SOMETHING ABOUT “GALONG”

New Zealand Tablet, 24 January 1918, Page 23

SOMETHING ABOUT “GALONG”

St. Clement’s College, Galong, N.S.W., the first Redemptorist Seminary beneath the Southern Cross, will be solemnly blessed and opened on February 24. His Excellency the Apostolic Delegate, Monsignor Bartolomeo Cattaneo, will preside at the dedication ceremonies. The Pontifical High -Mass will be sung by the Right Rev. Dr. Dwyer, Bishop of Maitland, and the occasional sermon will be preached by his Grace Archbishop Duhig, of Brisbane. " Many bishops and prelates, and a numerous clergy have promised to attend the great function. St. Clement’s Redemptorist College has been erected at a cost of nearly £12,000. For this interesting information, and following narrative we are indebted to the Very Rev. Father Lynch, C.SS.R., a recent visitor to Dunedin. The designer and contractor, Mr. Moriarty, has put his best effort into a work up to date in every detail. House comfort, added to climatic healthfulness, will combine to make St. Clement’s an ideal Seminary. Robust health is a grave consideration for those destined to a most strenuous missionary life. Galong is- an ideal health location. Redemptorist lectors, trained for work of professors, in Ireland, Rome, and other parts of Europe, will direct the course of studies. Students, as a rule, in first years, will follow the usual secondary college and University course. If, after due consideration, a young man finds he has not a Redemptorist vocation, time at Galong will count for other professional 'studies. . A distinctive Redemptorist College is not a novelty. , Redemptoriste in North America have their St. Clement’s College, Saratoga Falls, and their Seminary of Ilchester. The Irish Province has a juvenate at Limerick and a studentate at Esker, Athenry. The Schola Major, in Rome, has representative scholastics from all the provinces. .j. St. Clement’s, Galong, is a fresh step in advance of the Congregation of the Most 1 Holy Redeemer, ■ and a fifth missionary house added since the days when the banner of St. -Alphonsus was carried, to these great south lands, thirty-five years ago; by Fathers Vaughan,

O’Farrell, Hegarty, and Halsen. ; ' One foundation on ..V.'.* ~t- «■ ■* • tr .*»■> r . S £t ■»- r. *•••-/> 'w-V ' v , an- average of every seven ; years spells -"progress ! Galong is a providential acquisition: It was willed oy Mr. Ryan, of Galong Castle) N.S.W., )to ’the Cistercians of Mt. Melleray. The Trappists, 3 through shortage of monks, could not make the foundation. It reverted in terms of the Ryan ’ testament to the * Redemptorist congregation. ; A ■ magnificent ! house .of studies marks their acceptance of -the generous gift. ’;• ’ There is special fitness in choice of the patron -of the new college. St. Clement is of our own > modern times.- He was a nineteenth century saint— the only saint canonised in the ; nineteenth ; century ; who worked and died in the century of canonisation. He was a model priest-worker, who became a priest in the face of gigantic difficulty. . Of him, Pope Pius VII. wrote to the Emperor Francis I.: “A true apostlea real saint, —a pillar of the -Church.” *Of him, Frederick Werner, a famous orator of Vienna, said: “Among living men, I know of only three of superhuman energy —Napoleon, Goethe, and Father Clement.” The great Redemptorist priest-saint, in his revival of religious literature, became : a journalist. St. Clement Hofbauer founded Die Oelsweiye, a Catholic weekly paper, to promote truth and . defend Catholic interests. A model for Catholic pressmen !, A model, , too, for Catholic students! His vocation to the priesthood and realisation, under gravest difficulties, of the vocational idea, presents encouraging features to young men of moderate ability, slender means, but sturdy character. His parents were poor. .To help his family he worked as a baker. He wanted all the while to be a priest. “Keep up your courage, my son,” said his wise mother; “although I am too poor to have you educated, bo good and God will yet make you a priest.” • God brought it about ! How ? As a custom he served Mass every day he could. One day he was at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna. .It rained heavily, and three ladies, sisters, were kept standing in the porch by the downpour. Clement saw their plight, and rushed out for a vehicle. They thanked him for his courtesy, and asked him to share the carriage. That drive was providential. They had noticed his pious Mass-serving. They asked if. he would like to be a priest, and he replied sadly that lack .of means made realisation of his desire an impossibility. The ladies told him that money would be no obstacle they would see to that. They kept their word nobly: they had the consolation afterwards of listening, to the sermons of the Apostle of Vienna, whom their charity had brought into the sanctuary of God. - Clement never forgot those ladies. As a priest he never failed to visit his benefactresses. ; Each morning he gave them the special remembrance every grateful priest gives to parents and relatives and benefactors who. have helped him to mount the' steps of the altar, of God. For their goodness they must have received till his death, thousands and tens of thousands of Mass mementos. The episode of the help given to St. Clement reminds one of the great Wexford Catholic gentleman whose practical charity went principally in the direction of founding bursaries in seminaries for young priests and helping on earnest young men of holy desires but slender means. In many countries priests of God are still living who day by day pray in a spirit of gratitude for his soul. Such benefactors are most pleasing to the Good Shepherd of Souls. Their life becomes wondrously meritorious with merit of highest heaven-grade. They realise that the dead are soon forgotten by ordinary legatees. They take effective steps that they will be daily _ remembered ’ where remembrance is not a crumbling gravestone or a withering wreath of flowers. The Church needs a strong priesthood ! The Church needs seminaries \of highest learning and piety! The Church needs benefactors who will remember what she has done for them,' and what with a little thought out of the means a generous God has given them, they can do - for her progress in this age of greatest need and difficulty. /.