Conqueror (VERSE)
Driscoll, Louise
October 3 ~ , I929 THE COMMONWEAL 667 The experience of the Catholic Summer School, now approaching its fortieth year, has been that the average man and woman can find grateful...
...There have been those in recent years who have suggested that the spirit of play was triumphing over the spirit of study at the Summer School, but anyone who saw the University Extension courses in action during July would realize that this departure alone has proved quite sufficient to vindicate the studious significance of the Summer School...
...The stars came out in their old-time places, The noises of night began, A wail here and a whirr there And a little slipping sound, The snap of a twig as a padded foot Softly presses the ground...
...Teachers who have spent tedious years in a city environment, find the sylvan conditions of University Extension at Cliff Haven ideal...
...LOUISE DRISCOLL...
...To take but one incident...
...There probably never was a time when Catholics so felt the need to know all that they could possibly know about their religion as they do at present...
...But I am not afraid at all, I stand as a man should, For I have worsted my enemy Alone in the lonely wood...
...There is an atmosphere of intellectualism, an atmosphere of devotion, an environment that is impregnated with the true Catholic spirit...
...When day comes I shall go again To the old work and the old way, But I think I shall not fight again Whatever the world may say...
...The courses were given under the auspices of Fordham University and represent manifestly only the beginning of what is to be accomplished in this line...
...The Catholic of the street and the train wants to be of help to his neighbor in the understanding of Catholicity...
...October 3 ~ , I929 THE COMMONWEAL 667 The experience of the Catholic Summer School, now approaching its fortieth year, has been that the average man and woman can find grateful stimulation for mind and body under the conditions that have been developed at Cliff Haven...
...He secures that information quietly, pleasantly and in stimulating surroundings that make it all the more readily available...
...Catholicity was a religion for the poor and the ignorant, not one that needed to be taken seriously by those gifted with intelligence, especially if they had had any opportunity to develop that intelligence...
...Manifestly the grounds will be crowded in future during all the nine weeks as they always have been during August...
...The ideal of the Summer School has been not only maintained, but advanced, and Catholics are securing under these conditions of peace and quiet in a Catholic atmosphere opportunities for the absorption of information and inspiration with regard to their faith...
...CoT/~7/ger 0r My enemies have fled from me, They dropped their weapons and ran...
...The building in which most of the classrooms are situated is embowered in a pine grove which stretches along the lake front for a quarter of a mile, so that between the coolness afforded by the trees and the breeze off the lake, there is no possibility of the insufferable heat which afflicts the cities during the summertime...
...These University Extension courses combined with the regular lectures, many of which during August were crowded to capacity, represent a climax of interest in the Summer School far beyond preceding years...
...This is, however, one of the striking experiences that the visitor to Cliff Haven is impressed by...
...These opportunities must mean very much in these critical days when so many intellectual people insist that all forms of Christianity are dwindling in influence, and that only the Catholic Church is maintaining its hold upon the affections and the reverence of its people...
...He finds in the agreeable leisure of the Catholic Summer School the opportunity to secure a fund of information on the burning topics of the hour that enables him to understand and appreciate the faith that is in him and at the same time supplies him with an armamentarium of response to questions that develop from his contacts with men and women for the rest of the year...
...Until the twentieth century, indeed it might be said until after the great war, it was the custom among the English-speaking peoples for those not of the Church to ignore Catholicity or to consider that it was a decadent form of Christianity sooner or later destined to disappear...
...When the Angelus bell rings, all the Summer Schoolers stop in the midst of whatever they are doing--talking or walking or studying or playing--and bow their heads in a few minutes of recollection and prayer...
...People refused to read Catholic books because they felt that there was nothing that could be said from that standpoint that had not been said before...
...Most of those outside the Church who have seen Miller's Angelus would very probably be inclined to think tl~at this bending of the head in reverence while the Angelus bell rings from the distant town is all right for peasants--is something appropriate to the French countryside as a reminiscence of the faith of the middle-ages, but hardly in place in the everyday life of modern Americans...
...It becomes such a commonplace after a few days that he scarcely notices itmexcept to fall in with it himself...
...One can scarcely pick up a serious magazine that does not contain an article making some reference to the Church, and usually in a way that indicates that special attention is being focused on it...
...We have changed all that...
...At the same time he lives in a Catholic atmosphere that brings home to him better than anything else could the true meaning of Catholicity in modern life...
...The man in the street, the man on the train, wants to know more about this religion which his immediate forefathers used to condemn so bitterly and which is now being discussed from so many different standpoints...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 26
