3. Efforts have always been made by our clergy to establish schools for the common people. The first work of the parish priest after he has built his church is to build a school-house. The free education of the children of the poor has the next place in his care to the service of the altar. There is not a step in the whole system of education, from the alphabet-class to the highest university cursus [Footnote 278], to which the Catholic Church does not devote the labor of some religious order or congregation, blessed and sanctioned and assisted by the supreme Pontiff.
[Footnote 278: Transcriber's note: "course">[
She does not confine, she never has confined, her solicitude to theological studies or the education of the rich. Teaching the poor has been the chosen labor and chief glory of hundreds of her saints, and is now the crowning work of many a flourishing order, such as the Sisters of Charity, the Brethren of the Christian Schools, and similar organizations, the prime object of which, be it remarked, is the education not of the upper classes but of the mass of the population. The Jesuits are more celebrated for their colleges and higher seminaries than for rudimentary schools; but they too have their primary classes in all places where there is both need and opportunity for them; and even in their colleges where every student is supposed to pay for his education, a system of gratuitous instruction is pursued with a delicate secrecy designed to spare the poor scholar any possible mortification. Of course it is chiefly "the masses" who profit by this hidden charity. Even Mr. Seaman himself, in another part of his book, interrupts his censure of religious orders in general by a confession that many of the communities of monks and nuns have done good by devoting themselves to the education of the young: if he had not confessed it, indeed, he must have been a marvel of ignorance or dishonesty. With the history of the common-school agitation led by Bishop Hughes in New York so fresh in mind, he must be a bold partisan who would deny our anxiety to keep in the very van of educational progress. The Catholic demand for a share of the school fund was in reality a demand for the admission of our parochial schools to the common school system of the State. We were ready, nay anxious, to carry out the State programme of instruction to its fullest extent, and admit the State inspectors and examiners to scrutinize our operations whenever they saw fit. But sectarian bigotry has imposed a double tax upon our efforts for the education of our children, and rather than we should teach them about God opposes our teaching them anything at all. We do the best we can. We pay our tax for the support of the schools we do not approve; we pay another voluntary tax for such parish schools as our poverty can afford; and if these are too small to receive our children and too poor to do as much for them as they would be glad to do, the fault is not ours but the law's, which deprives us of the aid to which we are justly entitled from the common fund. One thing is clear to every dispassionate observer: the Catholics do twice as much for education as any other denomination—nay, do that which no other denomination would think of attempting. A state system of gratuitous instruction is often referred to as one of the exclusive boons of Protestantism. Well, in how many of the great countries of the world, besides our own, is such a system known? Only in France and Austria, which are Catholic, and in Prussia and Scotland, which are Protestant. Protestant England has done less for popular education, and has consequently a more grossly ignorant peasantry than any other country on the globe equally advanced in general civilization. Her great universities and grammar-schools are the relics of Catholic foundations. The half a million of pounds annual income which they enjoy is drawn from Catholic endowments, perverted from their ancient uses; and it is estimated that not more than three-fifths of this sum is actually made available for educational purposes in any way whatever. So shamelessly have these legacies of the ancient faith been misapplied, that there are masters drawing large salaries for presiding over schools which have no scholars, and a few years ago it was found that the teachers of 708 inferior schools and 35 grammar-schools signed their returns with a mark! Of late the government has made efforts for a reform, and the various dissenting sects have also done a great deal in the establishment of denominational schools; but no general system of popular instruction has yet been devised. Popular education in fact is a purely Catholic idea, almost as old as Christianity itself, and the germ of the modern common-school system was in the bosom of the ancient church. "After the introduction of Christianity," says The American Cyclopaedia, (art. "Common Schools,") "and its accession to power, the duty of the authorities to educate the young was speedily recognized by the bishops and clergy. The object of this education was of course their training in the doctrines of Christianity, but it was the first recognition of the duty of giving instruction to the masses. As early as A.D. 529 we find the council of Vaison recommending the establishment of public schools. In 800 a synod at Mentz ordered that the parochial priests should have schools in the towns and villages, that 'the little children of all the faithful should learn letters from them. Let them receive and teach these with the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine for ever. Let them receive no remuneration from their scholars, unless what the parents through charity may voluntarily offer." A council at Rome in 836 ordained that there should be three kinds of schools throughout Christendom: episcopal, parochial in towns and villages, and others wherever there could be found place and opportunity. The Council of Lateran in 1179 ordained the establishment of a grammar-school in every cathedral for the gratuitous instruction of the poor. This ordinance was enlarged and enforced by the Council of Lyons in 1245. Thus originated the popular or common school as an outgrowth of the Christian Church. "A council of the 16th century speaks of schools in the priests' houses, and the decretals abound in mention of popular instruction as one of the first duties of the clergy and one of the traditional and most ancient glories of the church. "If the important knowledge of reading and writing was spread among the people," says the socialist philosopher St. Simon, "it was owing to the church." If that knowledge, during the political and social disorders of the middle ages became so difficult of attainment that only a favored few could acquire it, it was the church alone who kept the sacred flame of learning alive in the schools and the cloisters, maintained the great universities and grammar classes in the midst of the most turbulent periods; and when society crystallized again into order, brought forth the treasure of knowledge which she had guarded so long, and gave it to the world. [Footnote 279]
