At the same time that it directs the institution of seminaries, the council is at the pains to explain their great usefulness, the necessity, even, of them for the church, as the only efficacious means of always providing zealous as well as solidly instructed ministers. It lays down also the way of life which should be observed within them, the studies to which especially the young men should devote themselves, the means to be employed by the masters for the complete education of their pupils, and even the resources of which the bishops will be able to avail themselves to help to defray the expenses of these precious schools.
It may have been already remarked how the council regulates everything of its own authority and without asking aught of secular powers. It proves the church’s right to herself alone institute and organize her ecclesiastical seminaries. But that which decisively manifests her mind on this point is the care which the Council of Trent takes to place the entire administration of these schools in the hands of the bishops, assisted by two of the oldest and most prudent of the cathedral chapter, chosen by them under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.[173] Such is the authority to which belongs exclusively the right of regulating all that concerns the education of clerics. Neither can the lay faithful, nor Christian families, nor, still less, governments, meddle at all with this work, which is exclusively the affair of the church. Accordingly, in the forty-sixth proposition of the Syllabus, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., has reproved, proscribed, and condemned the doctrine of those who pretend “to subject to civil authority the method to be followed in the theological seminaries.”
The church claims, then, complete liberty to choose her ministers herself, and to form them in the manner which seems to her most desirable. This is no privilege which she asks of the state, it is a right which she holds from Jesus Christ, and by his divine appointment: the right of existing, the right of perpetuating herself upon earth by keeping up her hierarchy of teaching pastors and faithful taught, and in recruiting from among the latter those whom God himself calls to the honors of the priesthood.
And, in truth, to what rights over the education of clerics can a civil government pretend? Is it to judge of the knowledge which is necessary for the ministers of the altar? But is not the church appointed by Jesus Christ the sole guardian of revealed truth, and has not she alone received the mission of teaching the peoples? Can it be, indeed, to discern in the subjects who present themselves a divine vocation, and the degree of virtue requisite for a priest? But for such discernment, has, then, the civil power the special illumination of the Holy Ghost? Does it know the mysterious action of grace in the soul, and does God reveal to it his secrets? Or can it be, as some governments have not been afraid to do, to determine the number of young men who ought every year to respond to the call of God and enrol themselves in the sacred army? Impious and sacrilegious pretension! which says to the Spirit of God, “Thus far shall your inspirations go, and no farther.” As if the state, and not God, were the judge of the church’s needs! As if the civil power had received from Jesus Christ the commission to fix annually in the budget the effective of men employed in his divine service, after the same fashion as it regulates the annual contingent of soldiers called to the service of the state!
But no, not one of these pretensions is tenable. The state has no power whatever over the education of clerics; and the church, by its divine institution, is alone competent for this work, necessary above all to its existence and the perpetuity of its action in the world.
Such are the rights of the church in this first department of education. They are absolute, exclusive, and inalienable. What have we next to say of those she possesses in the education of the laity?
The Rights of the Church over Public Education.—That which certain Catholics refuse to the church, even in a community Christianly constituted, is not the right of giving instruction in the public schools, and making her influence felt there to the advantage of the morality and good education of the youth. No one but a rationalist or free-thinker can deny the necessity of making religion the foundation of all education, if we would bring up Christians, and not unbelievers. More than this, these same Catholics acknowledge, besides, that the church by her priests, and her religious devoted to the education of youth, enjoys the right possessed by all citizens of opening public schools and teaching, not only the verities of the Catholic faith, but letters and human science in all its branches. They are generally advocates of freedom of instruction to its utmost extent; and the power they accord to the humblest citizen they do not commit the folly of refusing to those whose character, knowledge, and disinterestedness best qualify them for those delicate functions.
Here, then, are two acknowledged rights of the church, on which we need not insist further. First, the right of providing religious instruction for the youth at school, and their education according to the principles of Christian morality. Secondly, the right of giving, herself, to children and to young people, whose families entrust them to her, a complete education, embracing instruction in letters and in the secular sciences; the right, consequently, of founding religious congregations entirely consecrated to the ministry of instruction and Christian education; the right of establishing these institutions, providing for their recruitment, and for their material means of existence. All this, it is acknowledged, constitutes the normal condition of the church in communities which concede a just share of influence to the Catholic religion, to its ministers, and to all those who are inspired with its spirit of devotion to the general welfare. But observe the points of divergence between the Catholics of whom we are speaking and those who are more jealous to preserve intact the rights conferred by Jesus Christ upon his church. According to the former, a distinction must be made between religious education and literary or scientific education. The former, by its object and by its end, escapes from the competence of the state to re-enter what is exclusively the province of the church. It is different with literary and scientific instruction. That, they say, is a social service which belongs, like other services of a similar kind, to the jurisdiction of the city or nation. The exercise of the teaching ministry is undoubtedly free. Private individuals are entitled to devote themselves to it without let or hindrance. But the direction of this ministry should be ascribed to the state, the only judge of whatever affects the present and the future of society. Guardian of order, of justice, and of morals in the community, it is the duty of government itself to regulate the discipline of public schools, the instruction which is given there, the academic titles which open the way to certain civil or administrative careers, and the choice of masters; who, at any rate, should not have incurred any of the disqualifications determined by the law. Moreover, since its functions impose on it the duty of encouraging, as much as possible, useful institutions, and such as are essential to public prosperity, the government is bound to support schools founded by private individuals; and even, if there be not enough of them for the needs of the people, to institute others by its own authority, and out of the public funds. This, according to them, belongs to the domain of the state. Here it reigns supreme, without having to share its power with any other power, civil or religious. Public instruction is a branch of administration on the same grounds as war or finance.
Thus think and speak Catholics of the modern political school. Unluckily for them, such is not the doctrine of the church. Pius IX., in the forty-fifth proposition of the Syllabus, explicitly condemns the opinion we have just described, and which he formulates in the following terms: “The whole direction of public schools, in which the youth of a Christian state is brought up, with the exception, to a certain extent, of episcopal seminaries, can be and ought to be vested in the civil authority, and that in such a manner that the right of no other authority should be recognized to interfere with the discipline of those schools, with the curriculum of studies, with the conferring of degrees, or with the choice or approval of masters.” This, however specious, is thus erroneous, and no Catholic can maintain it. It is, in fact, false in a two-fold point of view—false in a merely natural point of view, because it ascribes to the state a function which, in default of the church, belongs exclusively to the family; false also, and especially, in a supernatural point of view, because it separates what ought to be united, the temporal consequences of education, and its supernatural end. We will expose this twofold error.
Under the empire of a nondescript philosophical paganism, our modern politicians have a striking tendency to enlarge more and more in society the circle of governmental privileges. One would suppose, to listen to them, that it was the function of power to completely absorb all the organic elements which go to make a nation, and to leave no longer existing side by side of it, or beneath it, aught but inert individualities, social material capable of receiving impulse and movement only from it. Healthy reason protests against a theory so destructive of the most indispensable elements of social prosperity. Families collecting into cities forfeited none of their natural rights; cities, in associating themselves in nations did not pretend to abdicate all their powers. What both sought, on the contrary, in association, was a stronger guarantee of those very rights; it was the maintenance of the most inviolable justice in human relations; it was, in short, an efficient protection against violence and oppression, whether from within or without.