Associate Justice Clarence Thomas | Commencement Address | Christendom College

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you thank you armed thank you oh that makes you want to quit while you're ahead they've already given me a metal and this warm welcome so thank you all for being here I'd like to first thank Emma wind for that outstanding welcome we introverts Emma have to stick together the I always say introverts of the world unite but as I'm not going the meeting that would mean I have to leave home on first let me thank president O'Donnell for his wonderful welcome and for his patience in inviting me here I'd also like to thank chairman Bethel for her kindness and warmth and the members of the board members of the faculty families all of you for being here and the honored guests like to thank father Scalia it was a dear dear friend and all I see friends of mine out here oh my goodness the but most of all it is an honor to be with these students what a wonderful group you know I looked around and I saw these statues and icons the pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and st. Joseph and I realized I was in a Catholic school and and it encouraged me to put jmj at the top of my speech again it's truly an honor to have been invited to be a part of these commencement ceremonies I'm deeply humbled to receive the Pro deo at Patri award when I think of Saint Pancras whose feasts we celebrate today and our fallen soldiers and warriors across the world I cannot claim to merit this wonderful award they gave the last full measure for God and for country my contributions pale next to their ultimate sacrifices nevertheless I am deeply deeply honored and I will treasure it and I love being here with my bride Virginia who's a gift from God and my totally best friend in the whole world [Applause] you know I find commencements uplifting and a time to celebrate a milestone and so many young lives to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill it is not the end or the beginning of the end it is the end of the beginning of your education and your young lives lives hopefully spent in the pursuit of truth and wisdom this past week I asked my four law clerks who spoke at their who spoke at their respective college graduations they each had some vague recollections of the speaker but could not recall what was said so I am under no illusions that I'm under no illusions whatsoever that either I or what I say here will be long remembered but on their unanimous advice I will be brief and I ask you to indulge me for just a few minutes in 1971 when I sat where you are I was approaching my 23rd birthday and preliminary ly let me apologize for using I too many times and I was in the process of accumulating while I sat as you said many many regrets such as failing to return home to visit my grandparents often enough too often being influenced by my contemporaries who knew no more about life than I did and the biggest remaining outside the church from which I had fallen away so to begin I humbly ask each of you to take the time today this day to thank in the words of Emma the people who made it possible for you to make it this far your parents your Guardians your teachers your priests the nuns the coaches you know who they are thank all of those who make it possible for us to live in peace in this country thank God that you live in this country and for his boundless love and grace that elevates us above our choices and our circumstances and ourselves you know at graduation ceremonies many people will tell you to go out and conquer the world and climb mountains and do great things the truth is we are fortunate if we can conquer ourselves I saw saying some years ago that makes so much sense if you want to know what's down the road ask the person who's coming back on the road of life than the person next to you now is a fellow traveler those of us with gray hair and wrinkles are coming back in a sense we are meeting you on your way along a path of life that we long ago traveled some of us more long ago and we would like to say I was one of those headstrong youths I was sure none was sure I'm sure none of you are the way I was none of you is headstrong and like most young people I have had bad judgment from time to time there's a story of a young man who like me had bad judgment at the request of his mother he went to visit a wise older man who lived nearby the older man was known to have outstandingly good judgment the young man told him that he too wanted to have good judgment one day and sought the wise man's advice the wise man said son good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from having had bad judgment even as I've had bad judgment the bad judgment of youth something kept me from going too far and helped me to learn from those experiences I spent 25 years of my life in the wilderness away from the church and yet the clarion call of Sunday church bells never went away something restrained me in those days of the 1960s and 70s this inner restraint was called a hang-up or an inhibition in fact it was a conscience a Catholic conscience that had been formed in a world much like this wonderful wonderful college this is a decidedly Catholic college and I am decidedly and unapologetically Catholic it is it is this faith that has been the guiding beacon during some difficult and seemingly hopeless times even when I had turned my heart against it and turned my back on it and I have no doubt that this faith will do the same for each of you if you let it and perhaps even if you don't it is not a tether but rather it is a guide the way the truth and the life my first