 States accompanied by his most eminent highness Andrew Barté his eminence John Cardinal O'Connor and Mr. J. Peter Grace ladies and gentlemen Welcome welcome to the 900th anniversary of the sovereign military order of Malta and the 62nd annual dinner of the American Association his eminence James Cardinal Hickey the Archbishop of Washington will now deliver the invocations following that I Request that you remain standing and join in the singing of our national anthem faith in America Has reflected and restored our own now a man Whose unswerving defense of the rights of the unborn has reminded all of the essential dignity and Sanctity of life itself and we were talking since pictures speak much louder than words and To commemorate this very special occasion. We have prepared a five-minute Visual tribute to our honoree, which we would like to show to you at this time Ethiopia I Want to say thank you For all the love and care you have given to our poor Through your gift of food each time I have knocked at your heart for help You are always full support My gratitude and that of our poor people is our prayer for you That through this love You have for others you may grow in holiness. I Am sure you will thank God with us for the two tabernacles We have given to Jesus in Moscow and in Armenia I always feel God uses us on Nothingness to show his greatness So pray for us That we not spoil God's work, but that we may continue with great love Let us pray God bless you mother Teresa Made that extraordinary film on mother Teresa. I'm sure you've seen it. Mr. President was shown in the White House That so many of us have a scene to take Mothers the warm clothing that she and her sister companion would need When I checked with Jan last week when she returned from Russia where she stayed about two and a half weeks with mother I asked because Jan didn't volunteer it. She wasn't very generous to me How did mother Teresa like her warm clothing? Jan told me mother Teresa loved all the warm clothes inside a monastery all the time And they devote their entire lives to prayer and the service to God and mr. President as you know more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of Now the scroll says that you and mrs. Reagan will enjoy the benefit of the monks prayers day after day through your lives and forever Prayers that you will both be with our Lord forever. And that's where we want you to be When the time comes with our Lord forever This is the kind of a gift mr. President that I want to get when I retire because I will need them a lot more than you Going back to that beautiful film Everybody here has a copy of that film at each of your places So that we can all remind ourselves of how great our president is Also at your place is a wonderful book that was put out last week called grinning with the gepper Humor is the best balancing force than any of us Can have to retain our judgment in times of crisis and no man does that any battle than our great president? for instance as you will see from the book Discussing the rebates sent to taxpayers while he was governor of California president Reagan said I remember the third time we did that a long time senator state senator Came into my office one day outraged about our giving that money back to the people and he said that he considered Giving that money back to the people an unnecessary expenditure of public fund and that's true The next one is political, but I think you're like it the prep the president said There are some things that are current today and sweeping the country that I haven't had time to get for We recall That eight years ago and long before you made clear statements that some things are good and right and Some things are wrong Very wrong, and you made a very clear judgment in a time of moral uncertainty You reminded the nation that morality binds us that morality observed Creates a great people that a morality. Thank you so very much Peter grace has the shortest memory of any man. I know And when he departs from the text that's usually chaos Immediately after mass today, which was just a few hours ago. He told me that was the greatest homily He had ever heard in his entire life Three hours later. It's the greatest homily. He's heard in years If I see him for breakfast tomorrow morning, he'll probably ask me. What were you doing yesterday afternoon? Mr. President it is not my privilege to introduce you this evening or to speak about you this evening On the only occasion on which we are on this day as together We experienced a minor disaster. It was it was rather catastrophic for you. It was only minor for me Everyone had come up to the table. This was at the Al Smith dinner Everyone had come up to the table due to president and I arrived Mr. President I Regard it as a special and happy occasion this meeting between us the holder of supreme authority in your great nation who's defended and is Defending the principles of democracy and of man's freedom and the head of an order Which has placed its sovereignty at the service of the poor and the suffering and so of freedom from want This meeting is taking place at the moment when you're about to conclude your long and distinguished period of service conscious and proud of having ensured for your country an era of renewed trust and hope and of having given to our tormented world a reasonable possibility of peace The grandmaster on the other hand finds myself at the beginning of his service and in need of strong support Not only from his confrere in the order, but also from all men of goodwill and We are happy to see this goodwill in your noble nation. Mr. President It manifests itself in the generous and Outstanding assistance which the American associations the second largest one in the sovereign order gives to developing countries This is an activity in which Especially as regards the Latin American countries the ways of your nation and those of the sovereign order easily meet The American knights and dames have in addition Taken a leading role in combating the scourge of AIDS and the terrible plight of the hungry and the homeless More importantly, mr. President you defended the rights of the unborn spiritual values the order of Malta was and is an aristocracy of service the order can Confer on ahead of state the collar of the order of merit of the sovereign hospital order of Malta in Recognition of all that you and your government have done to help reduce human misery and I trust that this act First in the history of the order with regard to an American president May represent the beginning of ever closer relations Not only with the numerous American confrere, but also with the entire American people Allow me mr. President to conclude this brief address With the expression of my warmest wishes and those of the orders government For serenity and happiness in this new phase of your life Thank you very much Your eminences your Excellency your most eminent Highness President Peter grace and ladies and gentlemen Tonight for me is a Is a moment from humility to stand here before you the members of the most ancient order of its kind in the world formed in the holy land 900 years ago Or as some of us would say only yesterday But to stand in this way before the members of this order with its remarkable history Which speaks to the entire ebb and flow of Western civilization