A Catholic University for Western Canada!  Is this but the dream of a far off future or can it be a reality within a few years?—­There is the problem which now faces the Catholic Church of our Western Provinces and upon which, in our estimation, rests the influence the Church is to have in the formation of the new and most promising part of our Dominion beyond the Great Lakes.  A high conception of the duty of the present hour and the whole-hearted co-operation of every Catholic unit in the West, will without doubt bring its happy solution and make our dream a reality.  To act on ideal principles with little or no attempt to forecast accurately what is practicable would be to court failure.  We are gradually passing the mile-stone of pioneer life in the West, and the Church is slowly but surely being organized and entering into full possession of her normal life.  The duties which Catholic solidarity imposes upon us as regards the Church and the community at large are growing apace with the status of the Church in these new Provinces.  Among these duties none, we believe, are more important than that we owe to the cause of Catholic education.  Naturally, the burden of the responsibility falls here upon parents whose bounden duty it is to see that the school, college, university, be, as much as possible but the extension of their Catholic home. The rising generation in the West has a right to the benefits of a higher education; to this right corresponds in the community a duty imposed upon its members by Catholic solidarity.  For in the growing youth we see the Country and the Church, with whose future welfare it is necessarily united.  A true Catholic must have his vision of what the Church ought to be in his Country and must work to make that vision come true.

Through a Catholic University, and through it only, will the Church give its full contribution to the national life of Western Canada by creating as we said, Catholic leadership.  We have as Catholics, ideas to give to the nation, to its up-building, and to its prosperity.  The sun of Canadian liberty is shining for our doctrines as it does for other ideals.  And, strange to say, the most subversive theories seem to take the greatest and most frequent advantage of this freedom.  We have no apology to make for our ideas.  They stand on their own merit and have been vindicated by the acid-test of time.  To bring our message to the country, to spread its beneficial influence is the mission of our Catholic leaders.  Only a large number of truly educated Catholic men are able to make their influence felt on the life and thought of a country.

This identification of a Catholic university with our Western Provinces will be an asset to our public life and beneficial to the people at large, notwithstanding their aloofness and unreasoned opposition to our principles and methods.  The evils of the times are the direct result of the secularization of education.  Catholic higher education is the only antidote and remedy to this evil.  Its principles are a vigorous protest against materialistic philosophy.  We believe in the mastery of ideas and in the final victory of truth.