The great question of the present day is the question of education.
The Catholic Church, as the infallible teacher of men, claims for
herself the right to control human thought, and exercises that right
by sitting in judgment on each newfangled system as it appears. This
claim is peremptorily rejected by the civil power, which, on its part,
wishes to make of education a department of government. The science of
the age sides on the whole with the civil power as against the Church.
Towards the ecclesiastical authorities it assumes at times an air of
pity, as towards men whose otherwise estimable qualities are warped by
a religious bigotry which is eminently unscientific; at times it
exhibits irritation and distrust; at times again it is in open and
undisguised antagonism. In the face of a jealous government, to urge,
and to urge successfully, the inalienable rights of the Church,
requires no ordinary tact; in the face of the contempt, or distrust,
or antagonism of the intellect of a country, to take every
understanding captive unto Christ, demands no ordinary courage and
ability. And yet this is what is meant by founding a Catholic
University; and this has been achieved in the nineteenth century in
Belgium, under God, through the instrumentality of one priest,
Monsignor Peter Francis Xavier De Ram, the late Rector of the Catholic
University of Louvain. A life such as his is a model which all may
study with great profit. It is only with his spirit and through his
principles that we may hope to obtain for Ireland what he obtained for
Belgium――the full liberty of Catholic education.
De Ram’s great work, but not his only work, was the foundation of the
Catholic University of Louvain. At the time when he was called by the
bishops of Belgium to form and direct the new institution, he was
diligently engaged in promoting the spread of good books, in
illustrating the antiquities of his country, and especially in
publishing the lives of the saints and other distinguished men who
have shed glory on his native land. Almost in his infancy he imbibed a
special predilection for the study of the lives of the saints from a
holy aunt, a religious of the Premonstratensian Order, who lived in
his father’s house, having been driven from her convent at the time of
the first French Revolution. Even before he had completed his clerical
studies, this taste made him publish, as author or editor, several
works bearing on the lives of the saints, and before he was
twenty-five years of age he undertook a new edition in the Flemish
language of the great works on this subject by Alban Butler and
Godescard. This taste he preserved through life, and to it when fully
developed we are indebted for his other great works, the _Collections
of Belgian Synods_, the _Synodicum Belgicum_, the _Synodicum
Antverpiense_, and _Ecclesiastical History of Belgium_, _Belgica
Sacra_, of which he published the plan in 1830, for which since then
he has been collecting most abundant materials, but which, alas! he
has not lived to finish.
Later on, we find him labouring strenuously and successfully to obtain
for the Jesuit Fathers a state subsidy to enable them to continue the
stupendous undertaking of the old Bollandists, the _Acta Sanctorum_.
Thanks in great measure to this help, the noble work is now making
progress to the great glory of God, to the advantage of religion, and
the honour of Belgium. And among the first eulogists of the departed
prelate, we have the great Jesuit Father de Buck, the head of the
present Bollandists in Brussels, to whose notice on Mgr. de Ram we are
indebted for much that appears in this sketch.
In fine, this same taste for historical research, especially in the
history of his native land, made him take a most distinguished place
in the Royal Academy of Belgium, of which he was for thirty-one years
one of the chief members, and especially in the Royal Commission of
History, founded precisely for the promotion of the study of the
national annals. Indefatigable in his labours, never-failing in his
attendance at the meetings of the Commission, bringing to them the
rich treasures of his learning, joined to the affability and
conciliatory tone which always characterised him, we are told by one
who knew him there, that never during that long period was there
between him and his associates in that great work the least shadow of
a difference. True to the end to his work for religion and his
country, one of his last public acts, two days before his death, was
to assist at a meeting of the Academy; and he leaves unfinished three
works undertaken in the same holy cause: the Chartulary of the Abbey
of Cambron, the preparation of materials for a general and diplomatic
history of the University of Louvain, and the collection and
arrangement of the short Flemish chronicles scattered in manuscript
through the Belgian libraries, with a view to their forming a
compendium to the great chronicle of De Dynter.
