Public School Education

by Michael Müller

The depravity of man shows itself in the constant endeavor to shake off the restraint placed by law and duty upon his will; and to this we must ascribe the licentiousness which has at all times afflicted society. Passion acknowledges no law, and spares neither rights nor conventions; where it has the power, it exercises it to the advantage of self, and to the detriment of social order. The Church is by its very constitution Catholic, and hence looks upon all men as brothers of the same family. She acknowledges not the natural right of one man over another, and hence her Catholicity lays a heavy restraint upon all the efforts of self-love, and curbs with a mighty hand the temerity of those who would destroy the harmony of life implied in the idea of Catholicity.

One of the first principles of all social happiness is, that before the law of nature, and before the face of God, all men are equal. This principle is based on the unity of the human race, the origin of all men from one common father. If we study the History of Paganism, we find that all heathen nations overturned this great principle, since we find among all heathen nations the evil of Slavery. Prior to the coming of Christ, the great majority of men were looked upon as a higher development of the animal, as animated instruments which might be bought and sold, given away and pawned; which might be tormented, maltreated, or murdered; as beings, in a word, for whom the idea of right, duty, pity, mercy, and law had no existence. Who can read, without a feeling of intense horror, the accounts left us of the treatment of their slaves by the Romans? There was no law that could restrain in the least the wantonness, the cruelty, the licentious excess of the master, who, as master, possessed the absolute right to do with his slaves whatsoever he pleased. To remove this stain of slavery has ever been the aim of the Catholic Church. "Since the Saviour and Creator of the world," says Pope Gregory I., in his celebrated decree, "wished to become man, in order, by grace and liberty, to break the chains of our slavery, it is right and good to bestow again upon man, whom nature has permitted to be born free, but whom the law of nations has brought under the yoke of slavery, the blessing of their original liberty." Through all the middle ages—called by Protestants the dark ages of the world—the echo of these words of Gregory I. is heard; and in the thirteenth century Pope Pius II. could say, "Thanks to God, and the Apostolic See, the yoke of slavery does no longer disgrace any European nation." Since then slavery was again introduced into Africa, and the newly-discovered regions of America, and again the Popes raised their voices in the interests of liberty,—from Pius II. to Pius VII., who, even at the time Napoleon had robbed him of his liberty, and held him captive in a foreign land, became the defender of the negro, to Gregory XVI., who, on the third of November, 1839, insisted in a special Bull on the abolition of the slave trade, and who spoke in a strain as if he had lived and sat side by side with Gregory I., thirteen hundred years before. But here let us observe, that not only the vindication of liberty for all, not only the abolition of slavery, but the very mode of action followed in this matter by the Popes, has gained for them immortal honor, and the esteem of all good men. When the Church abolished slavery in any country where it existed, the Popes did not compel masters, by harshness or threats, to manumit their slaves; they did not bring into action the base intrigues, the low chicanery, the canting hypocrisy of modern statesmen; they did not raise armies, and send them into the lands of their masters to burn and to pillage, to lay waste and to destroy; they did not slaughter, by their schemes, over a million of free men and another million of slaves; they did not make widows and orphans without numbers; they did not impoverish the land, and lay upon their subjects burdens which would crush them into very dust. Nothing of all this. That is not the way in which the Church abolished slavery. The Popes sent bishops and priests into those countries where slavery existed, to enlighten the minds of the masters, and convince them that slaves were men, and consequently had souls, like other people, too. The Popes, bishops and priests infused into the hearts of masters a deep love for Jesus Christ, and consequently a deep love for souls. The Popes, bishops and priests taught masters to look upon their slaves as created by the same God, redeemed by the same Jesus Christ, destined for the same glory. The consequence was, that the relations of slave and master became the relations of brother to brother; the master began to love his slave, and to ameliorate his condition, till at last, forced by his own acknowledged principles, he granted to him his liberty. Thus it was that slavery was abolished by the preaching of the Popes, bishops and priests. The great barrier to all the healthy, permanent, and free development of nations was thus broken down; the blessings, the privileges of society, were made equally attainable by the masses, and ceased to be the special monopoly of a few, who, for the most part, had nothing to recommend them except their wealth.

