The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-06-27


our children to the public schools
10 mere secular education itself 1 dc
not attach the importance attached tc
1t by our age and country; but still ]
DO attach to it some value. Catholics
IN our times, are deprived of it, labor
under a serious disadvantage, and are
crushed down by sense of their in
Iferiority. We do not live in the mid
ole ages, when the people were sim
pie believers and docile to authority
When cholars wrote and published
only for scholars. and the people left
the thinking to their chiefs. The au-
thor now addresses the public at large.
and has the multitude for his Judges.
Inc people are no longer unuuestion-
ing believers; they have ceased to be
docile, are pulled up with a vain sense
OF their own wisdom and Importance
and can no longer be taught or gov
erned as children. The change NAV
regretted, may be for the worse. but it
mas taken place, and whether we like
II or dislike it, We must adapt our
selves to the new state of things If
mas introduced. We cannot now relv
on the simple faith and docility of the
people. We can govern or direct them
even in the way of salvation only
through their convictions. and there
Iore 1t becomes all-important to Gull
tlYate their intelligence, and to ena-
Die them to have enlightened conyic-
tlons. Our appeal must now be made
TO intelligence, and to the intelligence
not OF the few, but of the MANY. Our
greatest obstacle is in the Ignorance
OF the people. We find even Catholics
VINO are so ignorant, so utterly des-
tltute OF mental culture and discipline.
that the priest is almost unable to
make them understand the simplest
duties to their state; who areA too lit
tie cultivated, we may almost say, to
be taught the simplest rudiments of
natural morality, to say nothing of
the principles and dogmas of revealed
feIlglon. These too are not infre-
quently parents, whose duty it is to
bring up their children in the faith
and piety of the church Others there
are, less ignorant than these indeed
and having all the Education and cul-
ture they would need in an old Cath
olc community, who yet are too igno-
rant, too little cultivated to perceive
the dangers to which they and their
children are exposed, or to under
stand even the refutation of the err
rors and heresfes which surround
them. This ignorance may not be
fatal to the salvation of the SOUL but
1t is incompatible with the public in
terests of Catholicity in a country
like ours. and the greatest hindrance
and encouragement to the pastor.
Where we have and are able to have
no other means than the public
schools, 1 see not why the public
schools should not be used"
But these schools" repeated
OFlanagan, ARE corrupt and corrupt- |
ing"
So say some Catholics who have no
acquaintance with them, and Judge |
them from preconceived theory. or
from the testimony of incompetent and |
untrustworthy witnesses, not from act
ual observation. The public schools
are not all l could wish them; they are
not always all they might and should
be. The teachers are but too often in
immoral indolent, bigoted
and disposed to make the school an
engine for the perversion of the faith
Of the Catholic child. But all Catholic
are not immaculate.
md instances have been known of the
scholars chasing their drunken master
through the streets of a populous city.
No system is to be judged by it's oc-
,asional abuses, and no system of
schools is to be condemned because
here happens to be now and then an
Incompetent or immoral schoolmaster.
Where the law organizing our public
chools is fairly complied with, it is
wrong to denounce them as corrupt and
They surely are not all
hat Catholics want, but no child, I
catholic or non-Catholic, is likely to
re corrupted by attending them" re-
lied Father John t
But" insisted O'Flanagan, 'they t
re wrong in principle. They are state
chools. and the state has no more q
light to be an educator than it has to {
e director of conscience The child t
elongs to the parent, not to the state, i
nd education is a spiritual, not Sec I
lar IunctlOn.
That, answered Father John.
opens question which Mr.. Diefen-
ach has already settled. The early
christians availed themselves of the
nperial schools, supported from the
nperial treasury, and they counted
lie closing of those schools to them
y Julian the Apostate, as the cruel
st persecution they had undergone.
t. Basil, st. Gregory Nazianzen, and
hers the sons of saints, went to
udy their philosophy in the pagan
,hool of Athens. The state has no
in spirituals, and must
ave what concerns religion and mo-
.lity to the parent or the spiritual au-
ority; but 1t is its right and its duty
provide the means of solid secular
lucation for all it's children, because
e public safety, the public good,
hich it is bound to consult demands r
and there is no other power in So 1
ETY. that can do it. If the means are
vt, in some form, provided by the
ate, they will not and cannot be
divided at all. The rich may provide
r the education of their children at -
cir own expense, but the poor can Q
It. AS fact, where education is
Fl tO thn voluntary nrinoinIo tho mo y