But it is not with De Ram’s historical labours, great as they were,
that we are chiefly interested. His great work for us has been the
Catholic University of Louvain. That university was proposed by his
Holiness Pope Pius IX. as the model which our bishops were to have in
view in founding the Catholic University of Ireland. Over it De Ram
presided for more than thirty years, in fact since its foundation; the
difficulties, seemingly insuperable, with which he had to contend,
were almost identical with those that press our Irish institution; the
means for overcoming these difficulties in the two countries were very
similar, and we may hope that the Catholic University of Belgium is
but the harbinger of the success of the Catholic University of
Ireland.
The University of Louvain was called into existence to meet a
condition of things, the parallel of which existed in Ireland in 1850,
and to cope with dangers similar to those which, at that period,
impended over the Catholics of this empire. In its working it has
wedded together interests which the sophistry of the day makes it
fashionable to represent as antagonistic. It is eminently national,
eminently scientific, eminently Catholic. It cultivates literature
with a zeal which does not interfere with its devotion to theology and
other sacred studies, and pursues even the highest investigations of
science in such a way as to prove that nowhere can freedom of
scientific research find a more congenial home than in a Catholic
university. These sentiments were eloquently expressed by one of the
students of the university. M. Van Tomme, as he stood by the bier of
Mgr. De Ram, spoke as follows, in the name of his fellow students who
stood around him:
“The great work founded by the Belgian episcopacy has grown
under the shadow of our political and religious
independence, and, as our rector himself expressed it, ‘The
university is not only a Catholic institution, but also a
national institution’. Guided by this noble motto, he
directed for thirty-one years the Catholic University,
strengthening each day in our hearts the love of religion
and of liberty, that two-fold foundation on which rests the
glory of our past history, and which guarantees the future
of our country. The care of our souls, the cultivation of
our minds, these were the objects most dear to his heart as
a priest; his love for us made him find in us his reward,
his joy, his blessing. How can I express his fatherly
tenderness, his boundless devotedness to our interests, his
delicate management of our national spirit of independence?
These were the principles with which he ruled over this
laborious and difficult work…. You know the blessed fruits
produced in the education of our country by these gifts of
mind and heart. Educational liberty, rescued bleeding from
stranger hands, first took refuge in the bosom of our
University, where Mgr. De Ram stretched out his arms to
welcome it, and from that day forward watched over it with
zealous care. Our University, the heiress of a glorious
name, the offspring of liberty and of faith, under Mgr. De
Ram’s presidency, has nobly bound up together the past and
the present. Those great works urged on with such ardour,
the serried phalanx of youths who have gone forth from this
Institution, the eminent men whom this University has given
to our country and to the Church, all proclaim, that his
devoted labours have not been vain, and point out to us
unmistakeably the greatness of the loss sustained on this
day by Catholic youth”.
But we are anticipating the course of events, and we must take up from
the commencement the history of this great man’s connection with
Louvain. We must even go back a little; for, as Father de Buck
remarks, it is only thus we can correct some erroneous ideas, which
have been freely circulated, and form some notion of the enormous
difficulties which surrounded the foundation of the Catholic
University of Belgium. Some of these erroneous ideas were thus
expressed by Sir Robert Kane, President of the Queen’s College, Cork,
in his inaugural address at the opening of that establishment, on the
7th November, 1849:――
“After the revolution, which rendered Belgium an independent
kingdom, the question of university education occupied the
attention of its government as one of the greatest moment.
The heads of the Belgian Church were fully consulted, and
they surely deserved to be, from their right to coöperate in
every measure of public welfare. The result has been the
institution of three great colleges: one at Louvain, formed
in the buildings of the old university, and hence popularly
called by the name of the ‘University of Louvain’; the
second college situated at Liege; and the third in Ghent.
Students follow their studies in any of these colleges, but
they do not there get their degrees. What course did the
Belgian authorities take, when, after the Revolution, they
had in their own hands the power of giving to all those
colleges a code of securities for faith and morals which
might have served us here as a model? They demanded to have
Louvain absolutely and exclusively under their own control,
and consented to leave the colleges of Liege and Ghent in
the hands of government absolutely, without any provision
for moral discipline or religious instruction. What is the
practical result? The College of Louvain contains only the
university faculties, conducted on medieval models, and
educating after the forms of old established universities.
