JUBILEE OF ST. PATRICK’S COLLEGE, WELLINGTON.

New Zealand Tablet, 1 December 1910, Page 1977

JUBILEE OF ST. PATRICK’S COLLEGE, WELLINGTON.

(Contributed.) During the past three months St. Patrick’s College has had many proofs of the interest taken in its work by the priests and people of New Zealand. Donations still come' in freely to the jubilee fund, which shall partly wipe off the crushing debt still weighing on the college, thus enabling it to attain to that larger growth which all desire, none more so than the staff itself. But there must be many Catholics who have not yet sent the subscription which all along they intended to send. These are reminded that the jubilee celebrations are drawing near, and that lie gives twice who gives quickly. It would be superfluous to remind the readers of tho Tablet that a Catholic college is not a mere local or class interest, like the building of a church or primary school ; that it intimately touches every school, every church, every mission in the Dominion, and that on its success and wellbeing depend the success and well-being of the whole Church in this young land. Tor 25 years our premier Catholic college has kept watch and ward over the Catholic youth of the Dominion. Twelve hundred young men have been sent forth from its walls to help in the building up of their country, and, above all, to take a hand in the growth and expansion of the Church and to fight her battles whenever it was necessary. Thirty of them have devoted their young lives to the altar, and are to-day helping to spread the work of the Gospel, whether it be in college hall, or parish church, or on the missionary field. The Society of Mary, the secular priesthood, the Society of the Sacred Heart, and the great Society of Jesus claim their allegiance. This alone is a record to be proud of, and a claim to the gratitude of all Catholics. No need to recount its other achievements, for are they not written in the lives of its old boys scattered broad and wide, up and down the Dominion, and even beyond the great seas, in the high ideals, the steady resolve, and masterful purpose displayed by them, and, above all, in their enthusiastic support of Holy Church? Those things have been done in the past; the future, please God, shall witness a greater expansion, a wider sphere of work. But the help of the laity is needed to achieve this noble aim. All who have followed the various phases of the education question during this year 1910, and who have watched the Education Amendment Bill, which is on the very eve of being adopted by Parliament, must have realised with a startling suddenness that the cause of our Catholic colleges will during the next few years he the centre of all our hopes and fears. With the splendidly endowed State institutions thrown open to all Catholic childrennay, inviting them, beckoning to them to enter their walls and breathe and adopt their spirit— it becomes a sacred duty of priests and people to make great sacrifices if need be to endow our own colleges in such a way that they can successfully compote with all rival institutions,

That this great and crying need has already found sympathetic listeners is proved by the fact that but a few days ago an anonymous donor presented the sum of £IOOO as a jubilee offering to St. Patrick's College, to bo used for the foundation of a scholarship open to all Catholic children 'of the Dominion.

Let us hope that this generous example will be widely imitated, and that Catholics of every rank and station shall gather in serried ranks around their, premier college, and that tho festivities of the 11th, 12th, and 13th December shall be a landmark in the history of Catholic education in tho Dominion.