When the summer comes, the curate could easily organize occasional bicycle excursions with the young men to some memorable Catholic ruin, in whose history he should be well made up.  The saints and scholars who have glorified our annals are lying around our churches; we stumble over their graves for forty years sometimes, without enquiring who they were or what they did.  I am aware there are laudable exceptions:  they are, however, isolated.  When the public wants to know anything about our monasteries, they often have to turn to the layman and even to the parson.

The small number of priests in the Archaeological Society is a striking reproach.  One would think that our saints and their works were something to be ashamed of, since the natural guardians of their memories have practically abandoned them.  This country is filled with catacombs.  Every child should be made acquainted with the life of the leading saint, and the history of the most memorable ruin in the locality; those hoary prophets, now so mute, would then speak with tongues of fire out of the dim past, telling the story of our fathers’ Faith and heroic achievements.

Let us now rise to a higher plane of the young priest’s activities.

[Side note:  Activity VII Literature]

It is a stupendous and a humiliating fact that, while this country is deluged with the writings of the sensualist and the infidel, there are over three thousand brainy priests upon the land, and the world of thought knows nothing of them.

[Side note:  Cambridge and Oxford]

[Side note:  First Premium Men]

When we read of brilliant students at Cambridge or Oxford, we naturally look forward to see them leaders of thought or action in their own land, and we are seldom disappointed.  Our Irish colleges are discharging yearly swarms from their doors, many of them men with brilliant records.  Who hears of them after?  What have these first-class premium men, who gave such splendid promise, done with their gifts and knowledge?  How little does the Irish Church owe them?  The day the premium book was handed them, all serious effort died.  They were content to rest for the remainder of their lives under the shade of their academic laurels.

The soldier is not satisfied with the triumphs of his recruit days.  He knows that the purpose of his life then is not to gain a prize and stop at that, but to acquire efficient skill in the use of his weapons that he may become a living force on the future field of action.

The college is but the training ground, not the final goal; the real field of our activities lies outside its walls.  Yet when the scholastic course closes these richly-gifted men dip below the horizon, and the world seldom hears of them again; the destructive wave that in its silent strength is covering the land receives no check from them; they are engraving no impression on the intellect of the day.

Our humiliation and surprise increase when we turn to the publisher’s lists and see parsons, who have to prepare to meet critical audiences Sunday after Sunday, and are weighted with the cares of heavy families, holding leading places in every literary enterprise.