Public School Education

by Michael Müller

THE CATHOLIC PRIEST ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.

So far I have spoken as an American citizen. I have shown to all my fellow-citizens the tree with its fruits—the Public School system in broad daylight. All who call themselves Christians, or who consider themselves men of common sense, and warm promoters of the happiness of their fellow-citizens, will agree with me in saying that the Public School system is a tree of which we must say what God said to Adam of the tree standing in the middle of paradise: "Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it thou shalt die the death."—(Gen ii. 17.) It is now time for me to speak as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the duty of the Catholic priest to teach the children of the Catholic Church the language of their spiritual Mother—the Church. This language is no other than that of the Supreme Head of the Church—the Pope. Now the language of the Vicar of Christ in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable.

Jesus Christ, our Divine Saviour, has said: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?"—(Matt. xvi. 26.) What will it profit you or your children to gain all knowledge, and to attain the greatest success in this world, if, through your fault, and through your exposing them to the danger of evil education, they suffer the loss of that faith, without which "it is impossible to please God"?—(Heb. xi.)

Teaching of the Syllabus.

Guided by this principle, our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot "approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic Faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life."[H] Catholic parents cannot approve of an education which fits their children only for this life, and ignores that life in which the soul is to live forever. As faith is the foundation of all our hopes for eternity, and as faith without good works is dead, we cannot choose for our children an education which would endanger their faith and morals, and consequently imperil their eternal welfare.

Teaching of Pope Pius VII.

This is no novel doctrine, as some assert. In the beginning of the century, the illustrious Pius VII., in an Encyclical letter addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic world, July 10th, 1800, thus writes:—

"It is your duty to take care of the whole flock over which the Holy Ghost has placed you as Bishops, but in particular to watch over children and young men. They ought to be the special object of your paternal love, of your vigilant solicitude, of your zeal, of all your care. They who have tried to subvert society and families, to destroy authority, divine and human, have spared no pains to infect and corrupt youth, hoping thus the more easily to execute their infamous projects. They know that the mind and heart of young persons, like soft wax, to which one may give what form he pleases, are very susceptible of every sort of impression; that they keep tenaciously, when age has now hardened them, those which they had early received, and reject others. Thence the well-known proverb taken from the Scripture, 'A young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.' Suffer not, then, venerable brethren, the children of this world to be more prudent in this respect than the children of light. Examine, therefore, with the greatest attention, to what manner of persons is confided the education of children, and of young men in the colleges and seminaries; of what sort are the instructions given them; what sort of schools exist among you; of what sort are the teachers in the lyceums. Examine into all this with the greatest care, sound everything, let nothing escape your vigilant eye; keep off, repulse the ravening wolves that seek to devour these innocent lambs; drive out of the sheepfold those which have gotten in; remove them as soon as can be, for such is the power which has been given to you by the Lord for the edification of your sheep."

Rescripts of His Present Holiness Condemning the Queen's Colleges of England.

Our Holy Father Pope Pius IX., consulting for the special wants of the Catholics of Ireland, has not ceased, almost from the very beginning of his glorious pontificate, to repeat similar instructions in his apostolic letters to the Irish Bishops. Hence, by his rescripts of October 1847, and October 1848, he condemned, from their first institution, the Queen's Colleges, on account of their "grievous and intrinsic dangers to faith and morals"; and since then he has frequently repeated his sacred admonitions, warning the bishops and the faithful people to beware of evil systems of public instruction; and to secure, by every means in their power, the blessings of Catholic education for the rising generation.

Resolutions of Irish Bishops in 1824 and 1826.

Nor have the Irish prelates been unmindful of their duty in this respect. In 1824, that is to say, five years before Catholic emancipation, and in the midst of the struggle for that recognition of the existence of their people as citizens, they presented to Parliament a petition, from which I make the following extract, which clearly shows their conviction of the necessity of religious education:

"That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated; that Roman Catholics have ever considered the reading of the Sacred Scriptures by children as an inadequate means of imparting to them religious instruction, as a usage whereby the Word of God is made liable to irreverence, youth exposed to misunderstand its meaning, and thereby not unfrequently to receive in early life impressions which may afterwards prove injurious to their own best interests, as well as to those of the society which they are destined to form. That schools whereof the master professes a religion different from that of his pupils, or from which such religious instruction as the Catholic Church prescribes for youth is excluded, or in which books and tracts not sanctioned by it are read or commented on, cannot be resorted to by the children of Roman Catholics; and that threats and rewards have been found equally unavailing as a means of inducing Catholic parents to procure education for their children from such persons or in such schools; that any system of education incompatible with the discipline of the Catholic Church, or superintended exclusively by persons professing a religion different from that of the vast majority of the poor of Ireland, cannot possibly be acceptable to the latter, and must, in its progress, be slow and embarrassed, generating often distrust and discord as well as a want of that mutual good faith and perfect confidence which should prevail between those who receive benefits and those who dispense them."