The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-07-18
!. Conversations Of Our Club :. 4.
"The bishops and clergy" answe
By Orestes A. Brownson.

''The bishops and clergy" answered
Father John, ''look to the spiritual
wants of the Catholic people, and it
is only in the interest of religion that
they concern themselves with the ed
ucation of their children. They look,
as they should look, first of all to
Catholic schools, as protection to
the faith and piety of their children.
The secular elevation and acclimatiza-
ton, so to speak, of the Catholic body
is, and ought to be, with them only a
subordinate consideration. The social
position of the Catholic body is in it
self of comparatively small import
ance, for he gains nothing who gains
the whole world, but, loses his soul,
and he loses nothing, though he loses
all secular goods, who saves mis- soul.
If men have faith and piety, and are
friends of God, whether they are
princes and mobiles, or mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water, freemen
or slaves, is of little moment. The
! bishops and clergy must also work
with such materials, and use such
means as are at their disposal, it is
| impossible for them to place our Cath
Ole schools, regarded as secular
schools generally on par with the
public schools supported by the re-
sources of the state. Certainly, our
Catholic schools are not of a high or
der and l am aware of none, save
under the religious point of view, that
can begin to compete with the public
schools of New York or Boston"
ct seems to me-" said Diefenbacn,
that the public schools are to be
preferred, even in religious point of
view, to Catholic schools, which are
altogether inferior, under the charge,
as many of your schools are, of in
competent teachers, from whom the
children can learn little, and that lit
tie only NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. whose
manners and influence can do little to
elevate and refine them. These
schools, under the charge Of half-edu-
Gated and half-paid teachers, who, in
some instances, can hardly speak the
language of the school, and have
hardly a sentiment in common with the
order of civilization under which their
pupils are to live, are not precisely
what you want in country like this.
The mass of your Catholic population,
however honest, Industrious, and
faithful, are from the lower classes
of the Catholic population of various
European countries, iIlterate peasants,
laborers, servants, mechanics and
small trades people. They very soon
after their arrival become naturaliZed,
and invested with political and social
rights and duties to which they were
total strangers in the land of their
birth. Their children enter into the
body of American citizens, and re-
quire an education, mental cultiva-
ton and discipline their parents rare
ly received. Now, it seems to me that
the interests of religion itself, as well
as the interest of society. are opposed
to their growing up with a sense of
inferiority, which they are sure to do,
if sent to inferior Catholic schools,
and deprived by the religion of their
parents of the advantages of the SUI
perior public schools, attended by non
Catholic hiidren. Teachers from the
Old World where the distinction of
rank still obtains, who never have
thought of giving to all ranks and
classes a common education, or that
for the poorer class of Catholics here
any other education than is given to
the peasantry and lower classes of
Europe is necessary, will do as little
for you religiously as socially. You
will have, perhaps, even more diff
Guilty in preserving to the faith the
children educated in such schools as
they will keep, than those educated in
the public schools of the country. You
must accept, not by shouting democ-.
racy and running into the radical and
filibustering extravagances of too
many Americans, the political and so
cial order established in this country,
and educate your children to be Cath
olics in harmony with it, and not to
be Catholics only in opposition to or in
spite of it. If you train your children
to be the lower class in monarchial
and arstocratic Europe, you do not
train them for this country, unless you
intend to revolutionize it; you create
an antagonism between them and the
society in which they are to live, and
place the whole force of that society.
in their minds, against their religion,
and thus do more on the one hand to
tempt them from their religion than
you do on the other to attach them
to it.