The Colleges of Ghent and Liege contain the practical
branches, to which the majority of the young men attach
themselves. The schools of mines and engineering are at
Liege. The schools of mechanics and of practical chemistry
are at Ghent. There are great schools of medicine at both
colleges. Hence the practical education is conducted at
those colleges where there is no religion and no discipline.
In Belgium there are three colleges, one with
ultra-ecclesiastical discipline, attended generally by
Catholic foreigners, whom the traditional fame of the
medieval university brings to Louvain. The other two are
colleges without religion, to which the majority of Belgian
students are drawn for practical education” (_Inaugural
Address_, pages 23, 24).
In the course of the notice we shall see how many misstatements or
mistakes are contained in these few sentences. In this place suffice
it to say, that in the year 1864 alone, 325 students of the Catholic
University of Louvain took secular Degrees, viz., 117 in Law, 125 in
Medicine, 42 in Philosophy and Letters, and 41 in science; and since
1836, the large number of 6,881 took Degrees in those Faculties, viz.,
2,028 in Law, the same number in Medicine, 1,838 in Philosophy and
Letters, and 987 in Science. We have taken these figures from the
official publication, _l’Annuaire_, or University Calendar, for 1865,
and from it we also learn, that of 768 students, the total number in
the university in the Session 1863-64, only 121 were Students of
Theology. There were in the Faculty of Law 204, in that of Medicine
230, in that of Philosophy and Letters 102, and in that of Science
111.
The true history of the circumstances, which preceded and accompanied
the foundation of the Catholic University of Louvain, may be briefly
told, as follows:――
By the treaty of Vienna in 1815, the Catholic and Protestant
Netherlands, Belgium and Holland, were united under one king, William
I. of the House of Orange. Immediately on his accession this monarch
proposed for the acceptance of his whole kingdom a constitution which
had been originally intended for Protestant Holland only. This
constitution was condemned as anti-Catholic by the ordinaries of all
the dioceses of Belgium. It was also rejected by the nobles or other
chief men of the state. But it is worthy of remark, that,
notwithstanding its condemnation by the bishops, only 126 voters out
of 1325 alleged the attacks on the Church as the motive of their
rejection of the constitution; and although 766 opposed it, 527 were
found to support this most obnoxious portion of it. From this fact we
see the great strength of uncatholic opinion in Belgium fifty years
ago, since in so large a number of the chief men of the nation, so few
were found to follow the teachings of their bishops.
The ten years which followed were spent by the king, William I., in
endeavouring to undermine and still more weaken the Catholic and
national feeling in Belgium――to mould that country and Holland into
one nationality, which would be animated by one spirit, and that
spirit Dutch, and consequently Protestant. For this purpose Dutch was
made the official language for all administrative purposes and in all
the courts of law and other legal transactions. The immediate result
of this measure was to throw the education of the greater part of the
Belgian youth into the hands of Dutchmen, and Dutchmen were also
placed in every post of honour and emolument throughout the kingdom.
At length, on the 14th of June, 1825, two royal decrees were
published, by which it was sought to transfer to the hands of the
Protestant Government of Holland the education of the whole of the
youth of all classes in Catholic Belgium. The chief provisions of the
first of these decrees were as follow:
“Whereas many schools and institutions for the teaching of
the Latin and Greek languages; and for the training of youth
for the ecclesiastical state, as well as for other
professions, have been established without our consent; and
whereas Article 226 of the Fundamental Law[17] has given us
the charge of public instruction … desiring at the same time
to facilitate and favour every arrangement by which young
men may be fitted to become well educated ecclesiastics for
the Roman Catholic Church,… we have decreed and do hereby
decree….
“Art. 2. No Latin school, college, or athenaeum, shall be
established without the express authorisation of the
Department of the Interior.
“Art. 3. No one shall teach the Latin and Greek languages
_to the children of more than one family at once_, either in
primary schools or in private houses, without having first
obtained in one of the universities of the kingdom the
degree of _candidat_ or of _Docteur en Lettres_.
