The New York herald., 1879-11-16


priest at Cambridgeport, near Boston, in
which We made full and fair statement of
the facts to the readers of the HERALD last
week, not only continues to be agitated in
the New England press but is attracting
close attention and enlisting warm PARTISAN
ship far beyond the political and religious
jurisdictions in which it occurred. 1t Is
the case In which the priest endeavors TO
constrain a large and respectable part OF MS
parishioners, by ecclesiastical penalties, TO
withdraw their children from free pubic
school and send them to a religious pa
rochial school, where they allege that
the teaching is inferior and the corporal
discipline is unduly severe. In some quar-
ters it has reopened with great acrimony In
its fullest scope the well-worn discus
sion concerning secular and religious
teaching and taxation for the sup
port of popular education. On the
side of the priest it is contended that,
no matter how inferior the intellectual
training in his parochial school may be, its
combination with religious instruction
makes it more valuable to the children of
Catholic parents than the best conceivable
education unaccompanied with religious
development of doctrinal faith. Some of
his defenders push their advocacy to the
extreme Of holding that it is better for a
Catholic child to grow up without learning
to read or write than to attain any degree
of mental cultivation in purely secular
way. Logically these champions of the
principle that doctrinal religion must form
the basis of all education object to the
assessment of taxes for the support of.
any free public schools whatsoever.
On the other hand their integrity is Bit
terly challenged. They are accused of
wilfully encouraging ignorance and foment-
ing prejudices of religion and race, and of
aiming at the domination of hierarchy, of
which the American section is but small
fragment, over the minds of coming gen.
erations of Americans. On this point, as
we'll as on the point Of taxation, the argu-
ment of course touches politics vitality, and
unless common sense comes to the rescue
it is by no means unlikely that Father
Scully's case will initiate little Know
Nothing revival in the neighborhood where
it has happened. Curiously enough, ST.
multaueously with this discussion in New
England, there come from the other end of
the world tidings of the beginning of a
popular debate of the same kind in the
Australian colony of Victoria.
Now, in common sense, the provocation
of such revival on any scale, great or
ecooJl ,aar,o naadlaos ond xyontop in MoSso
chusetts, in New York, in Australia or any,
where that political institutions are pop
ular and free. On the ultra-priestly side it
is founded in two sheer impracticabilities.
The talk Of the extremists, such as we have
quoted, about preferring to let children
grow up ignorant vagabonds rather than
have them taught the rudiments of learn
ing in secular schools, may be perfectly hon
est. but it is perfectly preposterous. We
live in o land where Church and State
are absolutely disassociated, and where
the State must administer it's charge of
public education in strict obedience to
that principle of disassociation. 1t is idle
to argue that there is no such charge. Our
institutions are democratic. The people
rule, and they must rule intelligently.
Accordingly the capacity to enforce popular
intelligence belongs to the State, and free
public schools are its indispensable instru-
ments for enforcing it. 1t cannot surrender
to the Church its duty to see that future
voters are trained to vote intelligently
any more than it can abdicate
to the Church its duty to provide for
national defence against insurrection or
fereign aggression. The duty of educa-
tion, therefore, being public and gen.
eral, the taxation for its execution must
be public and general also. The protest of
an honest Catholic believer that all educa-
tion should be clerical, against being taxed
for the support of free public secular
schools, belongs TO the same category with
the protest of q Quaker against being taxed
for the support OF the army and the navy.
| With whatever degree of respect the State
may regard them both as manifestations of
honest individual conscience, it cannot
yield to either of them without disjointing
its very framework.
The second practicability consists in
the utter want of clerical preparation and
means to assume efficient charge of general
popular education, even were it conceiva-
BILE that the State could delegate to the
Church such function. Take, for example,
even this city of New York, where in num-
bers and wealth the Roman Catholic popu-
lation bears far larger proportion to the
aggregate of inhabitants and of riches than
in any other great city in the United
States, and where the learning, piety,
fidelity and earnestness Of its priest
hood excel in even greater proportion.
Suppose the public schools could be dis
solved to-day, and the myriads of children
of Catholic parents who are availing them
selves of their teaching were to have re-