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Show i i SPALDING AT WASHINGTON. i , Bishop Spalding delivered another 1 address of more than usual interest at j Washington 0n Thursday of last week. The occasion was the dedication of the new college which the Fathers of the Holy Cross are erecting at the Catholic Catho-lic university. . , - It is always refreshing to read the thoughts of the gifted Bishop of Peoria. The subject of the. Bishop's address was, "The University a Nursery of the Higher Life." The following paragraph para-graph from the Bishop's address is worthy of attention: "Whatever may be thought of the moral and religious progress or regress of America, there can be no doubt that our institutions of higher learning have now for more than a quarter of a century cen-tury been making rapid advances. STRONG MEN NEEDED. "If ever and anywhere," said the speaker, "men of exceptional intellectual intellec-tual and moral strength were needed, they are needed by American Catholics, Catho-lics, thrown as a minorSty, burdened with many disadvantages, into the micsst of the eager, self-confident and all-prevailing democracy cf the New World." Ho did not think that Catholics Catho-lics should be d.scouraged. because things are not as they weTe in feudal times. Should we regret the vanished power of Princes. Bishops and Abbots, he inquired, or "shall we murmur because be-cause here the word of God, issuing from minds and hearts that are alive and faithful, penetrates more surely and reaches farther than the solendor I and pomp of ceremonial worship?" It is not by boasting of the great things the Church has accomplished, he declared, that the Catholics can become be-come strong, but by becoming true men and doing something worthy themselves. them-selves. "Unless we are inspired with the spirit of the age and country in which we live, how can men know or love us? If we are not at home in our own Hire and fatherland, in the midst of what God makes us alive to see and cjo, when and where shall we find a home?" X |