[Footnote 279: See The Catholic World for February, 1869-art. "The Ignorance of the Middle Ages.">[
Nearly all the most famous institutions of learning in Europe are of Catholic foundation. Rome is especially well provided with schools, and the Roman College gives free instruction in the classics and the sciences. And in "the face of all these facts—knowing as he must know if he has studied the "progress of nations" with a particle of intelligence, that the Catholic Church has been the most munificent patron of learning the world ever saw—Mr. Seaman has the sublime effrontery to say that "no effort has ever been made in any Catholic country to educate the mass of the people or any of the common classes, except some few selected by the priests, to be educated and trained for the ministry," and that "the great body of Catholics seem to be studiously kept in profound ignorance, that they may be managed and governed the more easily"! It seems to us it would be a good and a just thing if the penalties against malpractice by which the law protects the medical profession from ignorant charlatans could be extended to the profession of literature. There is a graceful compliment to the literature of the Catholic Church in Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment." For the benefit of Mr. Seaman and his class we cite the passage nearly at full length:
"In spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion, may he see if he has his eyes open! I will tell him of one of them. Let him go, in London, to that delightful spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, the region where its theological books are placed. I am almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the library to the flames. He will find an immense Catholic work, the collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over that whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Protestant forces which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism is duly represented, indeed; Mr. Panizzi knows his business too well to suffer it to be otherwise; all the varieties of Protestantism are there; there is the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, but a little uninteresting; there are the works of Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing; there are the works of Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle, valiantly doing duty as the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the last word of religious philosophy in a land where every one has some culture, and where superiorities are discountenanced—the flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity. But how are all these divided against one another, and how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the Catholic leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compartment, its right mounting up into heaven among the white folios of the Acta Sanctorum, its left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of the Law Digest. Everything is there, in that immense Patrologiae Cursus Completus, in that Encyclopédie Théologique, that Nouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique, that Troisième Encyclopédie Théologique; religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. The work embraces the whole range of human interests; like one of the great middle-age cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it is! a power, for history, at any rate, eminently the Church; not, I think, the church of the future, but indisputably the church of the past, and in the past, the church of the multitude.
"This is why the man of imagination—nay, and the philosopher, too, in spite of her propensity to burn him—will always have a weakness for the Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought of men of a definite type as their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Anglicanism suggests the English Episcopate; Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers's, the Duke of Argyll; Channing's, Boston Society; but Catholicism suggests —what shall I say?—all the pellmell of the men and women of Shakespeare's plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne's collection faithfully reflects. People talk of this or that work which they would choose, if they were to pass their life with only one; for my part, I think I would choose the Abbé Migne's collection. Quicqnid agunt homines—everything, as I have said, is there."
But Mr. Seaman complains, not only that the Catholic Church neglects to teach the people, but that she neglects to let them alone. Not only has she never had any schools, but she has had too many schools. She has taken no care of education, and moreover she has meddled officiously with popular instruction when she ought to have confined herself to masses and sermons. The clergy, being for long ages the only teachers of letters, science, philosophy, and religion, acquired an influence over men's conduct and opinions which can only be regarded as unfortunate. Yet, a little while ago, he said that in all conditions of society the majority of mankind are ruled by the thoughts and instructions of others, and that education is one of the most important parts of government. Is it better that this tremendous influence should be exerted by the wisest and most virtuous class, or by those who are eminent only because they are the most powerful? If any set of men are to mould the opinions of the rest, should they not be the men who are best qualified by study and by sacred pursuits to exercise that function with intelligence and sincerity? We believe that when the child passes from the hands of the parent, its best guides are the servants of the church who have devoted themselves to the training of the young in order that they may do good to their fellow creatures and give glory to God. Mr. Seaman would entrust this sacred duty to pot-house politicians, who covet office for the sake of gain. The theory of a paternal government, which watches over all our relations in life, and rears children to be good citizens, may be all very well; but we know what governments are in practice, and petty office-holders are the last men we should want to trust with moulding the opinions of society. There is something too demoralizing in the means by which they generally get their places; and, after they have got them, how many are fit for them? It is the duty of government to promote education and general culture, that is very true; but how this ought to be done is another question. Mr. Seaman says the proper way is to remove children from the influence of the two institutions which God has designed for their guides and educators—the family and the church—and to put them under the control of place-hunters, who may possibly have a special talent for instruction, but are just as likely to be fools and rogues. But he has no arguments to support his opinions, and it is not worth while to answer sheer dogmatism.