encounter where the Catholic institution was in 19 September of 1955 when I entered the second grade at st. Benedict grammar Scoones of my hometown of Savannah Georgia in those days we lined up in the school yard by grade and after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in unison we filed it into we filed into our respective classrooms two by two the first subject was always religion using the Baltimore Catechism I can still remember sister Mary Dolorosa asking us as a class why did God create you in unison and the innocent voices of seven year olds we responded God created us to know love and serve him in this life and to be happy with him in the next a lifetime has passed since those days of innocence and hopefulness but as I near my 70th birthday I think often of what sister Mary Dolorosa taught us that September much has happened since those days I have read much learned much and experienced a lifetime of ups and downs I have studied theology philosophy history and law yet I have not come across a better statement of our purpose in life than what she taught us over six decades ago this could well be the result of the many flaws and deficiencies of my abilities and my life from time to time I am asked why I came back to the church after a quarter of a century away often as a civic cynical if not bitter so I usually respond that life happened and that I ran away as a confused bitter 19 year old ex seminarian and crawled back as a middle-aged man humbled by the realities of life and better able to appreciate God's gift of faith that reminds me of my encounters with my grandfather as that bitter young man he was a devout Catholic a convert and only had nine months of education he and my grandmother raised my brother and mean I had been an altar boy and thought I had a vocation hence my four years in the seminary but much was happening in the world involving matter of race relations I somehow got swept up in it and away in the swirling cauldron of then current events and it was so certain that I was right about the end of the world as we knew it about the impending revolution seemingly I was certain about everything you know it's funny now how just how certain we think we are about so much when we have two decades of life under our belts at the end of our confrontations that had to be exasperated to my wonderful grandfather he would often simply say before walking away you just live long enough you'll see I wish she were here now so I can confess to him that at 70 I now see what I did not see at 20 as he knew I would and as you all will in a sense I'm coming back to you as my grandfather and sister Mary Dolorosa came to me not to lecture you or exalt myself but rather as a pilgrim who wants nothing more than your pilgrimage to be more fruitful and more beneficial and more Christ centered than mine was my bride and I attended a Judicial Conference last week among the topics were brain mapping and artificial intelligence I could have used some of that each day one reads about cloning or some other science fictional endeavor in a generation we have gone from virtually no one with a cell phone to today virtually no one without a cell phone the world that you all will live in is moment live in most certainly will have challenges that are unimaginable to those of us who grew up during a different era that is perhaps much like what my grandparents or sister Mary Dolorosa would think of today's world unimaginable in an increasingly secular and Neil istic world you will be faced with man-made panaceas I think each generation pinball's between its own panaceas I think each for us we have had integration we had quotas and mandatory school busing to solve racial problems urban renewal and housing projects to solve urban problems psychedelic drugs were to be mind-expanding and we went from global cooling to global warming to climate change I doubt that the world your lives will be less cluttered with changes conflicts and man-made solutions nor do I doubt that it will be fraught with its share of confusions and complications neither do neither I nor anyone in this room knows exactly what will confront you or exactly what the world will look like for you for you all but those who raised and nurtured us did but those who raised and nurtured us did not and could not know that we would live in the world that we live in today the world of self-driving cars robots and remotely controlled drones was for them and for us a world of fantasy and cartoons like the Jetsons a few months ago my wife and I were talking with one of our favorite priests father Scalia one of the things that has mystified at me during my tenure on the court which now approaches 30 years was the fact that his father Justice Scalia and I were vet were from very very different backgrounds but we agreed on so much and trusted each other implicitly we saw so much the same way before I arrived at the court in 1991 I had never met him so we had no prior relationship he was from New Jersey and I've and New York area and I from South Georgia he was from a household of educated parents and mine was almost functionally illiterate and we did not share the same race I told Justice Scalia about this father Scalia about this and he provided what should have been obvious all along your catholic formation was your bond he said there it was our mutual formation of moral character since that day I've thought often about it observation those who nurtured us did not know what we would confront but they knew that we needed to learn the truth to deal with what we confronted they passed on among other things our Catholic faith it seems that in