Latin of liturgy, where prayer and devotion have 

 been as usual as study and recitation, she is apt to find a some- 

 what cynical learned world around her. It will not be an anti- 

 Catholic atmosphere — nothing hardly so impolite as that — for 

 one must, you know, in these days of culture and appreciation, 

 readily acknowledge the vast treasures of art, music and beauty 

 which the Church created and fostered, but it will be an un- 

 Catholic atmosphere varying all the way from doubt to amused 

 pity. It will be somewhat akin to an expression which might 

 be used if one were suddenly to find an enthusiast who believed 

 in the ancient heathen gods of Greece and Rome. The ex- 

 pression will be almost as if one might well admire the classic 

 statues of antiquity and glory in them, but pity the unfortu- 

 nate who in these days should render worship to Jupiter, Mars 

 or Juno, or any of the other gods of Olympus. It is this un- 

 conscious, half-veiled attitude of mind which will meet the 

 Catholic girl graduate when she leaves college and mingles 

 among her equals in academic honors. Sometimes it goes as 

 far as direct hostility to and malevolent misunderstanding of 

 our teachings. 



You have all heard the story of the Parisian quack doctor, 

 who, mounted upon a pedestal in the midst of the listening 

 crowd, was extolling the extraordinary virtues of the remedy 

 which he offered for sale. After many descriptions of the 



