St. Mary's Academy began offering classes in the fall of 1979, nine years ago this September, after a well-attended pilgrimage and a large crowd here to see Archbishop Lefebvre. The intention then for the Academy, as it is now, is to restore eduction—first, back to its Catholic principles, and secondly, back to the concrete application of those principles in the classroom. Naturally, the second part of this goal has been the hardest, for just because we have a singular grace in being able to look back to the richest tradition of education, from antiquity to Christendom, doesn't change the fact we are still a young school struggling to find and assert the spirit of that tradition in a world grown either hostile, or numb and indifferent to the gift and inheritance of Christian education. We are in one of those bad times for the Church and education, as described in the following quote:

The speaker here is decrying a world gone mad with greed, destroying in its materialism, he says, everything, including the love of God, a materialism that acts directly on the soul, destroying it, especially the souls of children. Although this was not written in our day, it could have been. It was written in another bad time, in the fourth century, by a bishop, confessor, and doctor of the Church, St. John Chrysostum. This passage is read every year in the sacred liturgy on the feast of another great teacher and confessor who labored against the materialism of his day, and ours, St. John Bosco.

Furthermore, in our day, the breakdown of even the fundamental ideas of a Christian social order, formerly shared by Protestants and Catholics, fundamentals grounded in manners, actually are, for the most part, gone. So that, with the families who have moved here from all over the United States, and with over half of the student population as boarding students representing many states, several different countries from Europe and this continent, we see St. Mary's Academy has become a centerpiece reflecting the deep desire of a determined number of parents to protect and save their children from the daily life of a world that increasingly finds the Catholic way of life ridiculous and absurd. We also see that some of these children, these students, are touched by this strange indifference to goodness—not from their homes so much, but from all those things and people close to the home, that truly affect our lives: namely, schools, companions, music, work, games and amusements. We must admit that it is simply not enough (although a great blessing!) to have what was called a good Catholic home, when all the good example and training of such a home can be undone in one semester at a public school, by one charismatic bad companion, by the channels of persuasion on radios and television, by the harshness and crudity of neighbors and neighborhoods with nothing good in common, the obvious damage of drugs and alcohol abuse, with the not so obvious damage done by the general noise and ugliness of daily life in the modern world.

So, while the existence of St. Mary's Academy may be considered a miracle, parents should understand God does not always work miracles at St. Mary's; that is, not in the visible spectacular sense. In fact, these do not seem to be the times of Pauline conversions, although we must never enter that area of judgment where Christ knows, loves, and calls all souls. What is meant here, is that the cultural impact on today's youth can be of such a magnitude that visibly there may be no sign of getting back to those Catholic principles—in spite of exposure to the true Mass, the catechism of the Council of Trent, the presence of priests and sisters. We must grasp what we have lost—as a civilization intended to be Christian—and what it has been replaced by; namely, an intrusion on the freedom of the will-before we can truly have a sense of the tragedy taking place in human life on earth. Christian education at its best seeks to improve life here and now as well as prepare for the fullness of life to come. This can be repeated over and over by teachers and parents, and pointed out that we have a duty to our neighbor and to the earth, to reverence them both, and to perfect ourselves in body and spirit—but it will be a most unusual and blessed child who can see past the apparent contradiction of such principles and the world outside the home, the Catholic classroom, and the chapel door. In this sense, St. Mary's Academy, and all traditional Catholic schools to come, should seek to foster unusual and blessed children. We are creatures that grow by imitation, and as we grow up from childhood to youth, there are so many people who influence us: the mailman, the bus driver, the policeman, the teacher, the neighbor—the child is looking to see if their actions square more or less with what they have been taught: are they, for the most part, friendly, are they courteous, are they fair and hard-working, do they fear and love God?

But let us look at education another way to make this point: a school is like a garden in the sense that a garden needs more than just seeds and plants to thrive—the flower and fruit of a garden depend upon all manner of things: soil, water, fertilizer, a wall or fence, a caring eye and hand—in other words, a kind of sympathy needs to embrace a garden for it to grow. Likewise, a school needs more than buildings, books, and even teachers—it needs a surrounding sympathy, a world that at least has the tendency toward a caring eye and hand for the good of our children—this, at present, our world does not have and, therefore, what we attempt to do at St. Mary's is going to be the most difficult task one can imagine.

So, I consider it to be of the greatest importance to realize first the width and depth of the tragedy that is upon us before beginning to speak positively of Christian education so that we may not deceive ourselves, but rather gird up our understanding and therefore give a clear-headed effort to the crises before us; not to peddle gloom and doom, which, God knows, traditionalists are all too famous for—but to accept with a supernatural hope always before us, that such statements as: "Catholic education as it was known in the past, in the better ages of the Church, is now impossible"—does not mean we are to do nothing; on the contrary, our duty lies precisely in the direction of restoration of education under Catholic principles, to get to work re-establishing the conditions for Catholic education to someday be restored to its fullness. But we must be realistic about our limitations, about the wounds our Mystical Body has received. In this refreshing light of honesty we see that on a large scale, restoration of Christian education back to, say, 1945, is not now possible—one might as well entertain the notion that restoration, top to bottom, of the Vatican back to the days of Pius XII is possible these days. But what is possible is the revitalizing of one classroom at a time, under the caring eye of one good teacher. Doing it bigger and better is simply not relevant. Apparent failure is often success in these matters.

