The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

He claims for "the Catholic Church" both "the duty and divine right" of teaching religion to "all nations," and of "instructing the young;" that is, "she holds for herself the right of teaching the truths of faith and law of morals in order to bring up youth in the habits of Christian life." Nevertheless, "there is no repugnance in their learning the first elements and the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences in public schools controlled by the State," which protects them in their persons and property. "But," he continues, "the Catholic Church shrinks from those features of public schools which are opposed to the truth of Christianity and to morality;" wherefore he insists that every effort shall be made, both by the bishops and others, to remove these "objectionable features." And he recommends that the bishops and the civil authorities shall agree "to conduct the schools with mutual attention and due consideration for their respective rights;" that is, that the schools shall be under their joint control, so that teachers "for the secular branches" shall be "inhibited from offending Catholic religion and morality," and the Church be permitted to shed her "light" by "teaching the children catechism, in order to remove danger to their faith and morals from any quarter whatsoever."

This was adroit, but not satisfactory. Although it was understood that Mgr. Satolli's decisions were to be final, this created such disaffection that it was found necessary to submit the matter to the pope, against whose opinion, when officially promulgated, there could be no protest. Leo XIII deliberated upon the matter for some time, and received from the American prelates arguments upon both sides. He, however, reached a conclusion which he communicated to Cardinal Gibbons in an encyclical dated May 31, 1893, which constitutes one of the latest papal utterances. Besides its numerous recitals, some of which do not bear directly upon the subject, he distinctly approves the decision of Mgr. Satolli, because it had been approved and recommended to him by the archbishops at their meeting in New York. He expresses great admiration for the people of the United States—especially the Roman Catholic portion of them—and says that he had sent Mgr. Satolli here in order that his "presence might be made, as it were, perpetual among the faithful by the permanent establishment of an apostolic delegation at Washington." This he probably considers a precautionary step; for, as Mgr. Satolli can not have any official relations with our Government—Italy being represented by a minister appointed by the king—he can remain as a "permanent establishment" at the Capital of the nation, so that he may not only watch the course of events, but be in readiness to become an apostolic minister plenipotentiary whensoever, by the aid of the faithful outside of Italy, he shall be able to snatch the crown from the head upon which the Italian people have placed it, and put it upon his own!

The approval of Mgr. Satolli's decision, however, has this important condition attached to it by Leo XIII: "That Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted, and that it is to be left to the judgment and conscience of the ordinary to decide, according to the circumstances, when it is lawful and when unlawful to attend public schools." This is a most significant condition. In the first place, it takes away from the parents the right to direct the education of their children, and places it in the hands of the ordinary, who officially represents the papal power. In the second place, it leaves the papal condemnation and censure still resting upon our system of common schools, and only removes it, here and there, from such local and particular schools as the ordinaries of the Church may find acceptable to them. And in the third place, it is a positive and unqualified affirmance of what multitudes of priests have said, that our schools are "godless," and that, in order to counteract their irreligious influences, "Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted."

But there is another condition attached by Leo XIII which is equally significant as that just named. It is due to him that this should be stated in his own words. He says: "As we have already declared in our letter of the 23d of May of last year, to our venerable brethren, the archbishop and bishop of the province of New York, so we again, as far as need be, declare that the decrees which the Baltimore Councils, agreeably to the directions of the Holy See, have enacted concerning parochial schools, and whatsoever else has been prescribed by the Roman pontiffs, whether directly or through the sacred congregations, concerning the same matter, are to be steadfastly observed."

