CHAPTER LXX
THE PRACTICAL CHURCH ADMINISTRATOR
Let us now break through the tangle of ecclesiastical sophistry, and try to get in a few paragraphs the common sense of the situation. Why are Catholic authorities reduced to quibbling and evading, and hiding their real dogmas from the world? The answer is that Catholic students throughout the world are inevitably influenced by their environment; those who live in liberal countries take on a tinge of liberalism. But meantime the dogmas of the church are laid down by a group of medieval-minded bigots in Rome, who set their faces against the whole of modern life, and prescribe formulas which are excruciatingly embarrassing to American Catholics with political and social ambitions. Hence it comes about that the “Syllabus of Errors” of Pius IX is not obtainable in official Catholic translations in American public libraries; hence also it comes about that one Catholic archbishop after another writes to assure me that the propositions of the “Syllabus” do not apply to public schools in America.
The frankest letter is from Archbishop Dowling of St. Paul, who practically admits that I am right in my suspicion that American Catholics are going as far as they dare to put the dogmas of the Papal reactionaries upon the shelf. He says:
The theologian still holds that in itself that State is most perfect where the rights of God are recognized as well as the rights of man. He assumes all the implications of that position. But his thesis receives the attention and the respect that are usually given to Utopias. The practical church administrator loyally accepts the fait accompli. He adjusts his policies and his plans to things as he finds them.
And again:
So far as I know nobody with any influence in the Catholic body of this country opposes the public school system. I doubt if Catholics ever give the subject of such a fatuous movement a single thought. In fact, Catholics are not effectively organized in any but parish groups. They have not an influential press. There is not a Catholic paper of any kind that circulates largely throughout the whole country. They are divided into many racial groups with no point of contact save a common creed.
I should like to accept this very courteous statement; but when I am dealing with men who admit that they are “practical,” meaning that they profess creeds which they do not try to apply, I am necessarily led to wonder whether such an attitude might not lead a man to feel justified in “shading” his views while writing to a non-Catholic correspondent. Also, I am obliged to contrast the archbishop’s statement with that on the letter-head of Msgr. Noll: “‘Our Sunday Visitor,’ the popular National Catholic weekly with 2,000,000 readers scattered over every country in the world. Thousands of priests order it for all of their people.” How can this be fitted to the statement that “there is not a Catholic paper of any kind that circulates largely throughout the whole country?”
For the rest of this chapter let us follow the program of the “practical church administrator,” and adjust ourselves to things as we find them. What one finds everywhere throughout America is as follows: The Catholics are maintaining a rival system to the public schools; they are running an enormous business, spending tens of millions of dollars, and they take toward the public schools precisely the attitude which business rivalry engenders in every human group. They say in their propaganda literature that they wish to be “fair” to the public schools. But just what can be the meaning of this word, to men who regard secular education as destructive to the souls of the children who receive it? Inevitably, they wish to save as many souls as possible; and the fact that they do it from the best of motives makes no difference to us. The attitude of the Catholic church is to get as much for the church schools as possible, and to hold down the public schools as much as possible; that is the fact, and any denial of that fact is propaganda, and a part of the game.
So when you travel from city to city, and from state to state, as I have done, you find that the Catholics are everywhere claiming what is “right”; but that “right” is never the same in two places. It varies according to one simple formula—it is always a little bit more than the Catholics are getting in that place. In Italy, Catholic “right” demands that the Pope shall be the civil ruler of the papal state, including the city of Rome, and that there shall be no schools except church schools. Catholic “right” requires this latter in South American countries also. In cities of the United States where the Catholic vote is large, Catholic “right” demands that church schools be supported out of public taxes. In California, which is not Catholic, “right” is somewhat less than this—merely that the state should furnish free text books for the Catholic schools. In order to get this concession, the Catholic lobbyists made a deal with the Y. M. C. A., agreeing to help the “Y,” which thought it had a “right” to be released from having to pay taxes on its property![[L]]