And more important than the classroom is the re-Christianizing of the home, not by spectacular, sweeping reforms and devotions—but rather by reintroducing, just for one example, the domestic ceremony of the family meal, and the time afterward for reading, singing, playing games, or simply visiting. But the poor world needs more than one family doing this—we don't need a majority, but we do need at least Catholic neighborhoods, the beginnings of which we see in the town of St. Mary's. Yet, how will such neighborhoods and communities be formed elsewhere—in Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis? They won't—at least, not likely in our life time. It seems there will just have to be one very brave Catholic home here and there in such cities and towns, holding fast-isolated, wounded, heroic—and attempting to be as happy as possible, and most important, to be always poised, inclined toward the love and conversion of their neighbor.

Let this tragedy illustrate that to be Catholic, to be a traditional Catholic, is simply not a matter of staying out of hell—and let us never be too sure who is going there and who isn't—to be a Catholic has to do with the quality of our lives here and now, and as difficult as it is to escape from popular music, television, magazines—things which seem impossible to get rid of, like atomic waste—we can recognize that they undermine the quality of our lives, they rob our children's soul of the freedom in which to see things clearly, true, good and beautiful. Let us speak clearly—we are meant for love, and while some of these inventions and amusements of the modern world are variously amazing and interesting—they are never lovable and are therefore disproportionate with the deepest needs of the human creature. And not just disproportionate, but really destructive. If a school is to thrive, to grow in peace, the home and the neighborhood, that is, the quality of life that surrounds the home must, for the most part, be good and peaceful; which is to say, part of our world is meant to reflect the life of heaven. How nearly ridiculous those words sound in our day.

Here is a current example of the predicament: the fad of the skateboard. Now, nearly every boy I knew growing up, my brothers and myself included, sooner or later discovered that you could attach roller skate wheels to a piece of wood and create either a scooter with a handle or simply a skate board. What was involved was finding and learning how to use the right tools to remove the wheels; to locate the right piece of wood; to attach the wheels with screws or nails so that they would finally stay on. Often, all this required the help of older brothers or other children of the neighborhood.

Clearly, the popularity of the present day skate board is the product of this urge of boys, and perhaps a few girls, to make such things; but now see what has changed: the skate board is quickly purchased pre-made, with choices of models or advanced technology in design, materials and roller bearings. Clothing and equipment of a very special kind are now marketed for the experience; ramps and raceways erected; and most disturbing of all, the cult of death represented by the human skull, the cult of the horror of violent death, has now become part of the cult of the skate board. But let us be fair: young boys, adolescents, will always be fascinated with danger and even curious about death. Risk-taking, to the anguish of all mothers and the more private fears of fathers, is simply a part of the child's growing up. But here we have the marketing and manufacturing of risk-taking, all artificial and planned, nothing spontaneous, all packaged and ready to roll, and rock. Something good, innocent, has now been taken up by the business of America—money and the corruption of youth—and made to represent a kind of evil.

This pattern—of taking normal experiences of youth, especially in the areas of music, games, and stories (now dominated by film and video), along with youth's natural and good disposition for adventure and even danger—this pattern of turning these necessary activities of growing up and being human into occasions of the destruction of the beauty of the soul, is being repeated all over the world. It is devilish. It puts the parent in a position of denying to their children what would ordinarily be encouraged: music, games, amusements—and most parents have either given up, or joined their children in front of the latest video game, or simply quit having children at all. It puts the priests, sisters and teachers at the Academy in a position of trying to find wholesome alternatives, something not already spoiled. They must choose things that have not been ruined by forces who seem to consciously strive against all that is decent, and simply, to the point, I fear that we and our children suspect there really isn't anything true, good or beautiful about life. That's the condition of the world, and its impact is even deep in the rural setting of St. Mary's. It is, thanks be to God, minimized here—it could be minimized more. But there is no escape because our children cannot escape. Now we see with painful clarity why a series of modern popes taught so strongly about the social reign of Jesus Christ—heroic encyclicals on the grave duty of paying just taxes so that the household is not filled with financial anxiety, so the mother does not have to work outside the home, and the father does not have to work like a slave. These have been serious warnings to business, to science, to the entertainment industry, to governments—capitalist and communist alike—to parents, to restore Christian society. No, we will not have heaven on earth, but we are charged to make earth a reflection of the life to come of heaven, else, losing sight of the real signs of our true patria, our fatherland, we all lose heart and faint on the way.