Mr. Seaman is not satisfied with once gravely declaring that "in all Roman Catholic countries education by means of schools and books is confined to the wealthy classes," and then blaming the priests for interfering with the secular studies of the people instead of confining themselves to religious teaching; asserting that the Church has "usurped the whole domain of metaphysics and philosophy," and yet that she has never done anything for education at all; praising the Presbyterians of Scotland for making schools a part of their religious establishment, so that the young might be instructed "in the principles of religion, grammar, and the Latin tongue," and upbraiding the church because centuries earlier she had done the same thing; but he returns time and again to the same misstatements and the same contradictions. During the Dark Ages, he says, coming back again to the Bible question, "the Scriptures were in the possession of those only who were learned in the dead languages. They had never been translated into any of the modern languages. A good explanation of this remarkable fact may possibly be that the modern languages, at the period to which Mr. Seaman refers, had not yet taken a literary form. He probably means to say that the sacred books had not been translated into the vernacular of any people. If he does, he makes a great mistake. In the first place, the Latin Vulgate was by no means a sealed volume. That version had been made expressly to render the Scriptures accessible to all. The tongue into which it was turned was the one most generally understood by whoever had education enough to read any book at all; and during the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was still in common use all over the continent of Europe. It was not then a dead language, so far as books were concerned, though in the conversation of common life it had passed out of use. Moreover, as we have already seen, translations of the Bible into other languages were made as fast as those languages took shape. Translations of the New Testament were made very early into all the tongues then spoken by Christians. Portions of the Scriptures were turned into Saxon by Adhelm, Egbert, the Venerable Bede, and others, between the 8th and 10th centuries; and there was a complete English version as early as 1290, that is to say, 90 years before Wycliffe's, which Hallam erroneously calls the earliest. The first book printed at Guttenberg's press was a Latin Bible, and in Italy, under the very eye of the church, there were translations in use in the 15th century. The popular fable that Luther first threw open the sacred book to the world is one of the most mischievous falsehoods in history.
On almost every page we find errors hardly less monstrous. "Not one valuable invention, discovery, or improvement," says Mr. Seaman, "during the last three centuries and a half, has originated where the human mind has been subject to Catholicism …. and the same may be said of jurisprudence, government, and science, as well as the useful arts." The impudence of this assertion is enough to take away one's breath. France, then, has done nothing for the arts or for science, Catholic Germany has done nothing, Belgium has done nothing, Italy has done nothing. Nay, more; if the Church for three hundred and fifty years has blighted material progress, if the Catholic clergy during that time have, as our amazingly ignorant author declares, "restrained the human mind from the prosecution of new discoveries in natural science under pretence that the new opinions promulgated were contrary to Scripture, and therefore impious and heretical," how does it happen that the world made any discoveries at all before that period? Why, does Mr. Seaman forget that the art of printing itself, the greatest invention of all time, dates from that "dark age" when the power of the Church was at its height, and Luther had not yet arisen, and that its first use was in the service of the sanctuary? Does he forget that Copernicus was a Catholic priest? that some of the most brilliant of modern discoveries in the positive sciences, in astronomy, in medicine, in natural philosophy, have emanated from Catholic Italy and France, and that the science of jurisprudence, to which he especially refers, owes more to those two countries and Germany than to all the rest of the world? The case of Galileo, to which of course he alludes, has so recently been examined in two elaborate articles in this magazine that we need give but little space to it here. It is enough to say that although the Florentine philosopher was forbidden to wrest Scripture to the support of his theory, and was censured for his disobedience of a solemn obligation to let theology alone and confine himself to science, the Church stood throughout his patron and protector, and the Pope and the Cardinals were the most zealous among his disciples. Mr. Seaman's statement that "when Galileo taught in Italy the Copernican system of astronomy as late as the year 1633, it was decided by the POPE and a COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC CARDINALS AND BISHOPS" that the doctrine was absurd and heretical, and he was "consigned to the dungeons of the INQUISITION and compelled to recant and abjure his opinions in order to save his life," (the capitals and Italics are Mr. Seaman's,) is a plain up-and-down falsehood. There is no justification of it in any reputable history. "The Pope and a council of Catholic Cardinals and Bishops" never pronounced any judgment whatever either upon Galileo or his doctrines, and never had anything to do with the affair. The judgment, such as it was, expressed merely the opinion of the "qualifiers," or examiners of the Inquisition—an irresponsible committee attached to a civil tribunal, whose report carried no theological weight, and no more represented the doctrine of the Church, or the sentiments of Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops than the Munchausenisms of Mr. Seaman represent the sober verdict of history. The Church is not to be reproached for the blunders of her individual members. Moreover, Galileo never was consigned to the "dungeons of the Inquisition," and never was in peril of his life.