Whatsoever powers the pope may have intended to confer upon Mgr. Satolli—whether those of a vice-pope or of a mere legate—it is certain that he did not intend to lessen his own. These are plenary, and therefore his pontifical decisions are absolutely binding, because he is infallible! In order, therefore, to ascertain the relation to be hereafter borne to our common-school system by the Roman Catholics of the United States, we are required to look to the decision of Mgr. Satolli as qualified by the conditions attached to it by Leo XIII. Taking the whole together, it amounts to this: That God has specially appointed the Roman Catholic Church the educator of the young; that where another system of education is set up against that prescribed by the Church, it is necessarily sinful and heretical, and may be rightfully overthrown and destroyed; that the Church system of education requires that the pupils shall be taught religion, and, first and always, that there is no other true religion besides that which the Roman Catholic Church teaches; that notwithstanding this, a Roman Catholic child may, as a matter of either necessity or expediency, be sent to the public schools of the States, merely to learn "the first elements," reading, writing, and ciphering, and "the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences," mathematics, chemistry, engineering, etc.; that the Roman Catholic Church shrinks from the idea that the intermediate branches should be taught the children, for fear they should discover that the Protestant nations are more prosperous and happy than the Roman Catholic; that when Roman Catholic children are sent to the public schools, efforts shall be made to procure the appointment of Roman Catholic teachers to instruct them in their religious obligations and duties, and specially to the effect that Protestantism is heresy and diversities of religious belief offensive to God, and consequently has his curse resting upon it; that the "objectionable features" of our school system must be removed by plottings within the schools necessary to that end, so that instead of being free they shall be made Church schools; that so long as the children are not taught the "catechism" they will remain "godless" and heretical; and that if in any of the schools the children shall be taught that the State ought to continue separated from the Church, or that differences of religious belief should be tolerated, or that our Protestant institutions must be preserved as they are—all or either of these things must be considered as "offending Catholic religion and morality." Thus far Mgr. Satolli; but the pope adds the peremptory injunction that Roman Catholic schools must be "most sedulously promoted;" that is, they must be set up in rivalry to our common-school system, so that the antidote may root out the bane; that the ordinary, and not the parents, shall decide what children shall be permitted to enter the schools; and that, in interpreting the decision of Mgr. Satolli, it must be done in accordance with the decrees of the Baltimore Councils and the rules "prescribed by the Roman pontiffs."

This settles nothing, and leaves the whole question ambiguous. It is Jesuitical, because it "palters with us in a double sense," by keeping "the word of promise to our ear," while breaking "it to our hope." In referring to the Baltimore Councils as their guide, the faithful find themselves instructed to omit nothing within their power to pull down the common schools, and build up Church schools in their places, for the reason that the former are irreligious, and the latter alone have the divine approval. And they find also that they are instructed by the second Council of Baltimore that their children are to be taught, as an essential part of their religion, that the State is not independent of the Church, and that "all power is of God," so that whatsoever the State prescribes not obedient to the law of God is not binding upon the citizen, and that the Roman Catholic has such "a guide in the Church;" that if the State shall require of him anything inhibited by the Church, he must obey the latter, and not the former.[210] But independently of this, the pope commands that these same faithful shall interpret the decision of Mgr. Satolli in the light of "whatsoever else has been prescribed by the Roman pontiffs."

This is indefinite. There have been over two hundred and fifty popes. Many of these have been good, some bad, but these latter forfeit none of their infallible ecclesiastical authority by being bad. To whom, among all these, shall the inquirer defer, when he investigates what they have commanded with reference to education? Many of them have asserted, ex cathedra, that the exclusive right to educate the young has been divinely conferred upon the Roman Catholic Church, and Leo XIII, in his recent letter to the American Cardinal, makes that assertion unequivocally. It is not believed that any pope ever asserted the contrary. Therefore, this general and sweeping qualification of Mgr. Satolli's decision either destroys its effect absolutely, or leaves it to uncertain rules of interpretation. Thus viewed it leaves the school question just as it stood before Mgr. Satolli came to this country.