“Art. 4. All colleges, athenaeums, or Latin schools, are
placed under the control of the Department of the Interior.
“All colleges, athenaeums, or Latin schools, named in Art.
1, which at the date of this decree have not been approved
as such by former decrees, _shall be closed at the end of
the month of September_, 1825, unless sanctioned before that
time”.
By the second royal decree a “Philosophical College” was established
in Louvain for aspirants to the priesthood.
“Whereas some of the heads of the clergy have represented to
us that the preparatory education given to young men
intended for the ecclesiastical state is insufficient, and
whereas we are desirous of providing means to form able
ecclesiastics for the Roman Catholic Church.
“Art. 1. An establishment for the preparatory education of
young Roman Catholics aspiring to the ecclesiastical state,
shall be provisorily erected at one of the universities in
the northern provinces of the kingdom. This establishment,
under the title of ‘Philosophical College’, shall be
installed in a suitable building…. The students shall be
received therein, with permission to wear the ecclesiastical
habit.
“Art. 14, After the space of two years, to be counted from
the opening of the ‘Philosophical College’, no philosophical
lectures shall be given in the episcopal seminaries…. After
the same time no student shall be admitted into the
seminaries who shall not have duly completed his course of
studies in the ‘Philosophical College’. Each student of the
same college must spend therein two years at least”.
Thus did the Protestant King of the Netherlands think he had secured
the undisputed control of the education, ecclesiastical and lay, of
his Belgian subjects; but a very short time sufficed to convince him
of his mistake. In vain was the short delay of two years allowed by
these decrees of June 14th, refused by a subsequent enactment of the
11th July, which strictly forbade any student to be received from that
day forward into any episcopal seminary in Belgium, unless he had
completed his preparatory studies in the Philosophical College. In
vain, by another decree of the 14th of August following, the youth of
Belgium were forbidden to seek abroad the free Catholic education
denied to them at home, and unless educated in one of the state
institutions, declared incapable of holding any public office in the
gift of the government, or exercising any ecclesiastical function
within the kingdom. In vain, by a decree of the 20th November, were
the superiors of the diocesan seminaries ordered to dismiss forthwith
all youths received since the previous 11th of July; and the young men
themselves also commanded to withdraw. On the other hand, in vain was
all the influence of the government used to induce the bishops to
approve, or at least tolerate, the new system. In vain was it sought
to convince the Common Father of the Faithful that the Philosophical
College was unexceptionable, by sending to His Holiness’ own seminary
in Rome some youths of exemplary life, who might, by their good
conduct, belie the condemnation pronounced against the institution
where they had made their early studies. The episcopacy of Belgium
continued firm in its opposition, and the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Leo
XII., directed his internuncio at the Hague to explain that it was
impossible for the head of the Catholic Church to assent to measures
destructive to the liberties of Catholics, or even to abstain from
condemning them and protesting against them. The Belgian youths would
not go to the Philosophical College; the few who went would not be
admitted to Holy Orders by the bishops; and four years passed slowly
along in passive opposition to the inroads of the government on
Catholic education.
At last, on the 20th of June, 1829, the Dutch Government had to
acknowledge itself vanquished. A decree was published abrogating so
much of the legislation of 1825 as rendered attendance at the
Philosophical College obligatory.
But along with this concession, and perhaps as it were to neutralize
it, came new attacks in other ways on the liberties of Catholic
Belgium. The royal message to the States-General at the beginning of
1830, recommended measures tending to a further _unification_ of
Belgium with Holland. Event followed event, and before the end of
August a revolution broke out, and five of the best men in Belgium
were installed at Brussels as a provisional government, under the
presidency of the Baron de Gerlache, now head of the Society of St.
Vincent de Paul, and president also of the recent Catholic congresses
at Mechlin.
When the revolution broke out in 1830, the wisest members of the
clergy said, as Father de Buck tells us, “_Fieri non debuit, sed
factum valet_”, and the whole of the priesthood made common cause with
the people. But, although the great masses of the country people
remained faithful to Catholic principles, and although the nobility
was returning to the practices of religion; although the persecution
of the clergy by the Dutch Government had aroused the spirit of the
nation, and several even of the infidel party began to lay aside their
prejudices, and to express sympathy for the faithful priesthood of
their common country, still the religious position of Belgium at that
moment was most unsatisfactory.
