The Roman Universities [pp. 313-321]

THE ROMANV UNI VERSiTZES.
they wish to perfect themselves. We need an arsenal of learning to which the priests of our country, and its laity too, may
at any time have recourse for all the offensive and defensive
armor of which they may stand in need amid the thousand
piercing questions that press upon them. We need an infstitution whose watch-towers shall scan the farthest horizon of
the learning of the day, and whose spires shall lift the cross
of Christ so high that it will be a beacon guide to the loftiest
intellects in our land. We need a true university, which will
showv to our doubting age all knowledge meeting in the divine
truth and radiating from it. We need a nursery and trainingground for the scholars of the future-scholars whose genius
will be, like that of our country, the freest and boldest and
noblest, yet the safest and most conservative of all.
Such is the great need which the Catholic University of
America must aim at supplying. No matter how gradual may
be its beginnings, that must be its purpose, the goal of its
eid2avor. Surely its establishment must be a joy to all who
have felt the need and the craving for what it is meant to supply, and to all who, with generous hearts, for the greater glory
of the church and the higher wvelfare of our people, desire that
others should have more abundant educational facilities than
themselves were ever blessed with.
The halls of the university are to be wide open to every one,
without limit or distinction, who is able and anxious to profit
by the superior courses taught in them. As the professorial
chairs are to be open to the whole world, to laymen and clerics,
to seculars and regulars, with no distinction save that of merit,
so the students' benches are to have no conditions save those
of fitness for higher studies and zeal to profit by them. We
look forward with glad expectancy to the day when our divinity college will be surrounded with homes in \vhich students
not only of various dioceses or provinces, but also of the various religious congregations, will live and study under such
discipline as their superiors may determine, and at the same
time attend the university courses, thus imbibing at once the
spirit of their institute and the noblest streams of sacred learning, and building up a real republic of letters.
Nor can the establishment of the university be less a joy to
the laity than to the clergy. Nowhere in the world can a body
of Catholics be found who are more devoted to their clergy, more proud of their excellence, more sensitive about the
church's honor and the intellectual standing of her ministers,
than the Catholics of America. Far from grudging that the
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