This modern world behaves like a world that has lost heart, thus, all the preoccupation with the body and the cult of youth, the exaggeration of otherwise normal and good pleasures of the body. That's what a civilization does when it believes nothing is really lasting that is good and beautiful. The body now is perfect, muscled, toned, and tanned, while the soul is sick unto death. That's the image and the reality of the world waiting for our youth. It's in the video stores of your town and St. Mary's; on all the television screens of your town and of St. Mary's; on the magazine racks in the stores in your town and in St. Mary's; and blares from the car stereos of most of the cars that cruise on your streets and in the town of St. Mary's all summer long. It is a world of noise and distortion. It is a sad world, for it is a world that has lost its childhood, going from the helplessness of infancy into the hideous look and manner of spiritual blankness in a ten-year-old's defiant presence. If our neighbor, next door, and around the world, is rotten, we will be too to some extent. We are social and dependent beings, like it or not. Try to live alone, especially as a family, and the family becomes eccentric, weird. Try to live in step with the world, even with the other step in the chapel door each morning, and the normal tension between the world and the other world is increased to a point of schizophrenia.

What are we to do? The first thing, believe it or not, is to rejoice—Our Lord may have never been nearer to us than He is now. Today is the feast of St. Clare: Dilexisti justitiam et odisti iniquitatem, her Mass begins: "Thou has loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Lovely Clare died in the glorious thirteenth century, but the barbarians were coming in the window then, as they are today, and we still need to grasp the Blessed Sacrament, the Mass, for protection and consolation. To hold to that faith in the Real Presence is to hold fast to the promise of the Cross, so that the Bride of Christ will bring to our wounds the oil of gladness. But we must not just love—we do that first, we love justice, we love God. But it follows from that love we must also hate iniquity, that is, all that is not God, all that is not true, good and beautiful in our daily life with our neighbor. We may not hate our neighbor, but we must hate all the things that make him rotten. With all our terrible faults, somehow, we have been brought near to Our Lord in this hour—we want good things for our children, even if our desires are misdirected at times, we want good things and we have the Catholic sense of where to look for them, and certainly St. Mary's is one of them—in fact, it is the only place of its kind. Squared against all the other parents and children in the world, culturally seduced and abandoned, we must be very dear to Him. So, there is great comfort in this hour, simply because He is near, simply because He desires to teach us what to love and what to hate so that we may thread our way back to Him.

Second, we must not repudiate the world of creation along with our hatred of iniquity, the world of man's idiocy and self-indulgence. The world of creation, the moon and stars, sun and trees, the sky and clouds, the colors of the world, the fields and mountains and all the animals, they are all good—they are all from the hand of the Father, they are holy, and we must recall that it is a part of our faith that much of this natural world of God's making is eternal, it will perish only to live again in some new and mysterious way with the blessed forever. So we must deeply reverence the beautiful surroundings of our exile as a fond companion on the way, and thank God for every sunrise and sunset and look at them as lovingly as did our first parents.

But we must reverence one another even more, to truly make the effort to see the eternal in our neighbor, especially ones of our families, we are in the midst of gods, as St. Paul calls us—not just our souls, but our very skin will live forever. Everyone we see is loved infinitely by God, made in the image of God Himself, but after five awful wars involving the United States in less than a hundred years, after exterminations, tortures, live television assassinations; the daily carnage wrought by modern technology and machinery; not the least, after legal abortions and legal euthanasia soon to come—we do not look upon one another as we ought. We now have an entire generation raised on the constant spectacle of human beings blown to bits, shot, maimed, bludgeoned, stabbed, run over, burned, dismembered, beaten senseless, thrown from buildings—and children, whose supple fingers still moist with the innocence of new flesh, wrap around the most ferocious and unnaturally hideous toys ever invented—these little boys and girls are yet to test our imagination as to the atrocities their generation will leave us by the year 2000! And yet, everyone we see is loved infinitely by God; everyone we see who is not loved by man, who has become unlovable due to self, circumstance, or the killing world, the Christ in us must love the wounded Christ in them. There is no other way to restore our souls so that we may see again, that is, to see the world and each other as God sees us, to see the kingdom of God here, to re-establish it here as the Pater Noster instructs us, and thus to be able to look a long way off, and see the Kingdom of God there, heaven. With this vision, a vision that is intended for everyone of us, and is given to us through prayer and a pure life, the vision that unites heaven and earth, man with God, in the great work of redemption, the work of love par excellence, only with this vision will come the reconquest of the Church, by way of the soul, the home, the neighborhood and the school. To work in such a way for all those things our souls recognize as good, is to labor intimately with Christ, to participate according to our talents, in the salvation of the world, as other Christs.

Furthermore, we need to learn to laugh at the world—once we have really seen how awful it has become, how dangerous it is to our children and ourselves—we must laugh at it with the strength of victors. Too often, we go around as if the devil won some contest with God or, at least, the devil has equal footing with God in this struggle. We need to remember that in spite of the drama being completed on this earth, which now appears largely as tragedy, there is the comedy that the most important contest between good and evil is over, finished, and Christ has won. Who will really believe this: There is nothing to worry about now? And yet, it is the most repeated phrase of Our Lord in the whole of His New Testament. We simply don't believe Him; that is, with shame, I say, we don't trust Him. Therefore, a conversion within ourselves is immediately necessary to restore what a priest here called the forgotten virtue of faith.