this increasingly secular world man sees himself as a master of the universe there seems to be this notion that we are weak put our resources that if we put our resources and our minds to it we can do just about anything and solve just about any problem with more research the most challenging and awful diseases can be understood and cured don't didn't we after all cure polio and tuberculosis which were terrifying during my youth and man is powerful enough to destroy the earth and change the climate who needs God who cares about the church the life without God without faith I've tasted the elixir of that life I've stared into that abyss some time ago one of our parish priests gave a most interesting homily that made the point better than I could ever hope to he told a story that may well be apocryphal I'm not sure but it still makes the point and many of you may have already heard it a young student in France boarded a train he took a seat across from an elderly gentleman who appeared to be dozing when the train lurched a rosary fell from the gentleman's and the young man retrieved it and handed it back to the gentleman he couldn't resist asking the gentleman if he still believed in such things as praying the rosary the gentleman admitted that indeed he still believed surprised the young student told the gentleman that his professors at the University did not believe in such superstitious he then went on to enlighten the elderly gentlemen of the more modern and sophisticated view of the world and explained that enlightened people did not believe in such nonsense as praying the rosary as the older gentleman prepared to leave the train at this stop the young man offered to send him materials to further enlighten him the older man kindly accepted the offer and gave the young man his business card as he departed as a train pulled away the young man read the card aloud to himself louis pasteur director of the institute of scientific research paris perhaps Louis Pasteur er through his path-breaking work and his life experience knew something the young man had yet to learn it seems that often the more we know and the more we learn the more we doubt how much we really know or how well we know what we think we know we realize what our human limitations are in a sense we realize just how minuscule we are in the scheme of things especially without God in the epilogue of his history of Christianity Paul Johnson observes and I quote at length man is imperfect with God without God what is he as Francis Bacon put it they that deny God destroy man's nobility for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body and if he be not kin to God by his Spirit he is a base an ignoble creature we are less base and ignoble by virtue of divine example and by the desire for the form of apotheosis which Christianity offers in everyday terms because we are created in the image and likeness of God we are required to demand more of ourselves than our base instincts to know love and serve God requires that we obey His commandments and the laws of the church this world will tug at you an attempt to divert you somehow you must stay the course God will provide a way give you the strength and grace to endure and overcome your failures I assure you that there are things today that you think are important that are critical that are indispensable many of these same things you will one day think are trivial and disposable there will be those who will confidently tell you that there is a new more modern and fun-filled thrilling way to live life without the constraints of conscience or faith they will suggest that the old-fashioned ways are passe in the era of smartphones iPads and iCloud they will say that we are smarter with the internet and artificial intelligence but these technological conveniences are not transcendent not divine and not God when I met my wife in 1986 she asked me what helped to sustain me through the many many battles that I fought in those days in Washington I showed her my folded copy of saint francis of assisi z' letter to rulers of people it read in part keep Oakley and I give you this advice keep a clear eye toward life's in do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creatures what you are in God's sight is what you are and nothing more remember that when you leave this earth you will take with you nothing that you have received but only what you have given a full heart enriched by honest service love sacrifice and courage embrace the god of us all and God's Word wherever it surfaces in the early 1990s shortly after I arrived at the court I frequently drove past a small cinderblock Church in Northern Virginia it had a simple side inexpensive sign out front with a quote from second Corinthians before we walk by faith not by sight simple yet profound yes Google Maps may get you from one place to another but only God will show you the way to that peace which passes understanding paraphrase Mother Teresa in the final analysis it is not between you and the things of the world it is always between you and God I congratulate each of you on this milestone in your formation your catholic formation may God continue to bless and guide each of you throughout your lives and I pray that you know love and serve Him in this life so that you could be happy with him in the next god bless you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Christendom College

Views: 21,224

Keywords: Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court, United States, Catholic, Unapologetically Catholic, C-SPAN, Fox News

Id: rJ4E2zPJbJ4

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Mon May 14 2018