The Pope, Benedict XV, in his recent letter to the American Hierarchy (March, 1919), writes: "The future of the Church and State absolutely depends on the condition and organization of the schools; there will be no other Christians than those whom you will have formed by instruction and education. . . . We have followed with joy," he adds, "_the marvellous progress of the Catholic University at Washington, progress so closely united to the highest hopes of your churches_. We have no doubt that henceforth you will continue even more actively, to support an institution of such great usefulness and promise as is the University." The Most Reverend Dr. O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, in 1904, vindicated for the Irish people not the privilege, but the right to a Catholic University. "For us Catholics," he wrote, "the Gospel as taught by our Holy Church, is our philosophy of life and we hold that any attempt to educate a youth in what we call secularism is a retrogression to a lower level than that of pre-Christian culture. For this reason we have withstood every attempt to force _secularism_ on this country and we shall resist it to the last. We have equally withstood _mixed education_, which, false as it is in itself and pernicious, is in this country a specious pretext for Protestant educational ascendancy." (University education in Ireland.) If such is the case with Catholic Ireland, what should we not conclude as regards our Western Provinces? Here, more than anywhere else in Canada, does the Church need staunch, genuine, Catholic leadership. In it the future of Catholicity beyond the Great Lakes is involved. Reason and experience prove that the training which makes for genuine Catholic influence is plainly out of question unless it be received in a college and university whose atmosphere, teachings, aspirations and ideals are thoroughly Catholic. The recent foundations of a Catholic University in Milan and in Nimeguen, Holland, justify this claim. * * * * * * Conditions existing in our modern neutral universities vindicate our stand and strengthen our position. The tendency in these universities is, without doubt, towards infidelity or to say the least, towards diluted Christianity.--"The transformation from the old denominational education to the new undenominational education was in point of fact due to an antitheological--and even in some of its manifestations--anti-religious movement. If it included a sense of the justice of equal treatment for all creeds and a sense of the liberty necessary for science, it also included some of the anti-Christian spirit of Continental liberalism. The undenominational movement was the practical expression of the liberal and scientific movement." (Life of Newman--L 306.)