LIB

OF TH

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT,

Lawrence F. Flick, M.D.,

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE

American Catholic Historical Society

FELLOW MEMBERS:-For the fourth time it becomes my pleasant duty to address you as the retiring President at the end of the official year. With the close of this year I shall lay down the honor which you have so kindly conferred upon me and again resume my place in the ranks. The urgent request of many of my fellow members that I continue longer in office is most gratifying to me; but my judgment is that it is for the best interests of the Society to have rotation in the office of the chief executive of the Society.

In laying down the reins of government it may not be out of place in me to briefly review the work that has been accomplished by the Society during the last four years. To do so may spur us on to greater effort, and may inspire with new courage those who have grown weary of the work and doubtful of the future.

The principal achievements during my term of office have been: Ist. The successful establishment of our magazine. 2nd. The classification and partial cataloguing of our library. 3rd. The purchase and equipment of our own home. And, 4th, the establishment of the position of archivist in Rome. Each of these steps has carried us forward to a more advantageous position, and the ground thus gained guarantees the permanency of our undertaking and promises greater things for the future. It must be borne in mind too that this work has been accomplished during a period of financial depression of the most threatening and paralyzing nature, a period during which most

societies have been content to remain stationary and during which not a few have succumbed.

It is true that all that we had set before us to accomplish during this period has not been brought to a successful issue, but what we have been able to do warrants hope in the complete realization of all our plans in the future. If the future can be read in the past, and I think it is generally admitted that it can, the American Catholic Historical Society is destined to play an important role in the future writing of history and in the moulding of literary effort in times to come. If we succeed, as we hope to in the near future, in establishing the office of archivist in all the large centres of Europe and America in which original documents exist that can throw light upon historical questions and especially upon those questions bearing upon the work of the Catholic Church in America, we will command the headwaters of historical thought upon the subjects with which we are concerned, and we will be in a position to speak with authority in matters of Catholic history concerning which Catholics ought not to be silent. The gradual equipment of our library as a complete Catholic reference library will furnish the armamentarium out of which to prepare the literary antidotes to the debasing immoral literature of our day, and will give Catholic writers an opportunity to not only tincture their writings with Catholic sentiment but to make the warp of their literary productions out of the deeds of Catholic men and women and the woof out of the home life of the Catholic family.

The American Catholic Historical Society occupies a unique position in the world. So far as I know it is the only large body of men and women devoted exclusively to the study and elaboration of history from a Christian point of view. There are many societies in this country and in Europe devoted to political and secular history, and there are some small societies in this country which have set before themselves the task of elucidating certain phases of