Arizona citizen., 1875-05-29
THE CITIZEN.
SATURDAY., - MAY 29, 1875.
CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE.

The lecturer repeatedly says that his
 people are being robbed by us, and works
 himself into high state of excitement
 upon this assumption. Now what are the
 facts. The public schools taking all the
 Territory together are patrOnized by at
 least ninety per cent. of Catholic children No protest nor effort has ever been made
 on the part of the Catholic people to change the present school law nor has
 complaint ever been made by them against
 the management of the schools Our
 best supporters of the public schools are Catholics We have never heard one single complaint from any source except from the lecturer and the priests. The
 latter have rallied against the schools since
 they found there was a prospect of suc-
 cess but the children have increased in attendance until our school rooms would
 not hold them all and quite as many have
 been turned away from our public schools
 for want of room as we have beer able to
 receive, and those attending and those we
 have been compelled to turn away are
 nearly all Catholic children. And still
 our friend, doubtless through lack of knowledge of the subject, says that we are
 robting the Catholics. It is true that we
 do not give the handling of the funds to
 the priests, which no doubt they would
 very much like, but It is untrue that we
 are robbing the Catholics, fornearly every
 dollar goes towards educating the children
 of Catholics. We are trying to assist
 these poor people to educate their chil-
 dren to become useful men and women
 and our friend and the priests get angry
 about It. We make no claim of being
 better than other men but we ask our inn
 partial readers to examine the difference in our action and those who oppose pub,
 lie schools. We have furnished d large
 portion of the funds as stated before to
 build their Church and school houses in
 Tucson. We have contributed lberally to the support of their schools and have al-
 ways bid them God speed in any and ail efforts to educate the young.
 The contrast s b ows that since our schools were started a constant effort has been made by the priests to discourage attendance at the public schools, and thereby force the poor children to grow up in ignorance.
 Our first attempt to build up school house was met by all effort to break up an innoceat social party If that was doing as you would like to be done by then we have not understood the golden rule. But it is possible that people who are leaders in churches have right to do things that would seem very unchristian on the part of an outsider. If so then we accept the explanation.
 This communication dodge on the part of the priests when the people seek that liberty of action that God granted to every human being is loosing its terror. Farther Walker recently preached a very bitter sermon against the public schools in New York and within day or two thereafter the columns of tho Herald were filled with letters from prominent Catholics denounciDg the outrage and sustaining the public schools. With such Catholics we can live in peace and we war upon no creed; we have respect for the | opinions of all bat when any Church creed l or individual striks blows at one of the l mos. cherished of our institutions We shall upon all proper occasions strike back, not with any personal feeling but with irmness in the belief that we are serving ths best interests of our country | and humanity.