Public School Education

by Michael Müller

And with respect to mixed education in particular, we have the opinion of another Anglican prelate, who, in despite of his professions of liberality, may be fittingly classed with Primate Boulter in his contempt for our people, and desire to subvert our holy religion by the means of education—the late Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whately. We are informed by his daughter, that on one occasion he said: "The education supplied by the National Board is gradually undermining the vast fabric of the Irish Roman Catholic Church.". (Life of Dr. Whately, pp. 244, first edition.) Again: "I believe, as I said the other day, that mixed education is gradually enlightening the mass of the people, and that if we give it up, we give the only hope of weaning the Irish from the abuses of Popery. But I cannot venture openly to profess this opinion, I cannot openly support the Educational Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight its battles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me." (p. 246.)

The language of the Church, then, and even that of the enemies of our religion, is quite plain on the subject of godless education. The good Catholic understands this language of his spiritual mother; he listens to it; he repeats it to himself and others, and he goes by it. Not long ago the Catholics of Ireland presented a requisition to the English Government to show their unanimity, and their determination to secure a Catholic education for Catholic children. What a glorious array of signatures is attached to it! There we find the honored names of the only Catholic lords that the operation of penal laws has left in that land ever faithful to the Church. There we read the names of the Lord Mayor, and the aldermen and town councillors of the great City of Dublin, of many baronets and deputy lieutenants, of several members of Parliament, magistrates, high sheriffs, clergymen, wealthy merchants, and land-owners; of men distinguished in the various scientific and literary professions or pursuits; of country gentlemen, traders, artisans, and of all the classes that constitute the bone and sinew of the country. In a word, the requisition is signed by more than 30,000 Catholics of every degree. May it not be considered as a great plebiscite? Is it not a proof that the laity and clergy are all of one mind? Is it not a solid refutation of the foolish assertion of some Presbyterians, that the Catholic laity take no interest in the education question, and that, were it not for the priests, the laity would be perfectly satisfied to accept godless instruction for their children? Those who attribute this baneful indifference to the laity, misrepresent and calumniate them, and show their ignorance of their real feelings, and of the efforts which Catholics in Ireland, in Belgium, in Germany, and in other countries, have made to have and to preserve a good Christian education for their children. The principal Catholic gentlemen in Ireland some time ago published an important declaration, presented afterwards to Parliament, in which they proclaimed their adhesion to the principles held by the true Church in regard to education.

As for the Catholic laity of Ireland in general, feeling, as they do in a special manner, the signal blessing they enjoy in possessing the true faith, and knowing that it is a priceless treasure with which, far more precious than worldly substance, they can enrich their children, their love for Catholic education is proved to evidence by the multitudes of their sons and daughters who throng every Catholic school, and especially every school in which the presence of Christian Brothers or of Nuns gives a guarantee that religion shall have the first place, and shall impregnate the whole atmosphere which their little ones are to breathe for so many hours of the day. They have proved, also, their dislike and fear of mixed education, by turning their faces away from schools in which no expense had been spared, on which thousands of pounds of the public money had been squandered, but against which their Bishops deemed it their duty to warn them. Hence, in several Model Schools erected in populous cities and towns, where the great majority of the inhabitants are Catholics, sometimes not ten, sometimes not two of their children are found within the unhallowed precincts of those mixed institutions.

In fine, the opinion of all the Irish Catholics on this subject of education is so well known, that nearly all of the Liberal candidates who sought their votes at the last elections for the House of Commons, declared in their electioneering addresses their adhesion to the principle of denominational education, and their determination to uphold it, and push it forward in Parliament.

And with good reason are they steadfast in those principles, for they know the necessary connection between good education and the maintenance of religion in their country. And they are determined to struggle for the establishment, in Ireland, of a sound Catholic system of public education, and never to relax their efforts till they obtain the recognition of this, their own and their children's right, even as they wrung Catholic emancipation from a hostile Parliament.

Thus the Catholic laity practise what their pastors teach; and in Ireland and other countries, both pastors and people are united in holding that nothing so effectually destroys religion in a country as a godless system of instruction, whilst they believe, at the same time, that a good Christian education contributes to preserve true religion, and to spread the practice of every virtue and of good works through the land.

Though the Catholic Church and her children are so anxious for the progress of knowledge, and have made such sacrifices for the civilization and enlightenment of the world, yet they do not indiscriminately approve of every system of education. Every one knows how much is done in our days, by the enemies of religion, to poison the sources of knowledge, and to undermine religion, under the pretext of promoting the liberal arts and sciences. In order to give a proper impulse to study, by securing protection for it, some insist that the full control of public instruction should be given to the government of each country, to be carried on by Ministers of State, or public boards; others attach so much importance to the development of the intellectual faculties, that they call for compulsory and gratuitous education, in order to give a great degree of culture to all classes; and others, in fine, demand an unsectarian education, pretending that God should be banished from the school, and children brought up without being subjected to any religious influences. The Catholic Church and her pastors, being charged to feed the flock of Christ with the food of truth and life, and to preserve the lambs of the fold from the contagion of error, cannot approve such systems, which seem to have been invented by the fashion of the day, a desire of innovation, or a spirit of hostility to religion.

It was to His Church, and not to the State, that Jesus Christ gave the command, "Go and teach all nations."—(Matt. xxviii.) "As the Father hath sent Me, so do I send you also."—(John xx.) "Feed My lambs, feed My sheep."—(John xxi.)

The office of the Church is to teach and sanctify all men. She receives the child on its first entrance into the world, and, by means of holy baptism, makes it a child of God. Like her Divine Bridegroom, she says: "Suffer the little children to come to me."

Now the Christian school is the place and the provision made for the training of those who are baptized into the Christian faith. They have been made children of God, and as such they have a right to four things belonging to them by a right of inheritance, to which all other rights are secondary. They have a right to the knowledge of their faith; to the training of their conscience by the knowledge of God's commandments; to the Sacraments of grace; and to a moral formation, founded on the precepts and example of our Divine Saviour. These four things belong, by a Divine right, to the child of the poorest working man; by a right more sacred than that which guards the inheritance of lands and titles to the child of the rich. A child of God, and an heir to the kingdom of heaven, holds these four things by a higher title; and his claim is under the jurisdiction of a Divine Judge. But the school is the place and the provision for the insuring of these four vital parts of his right to the Christian child. They cannot be taught or learned elsewhere; there is no other place of systematic and sufficient formation. And if so, then the school becomes the depository of the rights of parents, and of the inheritance of their children. The school is strictly a court of the Temple, a porch outside the Sanctuary. It cannot be separated from the Church. It was created by the Church, and the Church created it for its own mission to its children. As the Church cannot surrender to any power on earth the formation of its own children, so it cannot surrender to any the direction of its own schools.