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Show 1 THE GREAT EVENT AT BALTIMORE. Consecration of Mgr. Conaty as Titular Bishop of Samos Sermon Delivered By Dr. Shahan of the University. HT. REV. THOMAS J. CONAT. Last week the Intermountain Cath- ' olic presented the brief Associated j Piess account of the consecration of J Consignor Thomas J. Conaty at the old j cathedral of Baltimore, in whose his- icric walls so many splendid ceremo- nies sf the Catholic church have been J h Id This was supplemented by a I biographical sketch of the prelate. The I Baltimore Sun, now at hand, gives us a i fair synopsis of the sermon delivered on the occasion by Very Rev. Dr. Shahan of the Catholic university. - Monsignor Thomas J. Conaty, rector Tli of the Catholic university at Washing- I I ton, received at the hands of Cardinal I Gibbons the plentitude of the priest- ; i hood by being consecrated titular bish-op bish-op of Samos. For the benefit of the curious, it may be well to mention that Samos, vhi,;h is the name of the titular see which Bishop Conaty as- I sumes, is an island of the Aegean sea, I nbout twenty-live miles by eighty or 4 ninety. The most important of the, I Si orades after Rhodes, it is Very rug- ged and picturesque, is very famous I in deck history, and was a powerful i member of the Ionic confederacy. Jt 5 plays a great part in the mediaeval i wars with the Turks. Present popula- i it li..u is said to be about 50W, nearly 1 all Chiistians. Since lo3 it has had j I 11 quasi-independent government under the suzerainty of the sultan. The ceremony of consecration as j I , glared by the presence of nine arch-j . bisliops, not including Cardinal Gib- j buns, and numerous bishops and prom- I ineiu clergy from all parts ot the coun- try. The pews were tilled by a large f congn gntio:i, including many distin- I Kiiishi'd laymen of Baltimore. AVash-, ington and other cities. Following the consecration there was a dinner at St. f M;iry'.s seminary, at which Cardinal J Cihbotis presided and many of the vis-! vis-! iting prelates were guests. (The sermon was preached by Very Rev. Thomas J. Shahan. dean of the , faculty of theology of the t'atholic Ulli- 5 ctsity. It v as an eloquent disquisi- ' t i . . n upon th" nature of the bishop's; ' of'.ice. coupled with an earnest plea for 1 ' ''iitholic education in America. He poke for more than an hour, and dur- i In all t!;;n. time he was listened to '.' with the (hejiest attention and inter- sl- His tex-. was "Let the priests that rule wen )X. esteemed worthy of a double honor. e.-peciaUy they who labor in the word ;ind doct rine." First Fpis-1 Fpis-1 tie to Timothy, v. 17. . Pr. Shihan said: "The Catholic -1 mrch has this day nii.re than one spe- ci.. cause for rej.iiciiig. This day seals ' th.e nisecration et' a mature and ir- tuous life to the highest spiritual ideal f ; that man can grasp the total devotion T s - If to the public good. In the three I 1 ' I istles that St. Paul wrote on the na- k; f 1 m e and qualit ies of t he otlice of hishfip there recur unceasingly two ideas j biamelessncss of life and lotal surren- d-r of self to the utility of the coni- I m u n i t y. I Till: APOSTOLIC iFFJCE. 1 'Then, again, today witnesses ;in- j ether link in the chain of a post "lie of- tee and tradition. H confronts the l orld across niiicteen centuries with j those poor lishei-men of Galilee whom I their Master sent forth clothed with i His power and charged with the con- jj tinuance of His work. In that hour, by f- the waters of Genesareth, there was j j born Into this world a new force, high- I er than state or nationality or race or I culture, the idea of a universal mem- I bership in the mystic body of Jesus I f ''hrist. a membership that was based ! rn pregnant ideas of fatherhood and ' j sonship and brotherhood, so vast and I k.i profound that they transcended 1 easily all ordinary metes and bounds j tip space and lime, all human relation- ; . ships of the iiast. It is true that the i inifierial administration of the civilized f world had been but lately rounded out ! mid solidified. The turbulent domestic I liberties of Rome' were then only a i memory. The Orient lay broken be- ! - neath the legions of Caesar and the , ''ude stirrings of Teutonic barbarism I had been severely repressed by Tiberi-up. Tiberi-up. not without a troubling prophetic ''-sight into the future of the Roman Mate. For the first time in its history mankind ceased from continuous war .nd obeyed the mandate of ieace and i order that went out from the Seven ! Hills by the Tiber. Yet the true ce-; ce-; ment of universal peace was not the i legion of Rome any more than it had j been the phalanx of Macedona; rather I was it the new concept of a common I brotherhood that Jesus had brought upon the earth and