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Commencement 2004
President's
Remarks for the 2004 Trinity College Commencement
Raise Your Voices!
May 23, 2003
President Patricia A. McGuire
Every year at Commencement, it is customary for the president of the College to comment on the state of the College and the world into which we are sending our graduates.
The state of Trinity is very well, indeed. I am particularly pleased to note that, this year, Trinity's accomplishments include the very first graduating class in our M.B.A. program --- congratulations to all of our new Trinity M.B.A.'s! Trinity has realized many other accomplishments this year, well documented in our various publications and website, and we look to the future with confidence as we grow into the university we will become in the months ahead.
Sadly, the world into which the Red Class of 2004 marches today is not so fine. Indeed, I cannot recall a time in the 15 years that I have been Trinity's president in which the world appeared to be more perilous. Each generation has its own sense of challenge, and each believes that its problems, opportunities, threats and triumphs are unique. But there's a climate abroad in the land of civilization today that feels considerably different, that bespeaks unknown territories beyond the edges of familiar roadmaps.
The greatest test of a Trinity education occurs at that moment when you take a turn beyond the edge of your map, venturing across uncharted terrain, leaving your footprints so others might follow. You will have little to guide you but the habits of knowledge and critical analysis, the capacity for wise intellectual and moral judgment, the passionate, confident response rooted in faith that you honed and tested and refined during your Trinity days.
We venture across unknown lands. When most of you began your Trinity studies, we were a nation in a relative posture of peace. We could not have imagined the forces that would be unleashed on a bright early fall day. September 11. We were blown across that timeline into a strange territory that seems uglier and scarier each day. We tiptoe along the abyss of terror, shuddering with each explosive echo of war through the night, averting our gaze from the hard truth of photographic evidence of Apocalypse Again.
A Trinity education is a great gift particularly in times such as these because knowledge trumps fear at every turn. Education, particularly higher education, is one of the great pillars of the free society, free not only in law, but free in spirit and soul. Terrorists thrive where ignorance flourishes. Fear grows few roots where education lives well.
The moral code of a Trinity education calls you to lifelong stewardship of this gift through using its power to illuminate the darkness of ignorance where fear crawls around, to shine the light of Truth in places of deception, to challenge the sources of human oppression and despair, to be beacons of hope, insisting on the necessity of justice for peace to prevail.
You cannot be effective stewards of your Trinity education in silence. Indeed, silence betrays our values completely. Silence is complicit in the prolongation of war, the abnegation of responsibility for moral leadership, the casual acceptance of conditions of violence, abuse and degredation of the human person, body, spirit and soul. Silence denies Truth, allows lies to grow like weeds in the soul of a nation.
Raise your voices on behalf of Truth.
This week, as the nation observes the 50 th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, we are reminded of the power of human voices, joined in solidarity, crying out for simple justice. This was a power that transformed an entire society. This is a power that must be rediscovered and energized anew, so that the progress of five long decades marching toward racial justice will not slacken and regress into bitterly silent passivity over the still-pervasive sin of racism.
Raise your voices on behalf of justice.
In the past few weeks, we have been sadly reminded of the shame, the terrible sin of cowardice among people who choose silence in the face of depraved group behavior. "I was just following orders." Where have we heard that echo before in human history? Some of the worst atrocities in human history were accomplished when otherwise-good people lacked the courage to refuse immoral orders. Trinity's Code of Honor, practiced here in far less dramatic circumstances, goes with you through life, calling you to courageous honesty in all matters great and small, strengthening your spine for that day when you must have the courage to say no in the face of intimidation, to challenge and change the immoral order that people of conscience should always defy.
Raise your voices to insist on honor.
We are in an election year like few we can recall. The bitter national divisions of the last election in peacetime are festering, red states, blue states, states of confusion and conflict. Decades have passed since the last time this nation felt quite so unsettled, and if we cannot resolve this bitterness soon and come together as a free people who must lead this troubled world through the crisis that torments us, decades will pass before this nation feels peaceful again.
Raise your voices on behalf of peace.
In this tense and unsettling landscape, with the divisive election season in full bore, we need voices of common sense and moral clarity, voices that speak of peace and justice without apology. We need to remind our political leaders that concerns about human dignity, justice and peace, freedom of speech and assembly, equal opportunity and freedom from all forms of discrimination are not frivolous concepts of ‘political correctness' but central tenets of our Constitution, and foundation beliefs of most major religions.
Raise your voices on behalf of freedom and human rights.
