The Portland daily press., 1876-04-04
Church, State and School.

Not long since the Catholic Bishop Nc
Quaid and Mr.. Francis E. Abbot, editor of
the IndeT, delivered in horticultural Hall,
Boston, lectures on the public school ques-
ton. The lecture of Bishop McQuaid was
reviewed IN these columns soon after its de-
livery. 1t and Mr.. Abbot's reply are now
published in pamphlet by the Free Re-
ligious Association, pamphlet which de-
serves careful perusal by all; for all have
vital interest in the question and should
strive after clear comprehension of the
points at issue. In this article it is purposed
to give summary of Mr.. Abbot's argument.
Mr.. Abbot at once meets the real point of
the Catholic protest against the public school
system, that the Catholic conscience is vo-
lated and oppressed by it, He gladly admits
that protest manifestly so sincere. urged in
the sacred name of conscience, deserves re-
spectful and dispassionaie consideration, and
proceeds to enquire what is the rational
ground for the claim. The Catholic con
science demands, in the art phrase of Car
dinal McCloskey, "Catholic education for
Catholic children" No one disputes that
demand. as Mr.. Abbot clearly shows. The
Catholic parent may give his child Catholic
education, but he must do it at his own ex-
pense, not at the expense of the state. The
state ought to furnish education, but rot sec
tarianism. His equal rights are not in
frnged where schools are conducted on a
purely unsectarian basis, for he has as much
right to have his religion taught in the
schools as do Protestants, Jews, or Radicals
to have theirs-that is, no right at all. The
trouble with the Catholics is that this equality
of rights does not satisfy them. They feel
tivsly taught in The schools to which their
children go. This is demanding not equal
but unequal rights. The Catholic conscience
asks for in Bishop McQuaid's own words,
''the non-interference of the State in Church
or in School," That is the clean issue. So
long as the Catholic conscience claims to be
violated by system which supports Prot
estant schools at the public expense
its claim has justice. To make the pub
lie schools Protestant by requiring or per-
mitting Protestant worship in them is truly
violation of all but Protestant consciences.
But it is easy to rectIy this injustice by sec
ularizing the schools altogether. But the
Catholic conscience is not satisfied with equal
ity-it demands privilege, 1t claims to be
violated by system which supports secular
schools at the public expense. 1t would be
still more troubled at Protestant schools sup
ported by the public. 1t is evident that its
real complaint against the schools is that
they omit to teach positive Catholic doctrine.
Catholics openly acknowledge this, and the
very gist of their claims is that Catholic pa
rents ought not to be taxed for any but Cath
olic schools, since they cannot conscientious
ly send their children to any other; and since
the State cannot support Catholic schools,
Catholic parents ought to be relieved from
school taxes altogether, or else to receive
back their own taxes from the State to be ex-
pended under their own control for Catholic
schools. It is in the name of Catholic pa
rents that the protest is entered.
In the matter of taxation the State deals
exclusively with individuals, and deals with
them not as Catholics nor even as parents,
but simply and solely as citizens. The State
does not ask if man be Catholic or Protes-
tant or Jew, if he be married or unmarried
if he be parent or chdless; it only asks
him to pay his fair proportion of the school
expenses as an individual member of the civil
community. 1t is this which the Catholics
oppose; they enter, in the name of church
membership and family ties, a denial of the
general obligations of citizenship. They go
back thirty centuries, as Mr.. Abbot points
out, and set up doctrine of parental prero-
sative which is nothing but modification of
the Roman patTia proteStds, general social
theory which has been long outgrowD. For
saking the modern idea, the general growth
OF which has been uniform with the progress
OF modern thought, that the unit OF society is
the individual, they adopt the ancient idea
that the unit of society is the family. The
parental prerogative of Bishop M Quad i
the ancient and eutgrown patriG protestds in
truding itself into modern society with its
claim of despotic authority for the father over
his child, ignoring both the personal rights OF
the child and the collective rights of society.
The Catholic social theory, with lis claim
that the family, not the individual. is the So
cial unit. is the unburie1 skeleton of pre-his-
toric barbarsm, the most ancient aud best
authenticated relic in the keeping of the
Church. This parental prerogatve is a
shrewd and sagacious appeal to the very dem
ocratic instinct 10 which it is really opposed.