Saint John’s Abbey and University Pax Christi Award – May 28, 1964

There come times when men of patience and generosity come forward to make sense out of the hopes and anxieties of the people of their era.  There come other times, less frequent, when one man brings to his age the gifts of perceptive statesmanship and the enviable objectivity of a man of principle.  Over the years, larger horizons beckon the man who can bring thoughtful poise and quiet courage to the solution of national and international problems.

Born into a Catholic family on a farm in Watkins, Minnesota, you learned early the trials and blessings of life on the land.  Your college education and religious formation prepared you to lead others in manifesting a Christian conscience to the larger world about you.  From graduate school labors, you advanced to doctoral honors from several renowned universities.  As a teacher in public school and private colleges for ten years, you grew in appreciation of the temper of your countrymen.  While serving as the head of a department of sociology you gathered further knowledge that matched your decision to serve in the Congress of the United States as representative of the Minnesota 4^th district.  From 1948, for five elective terms, you expended your youthful energies in the national House of Representatives, serving on important committees on Civil Service, Agriculture, Interior Affairs, Banking, and Ways and Means.

Chosen by your congressional colleagues to represent the United States at international meetings, you participated as official observer in Geneva at the 1957 Trade and Tariffs sessions and as a delegate to the NATO Parliamentarians’ Convention in Paris.  From the time of your election to the Senate of the United States in 1958, you have been a contributing member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.  As a freshman Senator you were signally honored by appointment to the influential Senate Committees on Finance and Agriculture.  In these posts, you distinguished yourself in legislation dealing with revenue measures, agricultural problems, reciprocal trade agreements, social security, veterans affairs, rural electrification and conservation.

As chairman of the Special Senate Committee on Unemployment Problems in the United States, you are a nationally known speaker and writer on political, economic, and social problems.  William S. White has remarked that you are one of a very small number of men who has reached great senatorial prestige early in your career.  In the meantime, you have retained the perspective and humanism which can and should be the intellectual’s special contribution to public life.  As a fellow Senator has recorded, you have never “trimmed your sails for expediency’s sake, nor abandoned a worthy cause just because it encountered hard going.”  The London Economist describes you as one of the most intelligent men in politics – precisely because you have been a powerful influence in keeping our Republic a civilized and just society.

In brief, you have impressed others as the kind of spokesman who can bring meaning and validity into a national climate that seems at times to evidence frivolity.  Literate and incisive, you have lived the truth that acts of principle are worth more to a man than any act of calculation.  Your support in helping others has honored them.  Your life as a Catholic layman and father has given relevance to the cherished doctrine of the Mystical Body.  Your equal success as a teacher, legislator and husband has exposed the fallacy of the notion that intellectual and Christian maturity are mutually exclusive. 

Because you have embodied the perennial values of Benedictine teaching on social justice, personal integrity and family life, we present you,

Eugene J. McCarthy

Former United States Senator

our highest honor,

T H E   P A X   C H R I S T I   A W A R D

On this, the twenty eighth day of May, nineteen hundred and sixty four.

In Omnibus Glorificetur Deus