Now, we must repeat to Catholics who forget it, that there are not two last ends for man, but only one; and that is the supernatural end of which we treated at the commencement. Created by God to enjoy his glory and his happiness through eternity, in vain would man seek elsewhere the end of his efforts and of his existence. Everything in him tends towards this end. It is his perfection, and in order to exalt himself to it, he ought to give to his faculties the whole power of development of which they are capable. Woe to him, but much more woe to those who have had the responsibility of his education, if, through their fault, he does not find himself on the level of his destiny; if, instead of gravitating towards heaven in his rapid passage across life, he drags himself miserably along the ground, wallowing in selfish interests and sensual passions!
But if this be so, what can the state do to guide souls to heights which surpass itself? There is nothing to be done but to apply the principle formulated by S. Thomas: “It is his to order means to an end, in whose possession that end is”—Illius est ordinare ad finem, cujus est proprius ille finis.[175] The supernatural transformation of the soul into God, and eternal beatitude, which education ought invariably to propose to itself, are not the objects of human society any more than of the civil power which regulates it. That power is consequently incapable, of itself, of ordaining the means which contribute to this supernatural end. It cannot afford the very smallest assistance to education in this respect, nothing to form the man, and to adapt him to the grand designs of God in his behalf. In a word, education is not within the jurisdiction of earthly governments. It is above their competence.
What, then, is the power in the Christian communities commissioned with the sublime ministry of the education of souls? Who has received from God the divine mission of begetting them to the supernatural and divine life, rough-drawn on earth, perfected in heaven? There is, there can be, but one reply. The church! When he founded that august spiritual society, Jesus Christ assigned to it as its end, to guide men to eternal happiness; and on that account he endowed it with all the powers necessary to ordain and to put in operation the proper means for this end. Education conducted in a spirit fundamentally Christian—such is the universal, indispensable mean, over which, consequently, the church has exclusive rights.
See then, established by Jesus Christ, the great instructress of the human race—the only one which can rightfully pretend to direct public education in Christian communities! That superintendence, that direction, are an integral part of the pastoral ministry. The church cannot renounce it without prevarication.
Her reason, therefore, is obvious for insisting, with such obstinate persistency, in claiming, everywhere and always, the exercise of a right which she holds from God himself. Obvious is the reason for which the Sovereign Pontiffs have so severely condemned a doctrine which is the denial of this inalienable right for which, in the concordats concluded with Catholic powers, a special clause invariably reserves for the church the faculty of “seeing that youth receive a Christian education.”[176]
Nothing is more clear than that, when the Catholic Church, in a Christian state, claims for itself the ministry of public instruction, it is no monopoly which it seeks to grasp for the profit of its clerics. It has but one object, to wit, that instruction should have as wide a scope as possible; and for this object she appeals to all devotedness. Laymen and ecclesiastics, seculars and religious, all—all are besought to take a part in this work of instructing the peoples. Whoever offers himself with the necessary qualifications, a pure faith, Christian manners, and competent knowledge, is welcome. To such an one the church opens a free scope for his energies, to cultivate the rising generations under her shelter and in co-operation with her, in order to enable them to bring forth the fruits of knowledge and of virtue. What she does not assent to, what she cannot assent to, is that, under the pretext of liberty of instruction, the ravening wolf should introduce himself into the fold, in the person of those teachers of errors and falsehood who lay waste the flock by bringing into it discord and war; that, under the guise of science and intellectual progress, they should sap the religious belief of a people, assault Christian truth, and infect the young understanding with the deadly poison of doubt and unbelief. No, indeed! Such havoc the church can neither sanction nor allow them an opportunity to accomplish. She remembers that she has received from Christ the care of souls, that the salvation of his children has been entrusted to her keeping, and that God will demand of her an account of their blood shed—that is to say, of their eternal perdition. Sanguinem ejus de manu tua requiram (Ezech. iii. 18). As a watchful sentinel she keeps guard over the flock, and so long as the criminal violence of human powers does not rob her of her rights, neither the thieves nor the assassins of souls can succeed in exercising their ravages.
By way of recapitulation we will enunciate, in five or six propositions, the whole of this doctrine of the rights of the church over education, and thus place the reader in a better position for judging of its full force and extent.
1st. The education of clerics destined to ecclesiastical functions is the exclusive right of the church. She alone regulates everything connected with it, whether the erection of seminaries, or their interior discipline, or the appointment of masters, or the instruction in letters and science, or the good education of the pupils, or their admission into the ecclesiastical body.
2d. The church implicitly respects the right of families to provide a private education for their children by whomsoever and in whatever manner they prefer. Only she imposes on the consciences of Christian parents the obligation of seeing to it that that education be religious and in conformity with the faith they profess.
3d. The superintendence and direction of the public schools, as well of those wherein the mass of the people are instructed in the rudiments of human knowledge, as of those where secondary and higher instruction are given, belong of right to the Catholic Church. She alone has the right of watching over the moral character of those schools, of approving the masters who instruct the youth therein, of controlling their teaching, and dismissing, without appeal to any other authority, those whose doctrine or manners should be contrary to the purity of Christian doctrine.