enlivened and con- firmed by His own example." AUTHORITY HANDING DOWN". Dr. Shahan spoke of the unifpue phe-' phe-' nemenon in history the handing down j after the same manner of an identical authority that of the Church for nearly 2.000 years. "'The church's actual bishops," he ' said, "are the last links in the chain j of individual succession that goes back to Jesus Christ. Each one of those selected men, apart from his personal worth, is truly an epitome of the history his-tory of the church, i "If we seek another reason for rejoicing re-joicing we shall find it in the fact that i today the Holy Spirit is present with us in a way that transcends any poor, feeble fancy of ours to portray. During Dur-ing these ceremonies there takes place, we are persuaded, the transmission of the fullness of His highest graces. But there is more in the consecration of a bishop. Here the Holy Spirit descends upon the church not alone as consoler and guide, but as its administrator and head, as provident for its life and great otganic functions. AS A TEACHER. "In the Catholic church the office of a bishop is pre-eminently the office of a teacher. It is as the first and most ' eminent teachers of the new law ofj Jesus Christ that the Apostles have j always been remembered and honored. After all, does not Jesus Christ Himself Him-self come down before us as a teacher? Is it not in that mild and beneficent roll that he chose to appear among men. and not in the exercise of any political authority?" Dr. Shahan went on to speak of the history of education in the Catholic chutch, and the strengthening effect it had on the church itself. "In general," he said, "when we speak of education we may remember that its natural friend has always been the Catholic bishop, and that he alone saved it as a theory and a system ; through the long thousand years ofthe Middle Ages, when the prevailing warlike war-like and ignorant secularism despised all learning and fixed on every scholar in derision the epithet of clerk or churchman. He saved it, too. from the neglect and opposition of a false mysticism mys-ticism and an excessive asceticism which would have left human society a pii' to ignorance and all her evil brood. He had to deal with the entire society about him. and so the schools, which" everywhere in Europe he perforce per-force kept up, never lost touch entirely w ith the best traditions of Greece and Rome. If no one else visited them he compelled his priests to get their education edu-cation there, and so he made those schools the bearers to the lay world of messages from antiquity that otherwise other-wise had surely gotten lost in th gen- j era! infancy of civilization. In the . Middle Age's the only man habitually, ! necessarily. almost unconsciously, sympathetic to books and scholars is the Catholic bishop. How could he be i otherwise? He was the man Tesponsi- , b!e before God for the preservation and : spread of the Christian religion, of all , religions the one that rouses the most hearthily and develops the human reason, rea-son, with its written records, its claim to universality, its contact with all men and with all societies, its rejection rejec-tion of all other religions. Its avowed mysteries, its long and varied history." his-tory." THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. In speaking of the Catholic university, univer-sity, Dr. Shahan said: "We are engaged in no new work wh:n we gather about God's altar today to-day to share, each in his own way, in an act of very great importance the clothing with the episcopal character and office of the priest w hom five years ago the bishops of our native land requested re-quested the Holy Father at Rome to place at the head of the Catholic university uni-versity at Washington. If the Holy Fee. eminently cautious and judicious, raised above the ephmeral clamors of the hour and serenely observant of all the great world forces both old and new, has seen fit to put the stamp of approval on the labors and results of these momentous years, we ma- b certain that it was not done without fu!l consciousness of the grave significance signifi-cance of this step. We may be certain that this act bears to us the approval and the encouragement of the great pontiff who founded the Catholic, university uni-versity at Washington, and jdaced it under the perpetual authority of the whole hierarchy and gave to the work for its head a member of that same hierarchy and encouraged him by word and deed to labor so unselfishly, and establish it so firmly, that in time it should not be ashamed to take its piace among the best schools of the world." He spoke of the great need for the university, declaring education of the youth of a nation in Catholic schools to be essential to the maintenance of the Church. |