Catholic Problems in Western Canada

by George Thomas Daly

Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by the mutual participation in the activities of life. The family—the first in order of time and dignity—is beyond doubt the principal and central unit. The other social factors presuppose it and exist for its protection. Is it not the source from which springs the very life of the individual and wherein society replenishes its forces? The placing of the individual as the specific social unit of our modern democracy is a pernicious error. This fallacy has destroyed Society by upsetting the essential order of its units and has robbed the individual of his most elementary rights.

The substitution of the State for the family is most detrimental in any sphere of life. In matters of education it is nothing short of a disaster. The "State School Teacher" is an anomaly. It is the subversion of true social order for it constitutes "an unwarranted interference of the State in a function preeminently social. Education is a social function and cannot be converted into a governmental charge without violence to it." What Treitsche said of the Judiciary Power in a country may well be applied to education. "We find the first and fundamental principle of jurisprudence to be that no one should be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of his natural judge." The natural school of the child is the family; the common school should be nothing but an extension of the home. The mission of the school is to supplement the home and not to supplant it. The child and the parent therefore are entitled to have the same atmosphere pervade both school and home. Everything that is relevant to education belongs to the family. A policy that favours intrusion of an undue influence of the State in the school and destroys home authority and parental influence is unnatural and therefore anti-social. The State is not the natural teacher of the child.

This fusion of the political and social orders—which in reality means the suppression of the latter to the profit of the former—is the fatal error of the day and producive [Transcriber's note: productive?] of great evils. An Educational Department is the open door through which any Government may force its particular views on the growing generation. The monopoly of State education is nothing else but the conscription of the minds, an "intellectual militarism," which eventually leads to the absorption of the individual and the family and to greater disasters than war. Under the cover of citizenship it will legalize a country into servitude. The school ambitions of Prussia prepared the catastrophe the world has just witnessed. Always and everywhere the same cause will produce the same effects.

III.—A Political Reason

Authority and liberty are the two poles on which revolves Society. The perfect equilibrium of these two contending forces, one centripetal, the other centrifugal, make for its safety and welfare. The encroachment of one upon the other displaces the social axis and throws a nation out of its natural orbit. Political Society then oscillates between autocracy and anarchy. The infringement of this supreme law of moral gravitation has strewn the paths of history with the ruins of kingdoms and empires. The violation of a natural law bears always with itself its own punishment. For, society is not the conventional creation of man; it is governed by laws that man does not make, but, which his reason and experience discover and to which he must submit.

This perfect equilibrium of authority and liberty is perfectly expressed in Lincoln's famous definition: "A sane democracy is one of the people, by the people and for the people." The reason of this law of the political order is that liberty is previous to authority, for authority only exists to protect liberty against tyranny and to safeguard it against its own excesses. He is best governed who is least governed. LePlay, the celebrated French economist, made this just and pertinent remark: "The truly free nations are those who, without compromising this prosperity, extend the benefices of private life at the expense of public life." (Réforme Sociale II, page 92.)

Therefore the ideal State exists when all civil or social rights—which stand for the public enjoyment of all natural rights—are fully protected by political rights. These political liberties moreover claim not only the negative protection or non-interference of authority, but also its positive financial help. For political liberty exists for the protection of civil liberty, and not vice versa. The collective forces of a society are for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for them. A State is an institution for the protection of rights inherent to a free people.

The negation of this principle leads to the State paternalism which stands for the interference of State in matters which by right belong to the individual and the family. Never has State interference and State protection been more exaggerated than they are nowadays. The passing and pressing emergencies of the great war have accentuated these tendencies. The nations have kept the habit of being governed by orders-in-council, by arbitrary censorship and dictatorial methods. "The Executive has usurped the functions that rightly belong to the legislative assembly, with a virtual dictatorship as the inevitable result." The consequence of State Paternalism is the death of individual liberty either through socialism or autocracy. Man becomes the chattel of a bureaucratic government.

Of all civil liberties there is none more sacred, more fundamental than that of education. The freedom of education means the right of a parent to give to his offspring an education in harmony with his concept of life, with the dictates of his conscience. As education is nothing but a preparation for life, its theory goes hand in hand with the theory of life. To this liberty of the parent should correspond in society a political right. To deprive a free citizen of this right is to penalize him and oblige him—as is the case in Manitoba—to buy twice over a right of conscience. This condition wherever it exists is a flagrant abuse of political authority and consequently a social disorder.

Some may object to our argumentation and answer that in a modern democracy the majority rules, and the majority in the West are against "separate schools." The political right of the majority cannot cancel a moral right of the minority. It is a case here of repeating the statement of Burke: "The tyranny of a democracy is the most dangerous of all tyrannies because it allows no appeal against itself." This autocracy of numbers is often more dangerous and more brutal than that of a caste, of a czar, or of a king. Russia is giving us an illustration of this autocracy of number. Did not Germany use the same argument to crush Belgium and to try to dominate the World? Our sons have fought and died in this war against Prussianism and yet some of our Canadians—not worthy of the name—would willingly vote drastic measures of governmental repression which would make the Kaiser smile and the Czar Nicholas turn in his grave. The velvet glove may cover the mail-fist, but the blow is the same.