This is a time when people of faith have a special responsibility to bear witness in our culture. The drama playing out across the front pages each day is truly a struggle of the forces of good and evil, and it clearly is a struggle in which religion plays a powerful role, for better or worse. We must insist that our religious leaders exert their power for good, for justice, for peace. We who are the faithful must remember that we are the Church, that we are responsible for ensuring the vitality of our faith in the public arena.
Raise your voices as people of faith.
Unfortunately, in the Catholic faith, the disgraceful scandal exposed in the last two years has taken a terrible toll on Catholic credibility at a time that desperately needs the moral clarity of our Gospel teachings on social justice. At the same time, certain bishops seem to have forgotten that their leadership role is moral and spiritual, not political. What faithful Catholics do in the voting booth is, respectfully, none of the bishop's business, and attempts to dictate how Catholics should vote will only deepen the scandal that has weakened the Church's moral voice at this critical time. Using sacraments as punitive tools against lawmakers who are fulfilling their sworn legal duties to uphold the Constitution and to represent the will of the people is a shocking misuse of sacred power, no matter how well intended. The defense of life, which is certainly a profound moral cause of elemental justice, cannot trample all other rights and duties. Faithful Catholic citizens can certainly debate tactics, even as we share fundamental belief in the central tenets of our faith. To debilitate the ability of Catholics to be effective, full and robust actors in the political arena will return Catholicism to the margins of our culture, will ensure the defeat of many if not most Catholics who stand for election, will encourage the virulent strain of anti-Catholic prejudice that continues to course through certain parts of our culture.
Go to the polls and vote. Voting your conscience can never be immoral. The only shame lies in failing to vote.
We who are faithful Catholics must help our Church to regain respect for its moral voice, to rebuild its ability to teach effectively about the fundamental principles of human life and dignity without threats and coercion, to play a leading role as the Church once did in the national dialogue about peace and justice, to forge strong bonds of solidarity with all people of faith whose quest is the same, to be advocates for social change for those who cannot speak, "the least, the lost, the left out among us."1 A morally confident Church should not be thinking about controlling, or worse, punishing politicians or voters for the choices they freely exercise as part of the secular political process. A morally confident Church will be effective in its teaching duties without resorting to threats or coercion, and faithful citizens and lawmakers will cast their votes according to conscience after full consideration of the moral issues at stake.
Let us render to Caesar, and return to our real work of building the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Raise your voices, cast your votes, work for justice, insist on peace.
St. Julie Billiart, who founded the Sisters of Notre Dame 200 years ago, is still a powerful force guiding us across this treacherous terrain. She was not afraid, not in the least. She put her life at risk confronting revolutionaries in France who wanted to kill all the Catholics. She put her personal comfort at risk, even when she was paralyzed for many years, working tirelessly to establish schools for poor girls orphaned by the French Revolution. She put her life's work at risk when the bishop in France tried to stop her, and so she went to Belgium , to Namur , to ensure that the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur would flourish.
For 200 years, the Sisters of Notre Dame have been the kind of bold, courageous pathbreakers, peacemakers, justice-seekers I have invoked today. They are our greatest role models. Later this morning, we will honor one such SND, Ann Kendrick, a Trinity Woman who is a great exemplar of the passion and courage required to live the Gospel well.
100 years ago, the heirs of Julie Billiart began a procession that continues this day. In June of 1904, the very first Trinity students, marched to the first Trinity graduation, the commencement of the very first Red Class, the Class of 1904. On that graduation day, the first Class of '04 began the great Trinity Alumnae Association. I am sure that they are smiling now on their sisters and brothers in this, the second Class of '04 ever to graduate from Trinity, another great Red Class, the latest heirs of the tradition and charism of Julie Billiart and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
As the Class of 2004 accept your diplomas and wear your hoods proudly today, you become the latest witness to the genius of our Founders and the great traditions of Trinity in service to our world.
My dear friends in this great Red Class: may the joy and pride of this moment sustain you through the hard work that will be yours in the years to come. May you never relent in your quest to do what is right, to quest for justice, to pray for peace. May the friends you made in your Trinity days walk with you through all of life's labyrinthe pathways. May the knowledge you possess so fully today ferment well into wisdom with the yeast of experience. May your faith never fail, your hope always prevail, your charity endure through all of your days. May the grace of the Trinity be with you always.
1 Economic Justice for All, Pastoral Letter of the U.S. Bishops, 1986.
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