Mgr. Van Bommel, Bishop of Liege, tells us, that “in 1838 there were
in Belgium about 100,000 pseudo-liberals, deadly enemies of the
Catholic Church, and most powerful”. “And it is not hard”, continues
the learned prelate, “to explain the fact. For more than forty years
all who are destined to occupy positions of importance were, in
general, brought up without religious principles. Under the late
government the religious element had no part in university teaching; a
part of this teaching had even been entrusted to men known to profess
anti-religious principles. The wicked passions of men, dangerous
occasions, bad example, an immoral theatre, and above all,
a literature steeped in wickedness or hostile to Catholic
principles;――in fine, the repeated declarations of men who, for party
purposes, told the rising generation that to it alone should
henceforth belong the rights of government――all resulted in raising
this young generation to such a pitch of pride, independence, and
licentiousness, that the sweet yoke of faith and the practices of
religion became insupportable. Thus was there formed, outside of the
masses, who remained faithful, a multitude of men of position and of
influence, who know the religion of their fathers only from the bad
books where it is attacked, from the stage where it is insulted, from
the assemblies where its sacred ministers are ridiculed, from the
newspapers where it is calumniated”.
Such was the religious position of Belgium when the Belgian episcopacy
determined to found the Catholic University of Louvain. Public
functionaries, barristers, physicians, merchants, manufacturers,
nearly all the men of influence in the country, were infected with
that false liberalism which, as Mgr. de Ram himself declared in
November, 1830, made many who cried out most loudly for liberty,
intend to use it only for self-aggrandisement and at the expense of
Catholicity.
The prospect was uninviting; but the bishops were not to be daunted,
although in February, 1834, on their publishing their decree
establishing the university, there were disturbances in Brussels and
in nearly all the episcopal cities. In December, 1833, they had
obtained from Pope Gregory XVI. the sanction of their project and an
apostolic brief for erecting the new university; and in June, 1834,
they published in another meeting the general statutes for its
government. On the same occasion the assembled prelates decided that
the youthful M. de Ram――he had not yet completed his thirtieth year,
and was then a canon of the Metropolitan Church of Mechlin, and
professor of canon law and church history in the seminary of that
diocese――should occupy a distinguished place in the new institution.
He was formally appointed, within the next few months, head of the
Catholic University of Belgium, with the title which in past ages
appertained to that office――_Rector Magnificus_, and in that capacity
assisted at the solemn inauguration of the university in the Cathedral
of Mechlin, on the 4th of November of the same year, 1834.
No sooner was he appointed to his high office than he set about
finding professors for the faculties of theology, of science, and of
philosophy and letters, which alone were to be opened the first year
in the temporary home of the university in Mechlin. All the priests he
selected were Belgians. Of the lay professors one was a Belgian, the
rest were Dutch, French, Germans, and Danes. The following year the
university was transferred to Louvain, and we have the formal act of
agreement entered into in October, 1835, between Monsignor de Ram and
the burgomaster of the city of Louvain, and afterwards solemnly
approved by the bishops and municipality, by which on the one hand the
bishops undertake to establish a full university course, and on the
other hand the town council “undertakes to give gratuitously to the
University the free use of the buildings _des Halles_ (the great
university lecture halls and other public buildings) _du Collège du
Pape, du Collège des Vétérans, du Collège du Roi, du Collège des
Prémontres, du Collège de Saint Esprit, et du Theâtre Anatomique_”.
