The Irish standard., 1917-07-07
CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL
CONVENTION At BUFFALO
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republic. Now the Church is the CEN
trail fact in human history. Whatever
civilization, whatever culture, what
ever learning, whatever mercy, what
ever benevolence, whatever brotherly
helpfulness there is in the world to-
days is due, in the ultimate analysis,
to her. Upon the wreckage of the old
Roman and Grecian civilization, she
laid, by supernatural help, the splen-
did civilization of today, with its mag
nificient confidence in man and in
mans integrity and sincerity with it's
divine spirit of compassion and of uni
versal beneficence.
1t is, consequently, of supreme i'm.
portance that the Church should be
placed in it's true light that the facts
connected with her activities should
not be misrepresented and that these
facts should be given in their true
light. TO look upon her as the crea-
ton of band of arrogant ecclesias-
tics, to distOrt the events of her Won
derful life, to give to her deeds a
false setting and to continue this
Justification during the years of high
school and Of college studies, is surely
calculated to endanger the faith of
minds whose information is necessary
lily limited and whose development
lacks maturity.
Let us ask the question, then, how
is the Church, how are the great
events of her life too often presented
by non-Catholic instructors and pro-
fessors? Let us take work, pub
lished by professor of one of the
leading non-Catholic universities, and
let us examine how these subjects fare
at his hands.
On page 81 we read: you must
distinguish carefully between the be-
lief of Christians and the organization
of the Church. It may we'll be
doubted that the Roman government
would have cared to trouble the Chris
tians simply on account of their be-
liefs, any more than it troubled the
numerous other religious sects of the
empire. What really caused the
Christians to be looked upon as espe-
cially dangerous to the State was
their organization into something like
a great secret society with branches
in all parts of the Roman territory"
Thus again on pages SO, 80, he says:
IF you will go back to your New
Testament and read ever so carefully
the four different stories of the life
and teachings of Jesus, you will see
that nowhere He lays down definite
form of belief which he demanded of
all His followers"
On page 1O2 he states: "The Church
in Rome was one of the earliest
Christian congregations. In later
times the Roman Church claimed that
it had been founded by st. Peter, but
this cannot be proved
On page 107 we find the following !:
"The papacy, not content to remain
the spiritual leader of the West
claimed not only leadership, but a
divinely appointed authority or right
of government and this not only over
the West, but over the East as WE'LL
1t supported this claim by the theory
of Petrine supremacy This theory
was Of especial value to the Roman
Church, because it put it's claims to
authority on the ground of divine
commission, and thus made it quite
independent Of any accidents which
might at some time have changed
other and more practical founda
tons"
To pass to other authorities, notice
how flippantly the work of the school
men is frequently treated. Thus one
English philosopher declares of Their
works that those who wrote volumes
of such stuff were mad and intended
to make others So"
The author of famous history Of
philosophy describes their discussions
as philosophical skirmishes with the
help of verbal disputes, Of worthless
: mental abstraction, of axioms as
, sumed at haphazard, of distinctions
} destitute of the smallest foundation
and with the horrors of barbarou:
Technology"
, Another author, equally we'll known
Spanheim, makes the following start
ling statement: 1.-THE Scholastic,
, theory was a compendium of divinit!
supported by the opinions and au
, thorities of the Fathers, but chief!
: by reason and argument; the Scrip
l lures were omitted, while the doc
trines of Christianity were reduced tt
quite heathenish system"
Now, what must be the inevitable
result of pouring these wholesale
falsehoods into the ears of poorl!
informed high school or college lad
Will the constant repetition of sucl
. baseless statements not tend to weak
en- his faith in the Church as a divine
institution and give him an abso
: lutely false idea of the great teacher
! of the Middle Ages?