The Catholic University Bulletin. Vol. XIV. April, 1908. No. 4 "Let there be progress, therefore; a widespread and eager progress in every century and epoch, both of individuals and of the general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their natural limits, and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teaching, feeling and opinion."-ST. Vincent of LERINS, Commonit, c. 6. PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA WASHINGTON, D. C. Today, with the Church at large, we commemorate the anniversary of Thomas Aquinas as one of the saints of God. In its corporate capacity the University observes his feast with the ampler solemnities to do honor to the great Doctor of the Church, the Angel of the schools, the Patron of philosophy and theology. To pronounce these titles is sufficiently to recall to this audience the mighty work which St. Thomas has achieved for the Church during his own age, and in the centuries which have since elapsed. It is not necessary, here, to repeat in detail how, through the mouth of Popes and Councils, by the suffrages of religious orders, academic institutions and the testimony of learned men, the Church has, by universal acclamation and formal decree, elected St. Thomas Aquinas to be the special patron of all who seek to acquire, to defend, and to diffuse the doctrines of the Catholic Church. As patron of the schools, St. Thomas is proposed to us in a double aspect. He is our personal model; he is the teacher to whom we are to look for intellectual light and leading. While we read his story as recorded by his contemporaries, and study those silent tomes in which his mind speaks to ours *An address delivered in the Chapel of the Catholic University of America, on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, March 7, 1908. across the gulf of six centuries, he rises before us, the flawless exemplar of those who would seek and serve that wisdom which reaches from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly. We see a man of princely bearing; a noble forehead indicative of the spacious intellect within; and a countenance breathing sweetness and serenity. We see a student who, in the cause of truth, scorned delights and lived laborious days. Surveying the whole field of human knowledge he gathers from every quarter materials to build up the city of God. Loving and trusting truth, convinced that, because all truth is of God, no sound reason can contradict faith, he welcomes knowledge from whatever source it may come. With a power of vision. strong enough to penetrate the mists of hereditary prejudice, he perceived that the philosophy of Aristotle, as a whole was the work of sound reason, and therefore might be enlisted in the service of faith. Strong in his devotion to rational truth, he did not hesitate to encounter the dominant traditional antipathy, which, invoking venerable names of the past, anathematized Aristotle as the enemy of Christ. Respectfully disregarding the unwarranted dogmatism of narrower minds, with what results we know,-he incorporated the Peripatetic into Christian thought. Calm, fearless, imperturbable, he faces every adversary, with unreserved sincerity. He extenuates no difficulty; never employs the tricks of the sophist and the special pleader; never descends to denunciation as a substitute for argument. In short, St. Thomas Aquinas is the finished model of the first intellectual virtue that should shine conspicuous in the Christian scholar-intellectual honesty. Learning puffeth up. But in St. Thomas the widest learning was associated with the liveliest charity, and charity is not puffed up. He was too noble, too great, too like the Master whom he loved so well, to be a prey to the pettiness of self-conceit, of jealously, of rivalry, or the elation of triumph. Possessing all the science of the day, endowed with an irresistible logic which soon rendered him the acknowledged master of the academic arena, he was regarded by his contem |