Mgr. de Ram had now to organise the faculties of law and of medicine,
and here his difficulties increased. Where was he to find professors
in whom faith and true Catholic principles were united with that
profound and varied learning which would fit them to occupy chairs in
the new university? When we consider the deplorable state of Catholic
education among the cultivated classes in Belgium at the time we speak
of, these difficulties can be better imagined than expressed; and from
these difficulties we may form a judgment of the great prudence and
consummate wisdom through which Monsignor de Ram raised the
institution to that proud eminence which is now enjoyed by her
professors among the learned bodies of Europe. In all her faculties
there are among the professors not only men of extraordinary learning,
who unite clearness and method with depth and extent of knowledge, but
also models of every Christian virtue; so that with good reason does
F. de Buck conclude this portion of his notice of the illustrious
prelate by exclaiming: “Yes, the professorial staff brought together
by Mgr. de Ram, and which can henceforth be easily recruited from
amongst the students of the university itself, is the chief glory, the
undying crown of his rectorship”. But to understand the relations of
Mgr. de Ram with the professorial staff of the university, we should
read the funeral discourses which he pronounced at the obsequies of
those who preceded him in death. They are published in the University
Calendars from 1838 to this time, and clearly prove the esteem and
affection he bore to all who were united with him in the great work of
his life, the care with which he selected them, the zeal with which he
promoted the honour and happiness of each, and the sincere joy with
which he was filled when well-merited success crowned their literary
or scientific labours.
His devotedness to the students of the University was not less than
his affectionate esteem for the professors. By every means in his
power he sought to promote their spiritual, their intellectual, and
even their temporal interests. And this anxiety for the welfare of the
youth entrusted to him was not confined to the time they spent in the
university; it followed them into after life. “His fatherly
solicitude”, says M. Prosper Staes, of the Brussels bar, formerly a
student of the university, “his fatherly solicitude was not limited to
the youths who gathered round him each year for the purposes of study.
It followed the students in their several careers through life. His
old students always found in their rector one to encourage them, to
counsel them, to gather them about him, as a father gathers his
children, to rejoice in their success――in a word, to make them his joy
and his delight”.
His feelings towards the students, and theirs to him, as well as the
sentiments with which he unceasingly sought to fill their minds, can
well be gathered from the touching words pronounced over his lifeless
remains by one of the law students of the university, M. Van Tomme:
“To-day on this solemn occasion, the remembrance of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of our university, fills us with
sentiments of deep emotion. Surrounded by the multitude of
your students whom you loved so much, happy in being one
heart and one soul with them, you then said: Ever remember
our watch-word: God and our country; this word epitomizes
our duties and our principles. Yes; we have taken to
ourselves this word as our inheritance. It will be our
comfort in this moment of sorrow, as in those days of joy it
excited our enthusiasm. Wherever our students are called by
duty, this noble thought will always be their motto, as it
is to-day their hope.
“GOD, the knowledge of whom you have imparted to us so well,
to whom your life of merit, hidden to men’s eyes, is
manifest for your recompense.
“And OUR COUNTRY, which in the persons of these numbers of
youths whom you have educated for her, and filled with your
spirit, will ever bear upon her the impress of the works you
have achieved, and veneration for your memory”.
We are told, that in his government of the students, he knew how to
follow the _via media_ between severity and too great indulgence. He
was sometimes blamed for excess in the latter direction; but those who
make this accusation seem to forget that he had to do with the
direction, not of an ecclesiastical seminary, nor even of a school or
college, but of an university, where young men were to be prepared,
not for the service of the sanctuary, but for the busy scenes of life,
and where opening manhood, freed from the restraints of boyhood, was
to be gently led rather than forced, to love the beautiful paths of
wisdom on account of their beauty, and to walk steadily in them,
because of the goal to which they lead. If he did not hinder
everything that is evil, he is not to be blamed; for no legislator can
ever aim at this; and we are told by the Incarnate Wisdom Himself,
that the cockle must at times be permitted to grow with the wheat,
lest in plucking it up, the good grain should be injured. But that his
work produced blessed fruits, and that those fruits are likely to
remain, is evident to every one who compares the state of religious
education among Belgian Catholics when it was founded, with its state
at present. He did everything in his power to preserve and strengthen
the spirit and practice of religion among the students. He established
a regular course of religious instruction, at which all the students
of philosophy are obliged to assist, and to which the other students
are invited; twice each year he brought the most distinguished
preachers to Louvain to deliver religious conferences, which might
serve as a preparation for the Paschal communion; he assisted in
establishing in the University branches, or conferences of the Society
of St. Vincent de Paul, and to the utmost of his power encouraged the
Sodality or Congregation of the Blessed Virgin, which was founded by
the Jesuit Fathers in the chapel of their residence, and numbers over
two hundred members, all lay students of the Catholic University.
