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Government Entitled to Take Steps te'tustishnes: othe ‘txt teaching order of Sisters in the __To Preserve Its Existence, He Says °° staieuss tease nou M “What an ronor roil of names were aboard, One of-those priests,| can be calied ef Belgian-born and Pather White, offered up the first] Beigian-trainel misisonaries in of Belgium. His flaming charity} Mass ever to be celebrated in} America; Ths martyrs, Father and indomitable energy have! Maryland. The little oblong Indian] Reigian-trainel missionaries in elicited the admiration of even|cabin which Pather White had| saintly Father Charles Nerinckx, — the most grudging historians. He | transformed into a ehapel thus! tne whole host of Jesuits, Dominl- was responsible for the baptism became the cradle of Catholicism | cans, Laxarists, Poor Clares and of many thousands of Indians. He | in the ‘United States. So in a very! Sisters of Loretto who went all built and maintained an educa-| intimate way, Belgium is tdenti-| through the great peartland of tlonal establishment which in-j fied with thi beginnings of the! our Middle West establishing |iin the last t cluded » school of primary educa- | Catholic Church in my native) churches and schonls; and finally |; tion, a college of higher learning} land. Today as @ representative | that extraordiiary ‘Apostle of the ‘ who seemed to sum up in his per- son all of the missionary clory a home for religious training, a/ of that Chureh which has grown) Rocky Mounteins.’ Pather Pierre- | sister nations of Europe to the | trade school and an academy of | £0 gloriously and so providentially | Jean De Smet. We hold all their | the hospitable shore of America. ‘a children come fine arts. He established a bhoe- tam happy to record this fect. names in grateful remembrance. |. You fed the hi of a ta love to thee, pital which cared regularly for! “There are other Belgian ties! “Pive centuries is ligtle enough |'youthful nation, buoyed her with thou gave them theses more then three hundred Indians.; with my native land to which I/ time by European reckoning-—but | strergth by substantial contribu- never shall f He compiled @ grammar—the first | would like briefly to allude. The| what crowded and eventful cen-| tions in every aphete of life What they give thee is payment of its kind—in the Astec language | first Bishop in the American co!-| turies they fave been for us. and composed a book In that] onles, John Carroll, was ordained | From a nation of primeval forests tongue explaining the Christian|‘to the priesthood in Liege and! and vast prairies, we have come, religion to the native Indlans.| he taught briefly at Bruges. His| through Europe's help and inspir-| country and ita neighbors hare Small wonder that Belgium should | successor, the present Archbishop | ation, to our present position of | been subjected, t }eft made with joy ‘ oc have so glowing = missionary of Baltimore, Archblahop Keough, | world greatness. The sturdy sons) Belgium crusbed but still un- in you, the mother, *___) tradition when it could produce | alse is indebted to Belgium for) and daughters so generously pro- conquered by reason of her in- t but pride. ~ men of the character of Peter de| his theological training. And the| vided to us have graced every| comitable spirit and her deep In these fair gifts thy eons Ghent. world renowned Bishop Fulton J.| part of America with thetr achiere-| heritage of faith, there sprung daughters and prool Bheen, Apostle of the Missions, is| ments. Some rieasure of the grat- up in the pean of na-| Find “guall wonder, too, thet Amer-f'an honored graduate of Louvain | itude we feel for this may be ob-| tions, resentment of the apper- tea today should have cause to be) University. ; tained from the fact that over @/ ent and relative ty of the grateful for what that tradition “Belgium ean look with pride} thousand American cities and| United States. thee to has meant to ber in her reli-| on her part in the beginning of towns bear the names of their The slory of a nation is her gious and educational growth. | our Hierarchy—in the beginning] parent cities in Europe. There| lief, as I feel it too must be gous When the firet ship sailed out of | of the firat contemplative order| are, for instance, an Antwerp, &| yourd, that the ideal attitude for and iw? reveal their character England in 1633 to establish a in our country—in the founda-| Brussels and s Ghent m America.| the present day sons of Beigium days in colony in Maryland, two priests| tion of the oldest Catholic Insti-| none of them approaching in her sister-coun' Wy purturing , thelr mother who hed been trained in Belgium | tution of learning in the U sise, achievement or renown thelr be one not of resentment of a new need. Reprinted from to The Catholic News New York Octoher 31, 1953