But Mgr. Satolli himself provides for two school systems, which, as he regards them, are the rivals of each other, because he, like Leo XIII, considers the Roman Catholic Church as having had divinely conferred upon it the right of educating and training the young. But Leo XIII makes this idea of more prominence when he commands "that Catholic schools are to be most sedulously promoted." It all, therefore, amounts to this: that wheresoever there is a Roman Catholic who can not avoid it, he may send his children to the common schools for the sole purpose of having them taught "the first elements, and the higher branches of the arts and natural sciences;" but in all the intermediate departments of education, they must be under the exclusive charge of those appointed by the Church to be their instructors in religion. Hence, not only is there to be a continued rivalry between the schools, but between the systems as well. In the common schools the pupils are taught that our popular form of government is calculated to promote and preserve the general welfare; that our fathers acted wisely and well when they separated the State from the Church; that laws which require universal conformity to any particular form of religious faith, are not only unwise but violative of natural right; that those people who govern themselves by laws of their own making are happier and more prosperous than those who suffer themselves to be governed by monarchs and princes; and that the regulation of public affairs by constitutional governments is better for society than where they are regulated at the will of any one man. In the papal schools—perhaps within a stone's-throw of the common schools—the pupils are taught that each one of these propositions is heresy, and that both those who teach and those who accept them as true are under Divine condemnation. In the common schools the teacher enforces what he says by the example of the United States, gives instruction in our Revolutionary history, explains the provisions of our National and State constitutions which make the people the only source of public law, and stimulates the patriotism of his pupils by urging upon them the necessity of perpetuating our institutions in their present form for the benefit of their posterity. In the papal schools the teacher is required, when he denounces all these provisions of our institutions as heresy, to enforce what he says by instructing his pupils that innumerable infallible popes have so declared, and that they will offend God if they do not accept what they have announced as absolutely true, and in order that they may not be suspected of error by their youthful pupils, they need go no further back among the popes than to Pius IX and his "Syllabus" of 1864, wherein, after pointing out seventy-nine modern errors which he condemned—including "public schools" where teaching is "freed from all ecclesiastical authority"—he adds still another by declaring that it is impossible that "the Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced." Or, if it shall be found necessary to go further back than Pius IX, he need but refer to the celebrated encyclical of his immediate predecessor, Gregory XVI, issued July 15, 1832, wherein he declared that those who maintained that God could be rightly served by men of different religious faiths, "will perish eternally without any doubt," if they do not repent and "hold to the Catholic faith;" that it is "false and absurd" to pretend "that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man;" that "the liberty of the press" is "the most fatal liberty, an execrable liberty, for which there never can be sufficient horror;" that writings which are "destructive of the fidelity and submission due to princes" are to be condemned, because they enkindle "the firebrands of sedition;" that "divine and human rights then rise in condemnation against those who, by the blackest machinations of revolt and sedition, endeavor to destroy the fidelity due to princes, and to hurl them from their thrones;" that "constant submission to princes" necessarily has its source "in the holiest principles of the Christian religion;" that they are criminal in the sight of God who "demand the separation of Church and State and the rupture of concord between the priesthood and the empire," that is, the State; and that the union of Church and State is feared and opposed by the advocates of liberty, because it "has always been so salutary and so happy for Church and State."[211]

If, however, the pupils in these papal schools should indicate the suspicion that these official proclamations of doctrine by Pius IX and Leo XIII had not the sanction of earlier popes, their teachers, especially if Jesuits, will take delight in instructing them that these two last popes, at the foot of the list, are following strictly in the footsteps of some of the most conspicuous of their predecessors. And then they will dwell eloquently upon the magnificent pontificates of Gregory VII, Alexander III, Innocent III, Boniface VIII, and others equally ambitious, but of less strength of will. The task will be an easy one to explain the history of these great popes and the politico-religious principles they succeeded in grafting upon the dogmas of the Church. They will instruct them how Gregory VII plucked crowns from the heads of disobedient kings, released their subjects from their allegiance, and placed other and obedient kings in their places; how he claimed the right as pope to dispose of kingdoms, because "the spiritual is above the temporal power" to so great an extent that all people "should murder their princes, fathers, and children if he commands it;" and how he made monarchs, princes, and peoples tremble before him, as if he, by virtue alone of his pontifical power, were master of the world. And they will show them how Alexander III released the German people from their allegiance to Frederick Barbarossa, and compelled that proud emperor to kiss his foot, lead his horse by the bridle, and submit to having the papal heel planted upon his neck; and how Innocent III declared, by solemn pontifical decree, that the English Magna Charta was null and void, because it laid the foundation of popular liberty, and excommunicated all who were concerned in the patriotic work of obtaining it; and how Boniface VIII decreed, in his bull "Clericis laicos," that lay governments "have no power over the persons or the property of ecclesiastics," and that those who shall impose tithes, taxes, and burdens upon them, without the authority of the pope, "shall incur excommunication;" and how he also decreed, by his bull "Unam Sanctam," that the Church—that is, the pope—holds in her hands both the spiritual and the temporal swords, with the power to compel the latter to be used for and in the interest of the former; that the temporal sword is, therefore, "subject to the spiritual power," and that it is "an article of necessary faith" that "every human being should be subject to the Roman pontiff."