What have been the results? At the beginning of this article we saw
the deplorable state of educated Catholics in Belgium in 1830, with
respect to Catholic feelings and principles. At that time the number
of Catholic barristers and physicians who practised their religion was
extremely small. Now, in Brussels, Liege, and Ghent, the greater part
of the young bar, if not of the whole bar practising in the chief
courts of law, which are situated in these three cities, are
thoroughly devoted to the Catholic Church. Without doubt, several of
these young lawyers did not study in Louvain; they owe the
preservation of their faith to the good education received in the
bosom of their families, in the Jesuit Colleges, and in other Catholic
institutions; but a large number has studied in the Catholic
University, and all of them must be greatly confirmed in their
religious feelings and principles, and must derive new strength and
courage to declare them openly, from the public spirit redolent of
Catholicity which proceeds from Louvain. We are told that one of the
most interesting features of the great Catholic Congress of Malines in
1863, was the presence of eight hundred students of the University of
Louvain, youths as distinguished for learning as for the truly
Catholic spirit by which they were animated on that most interesting
occasion. We are also told, that in all the great cities, and some of
the smaller towns of Belgium, literary societies are springing up,
which publicly proclaim the Catholic principles on which they are
founded; and that the class in Belgium most devoted to the interests
of religion, is precisely the educated Catholic youth of the country.
What wonder, then, that the immense influence for good exercised by
the University of Louvain, under the presidency of its distinguished
rector, should be acknowledged in Belgium by enemies as well as
friends, and that on more occasions than one the Holy See itself
should have exhorted the bishops of other countries, as well as of
Ireland, to imitate their brethren of Belgium by founding a Catholic
University like that of Louvain!
While labouring to make the youth of the University good Christians,
Mgr. de Ram laboured also with indefatigable zeal to make them learned
men and good citizens. FAITH, LEARNING, LIBERTY, were the words which
he loved to unite in his discourses. Every one knows the results of
his inculcating those principles without ceasing on the young Belgians
entrusted to him by his Catholic country, which had just recovered its
liberty from Protestant Holland; and the numerous and high
distinctions won by the students of Louvain, in the public
examinations to which the whole youth of Belgium is admissible, attest
the excellence of the literary and scientific teaching of the
University, while the elevated positions now occupied by many of its
ancient alumni prove beyond gainsaying, that its educational fruits
remain, and will be an abundant source of intellectual, social, and
political blessings to Belgium.
Such is the institution which has just lost its first rector, we may
say its founder. Such the work which Mgr. de Ram directed with
consummate wisdom for thirty-one years. Such the Catholic University
of which Belgium, nay Christendom, may well be proud. It is a great
lesson to us all to see that even in these days of mere material
progress, without faith, without Christian love――when men would fain
persuade us that learning, to be a blessing, need not be referred to
God or religion――when the apostle’s words: “_Scientia inflat, charitas
vero aedificat_”, are held to be not over true. An University founded
and governed by a Catholic episcopacy, by the aid of their Catholic
people only, established on purely Catholic principles, without any of
those helps which men of the world value most, already in its infancy
rivals the great seats of learning of the middle ages. And all this is
due in a great measure to one man, who at thirty years of age was
called by the Belgian Episcopacy to rule over it, and who, with
untiring energy, consummate wisdom, and gentle perseverance, moulded
every part into perfect symmetry, so that schismatical Russia came to
study the model, and the Holy See could say to Ireland, as well as to
any other country wishing for a Catholic University: “_Inspice, et fac
secundum exemplar_”. With no more fitting words can we conclude this
brief notice, than with those spoken by the Vice-Rector of the
University at his funeral: “The Catholic University of Louvain was
indebted to God and to the bishops of Belgium for her Rector: to her
Rector she owes everything else”.[18]