and its noble present Which is a monument to the highest values of free men and women is to be reminded once again That the only true calling of man is service to God and To have served in that calling is cause not for pride, but for gratitude Today is for nine centuries you the knights and dames of Malta serve the victims of poverty hunger and disease I've often noted that in America We have a tradition that began when the first community of settlers Joined together to help build a home for a newcomer The tradition of neighbor helping neighbor the tradition of the barn raising and the settlement house and the church run hospital The tradition that tookville spoke of in wonderment more than a century and a half ago When he observed that when there was a job to do Americans didn't wait for the government, but pitched in and did it for themselves Well, yes an American tradition But one more ancient and universal as well of which history offers few examples more crystalline and enduring than the knights of Malta Now if I may tell you a story You don't find this spirit of love and mercy everywhere, which makes you appreciate it all the more when you do find it When I was still fairly new in my former line of work the movie business I Was cast to play opposite Errol Flynn in a picture called the Santa Fe Trail The movie was really about John Brown the abolitionist who led the famous raid on Harper's Ferry Raymond Massey played John Brown and he gave his character that perfect touch of insanity Mike Cortes directed and I've always thought the studio picked the perfect man to direct a film about a madman They give you an idea of what I mean We'd reached the end of the picture the scene in which they hang John Brown when Mike flew into one of his rages He was furious. He just discovered he couldn't actually hang Massey He'd have to use a dummy instead Well, then he started moving around the actor who was playing the minister who stood by Brown in the scaffolding He was setting up the shop The shot looking through the camera viewfinder and motioning to the actor to move about first left then right finally back And the poor fellow took one step too far back fell 12 feet from the scaffold and broke his leg Mike walked across looked down where he lay on the ground turned to his assistant and said give me another minister If only I could treat Congress that way But to return to faith hope and love Your work with the ill in particularly those with leprosy now those with AIDS Your partnership with Americans and its president Bob McCauley to move medicine to those in need all over the world Your support of Mother Teresa's care for the poorest of the poor Your work feeding the hungry in Latin America These are some of the highest examples of love compassion and mercy in our time They show the power of faith moving in the modern world I've heard a lot about this being the era of greed Usually from those who really mean the taxes are too low and government is too small. I Wish these critics would explain how it is that in the past eight years During this supposed era of greed Charitable giving has risen to record highs in our nation Last year in cash alone 94.7 billion dollars Not too long ago. We found it's even higher than we thought No one it turned out had ever fully added up what Americans give to their neighbors in need Through their churches synagogues and other religious organizations Some of this was because of the difficulty of gathering the information But I expect that it may also have reflected a secularist bias Whenever we've talked about the immensity of American giving critics have been quick to retort Well that much of it is through church congregations and that not much of that goes to the poor and the hungry Now a private organization called independent sector has added up what America's Congregations actually do pass on Not just conjecture about it It found that the giving to the media from these sources Amounts to more than half of the national total In other words, we already knew that private giving in America through corporations Foundations and other easily seen bodies was the highest in the world And now we know that this giving is only about a third of all American private giving to the needy That sure doesn't sound like greed to me By the way, I suspect that a dollar that comes from our churches and synagogues goes farther to help those in need Than one that comes from the government and I don't mean just because the government's overhead is higher Know it's that the state's power is at its root the power to coerce for example to demand Taxes the power of the church is the power of love and that makes all the difference Why is it that in this city would spend so much on its social service bureaucracy? So many young people find their refuge and salvation in father Ritter's Covenant House Could it be that there and the priests and nuns and volunteers they see the face of love entering their lives for the first time They aren't a case to be handled Which they would be if they were in the hands of the government agencies But a soul to be cherished 20 years ago the government declared a war on poverty poverty won Too many poor people were sucked into a system that declared that the only sin is not to have enough money Soon too many became dependent on government payments and lost the moral strength that has always given the poor the Determination to climb America's ladder of opportunity In my view the great lesson of that experience is that no war on poverty Stands a chance unless it rises above the secular state And is guided by the power of love that moves through god's word Now i know that when the knights talk of the power of love and serving The least of these thy brethren You also mean as i do protecting the unborn Our critics call themselves pro-choice But have they ever stopped to think that the unborn never have a choice When roe versus wade goes as i have faith it must The way of dread scot and separate but equal a new debate will rise in the state houses of our land And the voice that i believe must be heard and in the end shall be heard over all the others Is the voice of life The knights can be part of that voice Can i count on you in just seven days i will lay down the mantle of this great office the american people have bestowed upon me I won't leave the battle as long as there's breath in me i will fight for the principles in which i believe But if i may in this moment of leaving office make two special requests of you The first is that you prepare now to be a part of that voice of life in the great debate ahead And the second that you help america find a way out of the trap of the welfare state Help it find a way to open the doors of hope and love open them as no state any state ever can for those in need Help open the promises of this land of shining opportunity to all I believe now as i always have that america strength is in We the people this great experiment in faith and freedom will rise or fall on the courage of we the people And you who have so willingly and ably taken up the burdens of freedom Through the knights and throughout your lives You who are surely part of what jefferson called our natural aristocracy You will surely be in the front as we the people Turn to the dawn of america's tomorrows Thank you and god bless you