The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-09
spxREw OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR PROTES.
TANT CONTROYERSIALIST


schools is rapidly spreading In this State it
promises to furnish, before very long, one of
the most exciting political issues we have
ever had, owing to the unscrupulousness dis
played by the Catholics in obtaining from the
Albany Legislature large votes of money
amounting in the present year to half mill
lion of dollars for the support of their schools
Their success in this sort of operation, too,
not unnaturally renders them less disposed
than ever to aid their Protestant neighbors
in the discovery of q mO1lS 05UeHdt on the
school question. They do not care whether
Bible-reading in the public schools is aban-
doned, and, indeed, show some signs of being
as much opposed to it as the High Protestant
party, who consider the Bible-reading one of
the most important parts of the school curri-
culum AS long as the Bible is read at the
opening of the school exercises, and is
read for the reasons assigned by Judge
Storer in the recent decision of the Superior
Court in Cincinnati, and ley some Protestant
clergy, the priests have an argument in favor
of separate Catholic schools such as nothing
else could furnish them. All the good which,
according to the Protestant view, Catholic
child gets by listening to the Scriptures is,
according to the Catholic view, SO much
poison; and, the more eager Protestants show
themselves for its administration, the more
frantic are Catholics bound to become in
escaping from it. The reason, too, is obvious
it is drawn from the very constitution of
the Catholic Church. She is, on the Catholic
theory, the sole teacher of truth. Nothing
which reaches the soul through any other
channel however respectable, Is instruction
in righteousness. She knows nothing of
morals apart from dogma. She recognizes no
man good who is not good Catholic. The
Bible is a good book in the hands of priest,
expounding it in the manner directed by the
Church; in the hands of layman and,
above all, of hereto layman, it is nothing
but snare and stumbling-block.
There are some Protestants, we are sorry to
say, into whose heads it seems impossible to
hammer proper comprehension of the Catho-
lie position on this subject, and who, never
theless, as might be expected, insist on taking
heated and active part in the pending con-
troversy, and never open their lips without
making a settlement of it more difficult and
more remote. They talk of the Bible as if it
occupied the same position in Catholic that it
occupies in Protestant theology, and as if the
differences between the two churches were
simply differences of interpetration-the fact
being that the Catholics do not and never
have acknowledged it as a final authority, or
as the sole basis of the claims of their
Church to the respect and obedience of
Christendom. All they draw from
it is corroborative evidence as to the cor
rectness of the Churchs own account of its
origin and history. For instance, Ohrist's
well-known declaration to Peter, so often
cited in support of the supremacy of the
Roman See, they treat simply as corrobo-
ration of what has ''always, everywhere, and
by all" been received and acknowledged as
Catholic truth, or in other words, of
ecclesiastical tradition. 1t is this dis
tinction which gives an air of positive
self-stultifcation to a large number of
the arguments in favor of COM
in, ohoo oh
one hears both from the platform and the
bench and the press. Nobody has a right to
attack position, or, at all events, nobody
can attack it with success, without under
standing it. It is melancholy to listen, as one
has nowadays sometimes, to a long string of
reasons for not yielding to the Catholic view,
every one of which helps to confirm the
Catholic in his view-the Catholic being the
only person who needs to be convinced, or
who is giving any trouble.
The very first thing to be done by Protest
ants before engaging in the warfare which is
now apparently before them, is to strengthen
the one weak point in their own case, a.
that is the removal from the State education
of the one feature which prevents it being
really and truly secular education simply 1t
must be remembered that it is not enough
that Protestants should acknowledge that the
common-school education is simply secular;
Catholics must acknowledge it, and Catholics
cannot be expected to acknowledge it, on
the Protestants' own showing, as long as
Bible-reading forms part of it. The very
tenacity with which Protestants cling to ii
they justify on the ground that it Is religious
instruction, and, of course, religious instruc
tion of Protestant complexion; without it,
Judge Storer says the children would be 'left
without God in the world or, in other
words, without religious creed. The whole
system of school instruction should be such
that no sect can say that it contains anything
likely to help to spread the tenets of any
other sect. It will, doubtless, still be sale
that schools in which no religion is taught
are goddess schools" but this we canno
help; for the ''gOdlessness' Of schools al
sects have a ready remedy by teaching reli
gion at home, or by clerical instrumentality
out of school hours If a system of this kin(
does not satisfy all, nothing will. No nearer
approach to a satisfactory system of stat
education can ever, in the existing con
dition of the human mind, be made
and when we have got it into work
ing order, we have the consolation o
knowing that it cannot be assailed by any
argument which does not touch its very exist
ence; that, in short, there is no pretence o
deception about it.
The second thing Protestants have to do i
they mean to bring this controversy to a rea
sonable and satisfactory settlement within
the lifetime of the present generation, is h
avoid talking of and treating Catholics a
necessarily enemies of free government, an
their religion as incompatible with true ale
glance to the State in which they live. On
hears a good deal of this Just now from tn
pulpit as we'll as from the platform, and it
both misleading and ineXpedient. Nothin