If any doubt remain as to the favorable influence of Catholicity on civil liberty, it would be dispelled by the express teaching of the theologians, writing in accordance with the principles and the spirit of the Church. Not to extend this point too much, I will confine myself to the authority of the great St. Thomas Aquinas, who, as a theologian, has perhaps had greater weight in the Catholic Church than any other man. His testimony may also show us what were the general sentiments of the school-men in the thirteenth century, when he wrote.

Speaking of the origin of civil power and the objects of law, he lays down these principles: "The law, strictly speaking, is directed primarily and principally to the common good; and to decree anything for the common benefit belongs either to the whole body of the people, or to some one acting in their place." (Summa Theologiæ, i. 2, I. Quæst. Art. iii., Resp.) He pronounces the following opinion as to the best form of government: "Wherefore the choice of rulers in any state or kingdom is best, when one is chosen for his merit to preside over all, and under him are other rulers chosen for their merit; and the government belongs to all, because the rulers may be chosen from any class of society; and the choice is made by all." (Ibid, Quæst. cv. Art. 1.) One would think that he is hearing a Democrat of the modern stamp, and yet it is a monk of the dark ages! Many other testimonies of similar import might be cited, but these will suffice.

And what has Protestantism done for human freedom? The Reformation dawned on the world in the year 1517. What did it do for the cause of freedom from that date down to 1776—when our Republic arose? Did it strike one blow for liberty during these two centuries and a half? Did it originate one republican principle, or found one solitary republic? Not one. In Germany, where it had full sway, it ruthlessly trampled in the dust all the noble franchises of the Catholic middle ages; it established political despotism everywhere; it united church and state; in a word, it brought about that very state of things which continues to exist, with but slight amelioration, even down to the present day. In England, it did the same; it broke down the bulwarks of the British Constitution, derived from the Catholic Magna Charta; it set at naught popular rights, and gave to the king or queen unlimited power in church and state; and it required a bloody struggle and a revolution, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, to restore to something of their former integrity the old chartered rights of the British people.

Protestantism has always boasted much, but it has really done little for the cause of human freedom. As to the liberties which we enjoy in our country, we cheerfully award to our Protestant fellow-citizens the praise which is so justly due them for their share in the glorious struggle.

But as to the power of Protestantism to maintain the Republic by checking the great evils that have already sapped its foundations, it has not any at all. How could Protestantism check infidelity, since it leads to it? There are two causes of infidelity that have existed from the beginning of the world. But about three centuries ago Protestantism opened a very wide avenue to infidelity. Protestantism introduced the principle, "There is no divinely-commissioned authority to teach infallibly." Now infidelity exists in this principle of Protestantism, as the oak exists in the acorn, as the consequence is in the premise. On the claim of private judgment, Protestants reject the authority of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ. The Calvinists, going, as they do, by the same principle, reject the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Socinians, following the same principle, reject, to-day, the Divinity of Christ, and therefore abjure Christianity, and fall back into utter incredulity.

The German and French philosophers, rationalists, and pantheists, of all degrees, do not even stop at that; they go farther, and deny the existence of a God Creator, and all by the privilege of free and private judgment.

The individual reason taking, as it does, the place of faith, the Protestant, whether he believes it or not, is an infidel in germ, and the infidel is a Protestant in full bloom; in other words, infidelity is nothing but Protestantism in the highest degree. Hence it is that Edgar Quinet, a great herald of Protestantism, is right in styling the Protestant sects the thousand gates open to get out of Christianity. No wonder, then, that thousands of Protestants have ended, and continue to end, in framing their formula of faith thus: "I believe in nothing."