ing our poverty or our inability to rival the large public high schools, with their extensive and expensive equipment and numerous teaching staff, we might not unreasonably feel that our poverty is our security. The Catholic high school does not need much in the way of material equipment. It does not need a large teaching staff. It demands, first of all and above all else, competent, earnest, and enthusiastic teachers. A staff of from four to seven such teachers is amply sufficient for all but the largest schools. It ought to have a business or commercial course, as well as the academic course. It should aim-to use the words of Dr. Pritchett-at teaching only a few subjects, and at teaching them well. There can be little if any difference of opinion as to what these subjects ought to be, once we are agreed that they are to be few and that they are to be fundamental. Latin, English, history, mathematics, modern languages, elementary science will form a simple but substantial curriculum. The first two will be taught for four years each, the next three for from two to three years each, while from one to two years will be given to the elementary sciences. The Catholic high school should also, wherever possible, embody in the curriculum the study of Greek; and this will be easily possible, in many cases, through the cooperation of the parish clergy. For the boy who is going on to college or to a seminary, the study of Greek for two or three or even four years is eminently desirable. It will frequently be much easier for the Catholic high school to provide courses in Greek than courses in the modern languages or in science; and, for the boy who is looking forward to a college or seminary course, Greek will be far more profitable than either modern languages or science.

CONCLUSION

The data that have been gathered by the committee Ishow that the Catholic high school has fairly won for itself a right to be considered as an important factor in

the general Catholic educational scheme. It has come to stay, springing as it does from the actual necessities of the situation. It will be the part of wisdom so to foster its growth and shape its development that it may fit in with the parish schools on the one side and with the colleges on the other. There is a duty here as well as an opportunity for the diocesan authorities and for the heads of our colleges. It will require the exercise of the supreme authority in the diocese to fix the place of the high school in its relations to the parish schools. The sympathy and cooperation of college men are indispensable to bring the high school into harmonious and healthful relations with the college. Firmly established as an organic part of our educational structure, and rightly adjusted to the other parts, the Catholic high school will usher in a new era in the development of Catholic education in the United States. It will keep our children longer at school, and swell the number of those aspiring to a higher education. It will quicken the interest of both pupils and people in the parish schools, by strengthening and consolidating their work. It will foster vocations for both the seminaries and the religious orders. It will, in a word, complete and round out our whole vast scheme of education, and be the final step towards the full attainment of that ideal which has been cherished from the beginning and which has become part of the heritage of our holy faith itself— the providing of a thorough education for every Catholic child, under Catholic auspices, from the most primary class work up to and through the university.

JAMES A. BURNS, C. S. C.,
Chairman.

THE SISTERS OF THE HOLY CROSS

As France led Europe in intellectual development during the eighteenth century, so she led the world in the development and perfecting of the apostolic or missionary spirit in the nineteenth. And if to her leadership in the first, we ascribe the French Revolution and all that it stands for, to the second is due in large measure the possibility of religious education in our country today. We are so apt to attribute to the French Revolution the disaster and ruin of the Reign of Terror, the violence of the frenzied mob, and other destructive forces that followed in its wake, that we fail to see the constructive forces and the permanent good which grew out of them. Whether the present republics and constitutional monarcies of Continental Europe-one of the outgrowths—are an improvement upon the Ancien régime, we leave for historians and writers on economics to decide. But there can be no doubt in the mind of the student of church history that the Kingdom of Christ was extended, its ramparts strengthened, its standard-the Cross-raised in triumph during this period.

For out of those dark days of French upheaval shines the light of faith in the lives of heroic men and saintly women who felt their country's crying need-the education of its youth and its character-formation on true religious principles. Hence the saintly Dujarie, the apostolic Morean, the venerated Sophie Barat, the blessed Julie Billiart (to mention only a few) and their spiritual children the institutes and congregations of men and women founded in those trying days, and since approved by the Holy See to carry on the work of Christian education.

To measure their influence upon the religious and mental life of our own times and in our own country, we need

only glance at the pages of the Catholic directory. Therein we shall find an almost unbroken chain of schools running through our great cities and larger towns, through our villages and suburbs, from ocean to ocean, from the lakes to the gulf. These homes of prayer and learning-colleges, academies and primary schoolsare the fruitful heritage of those French apostles and founders, bequeathed to us through their followers-the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of the Holy Cross and scores of others.

Although the Congregation of the Holy Cross is a generation removed from the Revolution, it is closely linked with those days through the Reverend Jacques-François Dujarie, the founder of the Brothers of St. Joseph, a teaching body later incorporated in the Society of Auxiliary Priests formed by the Very Reverend Basile-Antoine Moreau to preach retreats and missions. Abbé Moreau (born 11 February, 1791; died 20 January, 1873) was Canon of the Cathedral at Le Mans and professor of divinity in the Grand Séminnaire. He was an eloquent speaker and was so successful in giving retreats that his services were in constant demand. With the sanction of his bishop, he banded his fellow-professors together for the same laudable work, and they led a regular community life for more than a year in the Seminary. The union of these clerics and the Brothers of St. Joseph, approved by Mgr. Bouvier, formed the nucleus of the "Association of the Holy Cross" to which in time the saintly founder added a third branch: the "Sisters of the Holy Cross," to co-operate with other branches in their pious labors, and to labor themselves in a particular manner for the benefit of the youth of their own sex.

Léocadie Gascoin (born 1 March, 1818: died 29 January, 1900) shared with the illustrious Moreau the work of founding the Sisterhood. At his hands, September 29,

1841, she with three companions received the habit of the Congregation of the Seven Dolors (as it was then called) in the Convent of the Good Shepherd which Abbé Moreau had also founded at Le Mans. Here they entered upon the duties of the novitiate as Sister Mary of the Seven Dolors, Sister Mary of the Holy Cross, Sister Mary of the Compassion, and Sister Mary of Calvary—names all breathing tender love to the Mother of Sorrows which ever since has been the characteristic devotion of the order. They were formed in the religious life by the saintly superior of the convent, Mother Mary of St. Dorothea; and a year later they made their profession as "Sisters of the Holy Cross" under the patronage of Our Lady of the Seven Dolors. They took possession of their new convent at Holy Cross where the Fathers had already established a college. Sister Mary of the Seven Dolors (Léocadie Gascoin) became the first superior and opened the novitiate.

Until her death in 1900, she was affectionately spoken of as Mother Seven Dolors even by those who claim St. Mary's, Notre Dame, instead of Le Mans, for their mother house. In 1860, as Mother General, she visited the foundations at Notre Dame, Indiana.

Abbé Moreau left nothing undone to perfect his threefold community which he hoped would be a great power for good in the work of Christian education. His instructions breathe a truly apostolic spirit which he demanded of his teachers-the Sisters as well as the Priests and Brothers. He insisted that the Congregation should be prepared to meet the demands of the times by giving to the people only the best that a well-trained educational body could offer. These lessons soon bore fruit and the apostolic spirit was carried into the wilds of Indiana by Reverend Edward Sorin, a young priest, who, inspired by Bishop Bruté's appeal for missionaries, joined Abbé Moreau's band of priests. In 1841, he and six brothers