The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-06-13

amount of schooling. In most CONT
mental nations it has been found ne
cessary to make it compulsory on par
ents to send their children to school.
The church looks after the moral and
religious education of children, and
establishes, according to her means,
schools to meet the wants OF the spir-
itual society; but she does not hold it
to be her business, and she has never
undertaken, to provide for and to give
secular education to all the children
of the land, in any age or nation. 1t
is her right and her duty to look aft
er the moral and religious elements
of all education given to her children,
whether given by the state or by in
dividuals but to purely secular edu-
cation, suppose, she holds only the
relation she holds to any and every
other secular matter AS for the
sects, | own | do not wish to see them
each educating for itself, even their
own children. Sectarianism is one of
the greatest curses that can light up
on a nation. and l am not willing to
support a rule that would tend to per-
petuate it. 1t was a great victory
won for Catholicity in this country,
when the common schools were wrest-
ed from sectarian control, and placed
under that of the state, and when
common school education was seoul
arized and forbidden by law to be sec
tartan. If the American people had
insisted that religion should continue
to be taught in the common schools,
Calvinism, in some form, would have
remained virtually, if not formally,
the state religion in nearly every
state in the Union, and Catholicity
could never have gained a foothold,
or Catholics legal status in this re-
public More than any other class Of
the community, have Catholics gained
by that very feature in the common
school system. against which, with
their Old World prejudices on the
subject, they are waging relentless
war In an old Catholic country the
secularization of education opens the
door to infidelity; in a non-Catholic
country like this, it favors religion by
breaking down sectarianism and the
bigotry and intolerance of the COM
munity."
That may all be very true" re-
piled O'Flannagan, and Catholics do
not generally object to purely secular
schools for non-Catholics; but such
schools will not suffice for us. We
want for our children no education
separated from religion and morality
Even if the common schools were
as they are not, free from sectarian-
ism. they would not be acceptable to
us, because we insist on uniting moral
and religious training with secular in
Struction."
THAT cannot be done in any system
of public schools, practicable in a
country like yours" interposed De
Bonneville; Catholics are a feeble
minority in the Union, and there is
no state in the Union which will con-
sent to make the Catholic religion
the religion of it's schools If any re-
ligion is carried into your public
schools it will be Professionalism in
some or all of it's forms. 1t is, in my
judgment, more for the interest Of
Catholicity that sectarianism should
be excluded from the public schools
though the Catholic religion is not in
troduced, than it is that they should
be made nurseries of Protestant big
otry and sectrian intolerance. Il
seems to me, that Catholics may very
well be content with the public
schools, though these schools do no
favor their religion, if, at the same
time, they exert no influence against
it."
(TO Do Continued