[168] See the number of February, 1875—“Education on the Radical Plan.”
[169] Laboulaye’s measure concerning higher instruction. The reporter recognizes in it the right of families themselves to choose tutors for their children, and also the right of associations formed with the view of instruction.
[170] A recent speech delivered at Belleville by the leader of French liberalism, M. Gambetta, gives a sufficiently exact idea of this kind of civil constitution. See the political journals of April 26, 1875.
[171] Ancienne et nouvelle discipline de l’Eglise touchant les bénéfices et les bénéficiers, 2ᵉ part., liv. ii. ch. 26, 27; 3ᵉ part., liv. ii. ch. 18-23.
[172] Conc. Trid., sess. xxii. de reform., cap. 18.
[173] “Quæ omnia, atque alia ad hanc opportuna et necessaria, episcopi singuli, cum consilio duorum canonicorum seniorum et graviorum, quos ipsi elegerint, prout Spiritus Sanctus suggesserit, constituent; eaque ut semper observentur, sæpius visitando, operam dabunt.”—Conc. Trid., loc. cit.
[174] “Pietas ad omnia utilis est, pro missionem habens vitæ quæ nunc est, et futuræ.”—1 Tim. iv. 8.
[175] Summ. Theol., 1. 2. q. xc., art. 3.
[176] We quote at length the remarkable passage from which these words are quoted. It occurs in an allocution of the Holy Father to the cardinals, delivered in the Secret Consistory, Sept. 5, 1851, in which his Holiness announces the concordat which had recently been concluded with the Spanish government “The great object of our solicitude was to secure the integrity of our holy religion and to provide for the spiritual wants of the church. Now, you will see, the concordat arranges that the Catholic religion, with all the rights it enjoys by virtue of its divine institution, and of rules established by the sacred canons, should be exclusively dominant in that kingdom; every other religion will be openly banished from it and forbidden. It is, consequently, settled that the manner of educating and instructing the youth in all the universities, colleges or seminaries, in all the public and private schools, will be in full conformity with the doctrine of the Catholic religion. The bishops and heads of dioceses, who, by virtue of their office, are bound to labor with all their might to protect the purity of Catholic teaching, to propagate it, to watch that the youth receive a Christian education, will find no obstacle to the accomplishment of those duties; they will be able, without meeting the least hindrance, to exercise the most attentive superintendence over the schools, even the public ones, and to discharge freely, in all its plenitude, their office of pastor.” Is not this, in exact terms, the thesis here defended?
[177] The following proposition has been condemned by Pius IX. in his Encyclical Quanta cura: “Optimam societatis publicæ rationem civilemque progressum omnino requirere, ut humana societas constituatur et gubernetur, nullo habito ad religionem respectu, ac si ea non existeret, vel saltem nullo facto veram inter falsasque religiones discrimine.”