This means that civil law ought not to prevail over Church law; and since it is manifest that two laws cannot both prevail, it follows that Church law is proclaimed superior to civil law.
Such is the Church’s own version of her attitude to the State; and now, let us see what is her attitude to the schools of the State? The propositions dealing with this matter are longer, and more involved with double negatives; but we will take the time to disentangle them, and the reader who is not interested in the problem may skip.
45. The entire direction of public schools, in which the youth of Christian states are educated, except (to a certain extent) in the case of episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the taking of degrees, or the choice and approval of the teachers.
The phrase “episcopal seminaries” means what we should call “Catholic schools” or “parochial schools”; and this proposition states that the Church is not satisfied with being permitted to teach what it pleases in these schools, but denounces the claim of the State to exclusive control of teaching in the State schools.
The next proposition, 46, defends the right of the Church to teach as it pleases in its own schools. Since that is not commonly disputed in America, we pass on.
47. The best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to the children of all classes, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophy, and for conducting the education of the young, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, government, and interference, and should be fully subject to the civil and political power, in conformity with the will of rulers and the prevalent opinions of the age.
This is an exact statement of the theory upon which the American public school system is founded, and this theory is declared to be an error.
48. This system of instructing youth, which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith and from the power of the Church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural things and the earthly ends of social life alone, may be approved by Catholics.
This is practically a definition of what we call “secular education”; it is what we give in our public schools, and we are declared to be in error when we do so.
There are many other statements in this Syllabus which are of importance. Thus in 77 we learn that the Church refuses to give up its demand that the State shall maintain it as the only religion. In 78 we are told that the State should not permit non-Catholics to worship publicly in Catholic countries. In 79 we are told that freedom of worship, and freedom of manifesting opinions and ideas, conduce to corrupt the minds of the people. In 80 we are told that the Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not “reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced.” I think that will suffice to make plain to the average American why the “Syllabus of Errors” cannot be found in English translation in Catholic volumes obtainable in libraries or book-stores!