Year: 1875




know ofno such sentiment. The Catho-


lies are respected and patronized in all
their enterprises of business, religion OF
charity.


There has been for twenty or thirty


years past demand on the part of the


ecclesiastical authorities of Ohio and New
| York, that the Bible should be excluded
from the schools, or that the Catholics


should be allowed to apply the results Of


their own taxation to the endowment and


support of their own schools. This last


the Bulletin seems to think reasonable,


from the following phraseology employed


to describe it:


| No sooner do Catholics, in their zeal for


the methods of instruction which they pre-
fer. respectfully request that they may
have that share of the school fund which
| their taxes have contributed left to be used
for education according to the wishes OF
Catholic parents than there is a general


bristlng up of fdisgruntled Radicals through
| out the land.


Our understanding of the question is


this; Education must be kept separate


from religious teaching. Every intelligent


person has right to read the Scriptures


for himself, and to exercise his private
judgment upon its meaning, with or with
out comment.


The Catholic principle, as we under
stand it, is that education is department
of spiritual instruction. No pupil should
be allowed to read any except a specified
edition of the Holy Scriptures, nor to form
any opinion of the doctrine which it con-
veys except under the guidance of the
clergy. We infer this principle from the
late Papal communication to the Austrian
government.


The separation of tt sum contributed
by uniform taxation to special purposes
is inconsistent with the theory of
taxation and distribution prevailing
in the United States. 1t has been
contended that the property of
one man should not be taxed to edu-
cate the children of another. 1t has been
determined to be as much common duty
to extinguish ignorance as the confagra-
tions of society. 1t has been held in
expedient to permit any member of So
ciety to prescribe the manner in which q
tax imposed by law shall be expended.


We should be greatly concerned if these
questions, which are SO old and so excit-
ing, should be revived and transferred to
the United States. The Bulletin takes
narrow view of its magnitude when it con-
siders the question as only interesting to
"disgruntled Radicals" 1t underlies the
whole Protestant Church, and may, if
pressed, arouse the same feeling here that
it has done with Bismarck and Gladstone.
Perhaps better view of the manner in
which this great question is considered at
home and abroad may be found in the fol-
lowing extract from the London Standard:


Rome fancies that she is fighting for the
recovery Of her lost supremacy. In the
United States she has made very oons;d.
school system which is rigidly unsectsrian,
is established in all the States, the Roman
Catholics, where at all numerous, have
founded schools of their own, and in a large
number of the great towns they have OBJ
tained subventious for them, in some places
grants of land, in others money, in others
both. In New York, during Mr.. Tweeds
sway, these subventions were very consid-
erable. But of late a strong reaction has
set in. Some of the States have already
adopted amendments to their constitutions
forbidding public bodies of every kind
from giving aid to seOtarian schools. And
In every State where there is a considerable
Catholic element an agitation is going on
for the adoption of similar rule. Thus
the priests are using their influence over
their coreligionists to obtain endowments
for denominatiOnal schools, while the Prot
testant party is agitating for the universal
extension OF the common school system. A
third party, which has its chief strength
among the Protestant Germans of the
West, is trying to make the. common
schools even more secular than they are BY
forbidding the reading of the Bible.


In departing from its business pledges
for the relaxation of 'disgruntling Radi-
Gals, the Bulletin may involve itself in
question which Leo and Luther could not
settle, and which many bloody battle has
failed to adjust. 1t will leave our COM
mercial neighbor little time for the grades
of tobacco or the tare on sugar and
rice, to which it had intended to devote
and confne ITSELF 1t is an ugly question
to trife with, and if our neighbor persists
in vindicating the opposition to universal
popular education, it may force itself in
the fix of the boy who had been fooling
around the heels of a mule: "No, my
son" said his papa, "you will never be
pretty again, but you will have q id