This would be doing for its Catholic citizens only what it now does for its Protestant citizens only; in fact, only what is done in France, Austria, and Prussia. The division would enable us to bring all our children into schools under the influence and management of our pastors, and to do whatever the church and a thoroughly religious education can do to train them up to be good Catholics, and therefore orderly and peaceful members of society, and loyal and virtuous American citizens. It would also remove some restraint from the Protestant schools, and allow them more freedom in insisting on whatever is doctrinal and positive in their religion than they now exercise. The two classes of schools, though operating separately, would aid each other in stemming the tide of infidelity and immorality, now setting in with such fearful rapidity, and apparently resistless force, threatening the very existence of our republic. The division would operate in favor of religion, both in a Catholic sense and in a Protestant sense, and therefore tend to purify and preserve American society. It would restore the schools to their original intention, and make them, what they should be, religious schools.
The enemy which the state, which Catholics, and which Protestants have alike to resist and vanquish by education is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, disguised as secularism, or under the specious names of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, which not only strike at all Christian faith and Christian morals, but at the family, the state, and civilized society itself. The state has no right to regard this enemy with indifference, and on this point we accept the able arguments used by the serious Protestant preachers and writers cited in the number of The Christian World before us against the exclusion of the Bible and all recognition of religion from the public schools. The American state is not infidel or godless, and is bound always to recognize and actively aid religion as far as in its power. Having no spiritual or theological competency, it has no right to undertake to say what shall or shall not be the religion of its citizens; it must accept, protect, and aid the religion its citizens see proper to adopt, and without partiality for the religion of the majority any more than the religion of the minority; for in regard to religion the rights and powers of minorities and majorities are equal. The state is under the Christian law, and it is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, spiritism, free-lovism, pantheism, or atheism.
The modern world has strayed far from this doctrine, which in the early history of this country nobody questioned. The departure may be falsely called progress, and boasted of as a result of "the march of intellect;" but it must be arrested, and men must be recalled to the truths they have left behind, if republican government is to be maintained, and Christian society preserved. Protestants who see and deplore the departure from the old landmarks will find themselves unable to arrest the downward tendency without our aid, and little aid shall we be able to render them unless the church be free to use the public schools—that is, her portion of them—to bring up her children in her own faith, and train them to be good Catholics. There is a recrudescence of paganism, a growth of subtle and disguised infidelity, which it will require all that both they and we can do to arrest. Fight, therefore, Protestants, no longer us, but the public enemy.[14]
THE NEW ENGLANDER ON THE "MORAL RESULTS OF THE ROMISH SYSTEM."[15]
The reply of the New Englander to our articles of September and October last is bristling with the most palpable and absurd mistakes. We call them "mistakes" through the utmost stretch of Christian charity, for there is really no excuse to be made for them. We cannot excuse them by allowing either their author or the editors of the New Englander the benefit of the plea of ignorance; for they were bound to inform themselves on a grave matter which they profess to treat of; nor that of haste and carelessness. They have had at least three months for a reply, and were at liberty to take three months more, if necessary; and to plead carelessness in such a matter is equivalent to a confession of culpable negligence and want of moral principle. They were bound by the principles of the Christian religion not to exaggerate or convey in any way a worse impression of their fellow-Christians than the exact truth would warrant, according to the words of St. Paul, "Charity is kind, thinketh no evil, ... is not puffed up;" which we might paraphrase in this way: Is not pharisaically inclined to exalt one's self at the expense of one's neighbor, or at the sacrifice of the truth. The New Englander has made use of every artifice; and, trusting to the unsuspecting ignorance or uncritical spirit of the community, of a shameful perversion of the truth to effect this unworthy and unchristian object. We speak severely because it is time the public, both Catholic and Protestant, should frown upon such practices, and endeavor to approach Christian unity by the practice of the most ordinary Christian virtues. We shall now proceed to make good our allegations against the New Englander.
1st. The New Englander makes a comparison of the provinces of Catholic and Protestant countries, prefaced by the following introduction:
"The author of Evenings with the Romanists, writing in 1854, gave the names and official returns of ten principal cities of Protestant Prussia and of ten principal cities of Roman Catholic Austria.... The Catholic World admits the statements, ... and claims, with that air of injured innocence, which is so favorite a weapon in Romish polemics, that, if the returns of the provinces were brought into the account, they would more than redress the balance of the cities. We proceed to put his proposition to experiment."
Would our readers credit it, that he has done nothing of the kind? He has not compared the Protestant and Catholic provinces of Protestant Prussia and Roman Catholic Austria, between which, and which alone, the parallel comparison of cities was made; but substituted another comparison, entirely his own, introducing provinces belonging to other countries to weigh down the Catholic scale, and excluding half the Catholic provinces of Austria for the same purpose. This we will show to a demonstration. Here is the table of the New Englander:
Illegitimacy in German Provinces.