Magna Carta, and Other Addresses

by William D. Guthrie

CATHOLIC PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS[68]

The completion of this building, its dedication to education, and the opening of its doors as a Catholic parochial school are matters of no ordinary significance in this community. By means of the present function we are publicly emphasizing the religious character of the educational work to be undertaken here. Due respect for the opinion of our neighbors and fellow-citizens seems to call for some statement from the standpoint of the Catholic laity in explanation of the reasons which have impelled a comparatively poor congregation to incur this great expense and to assume an obligation of future maintenance which year after year will constitute a very serious and increasing burden. It is indeed a striking event that a congregation, very few of whom have large means, should have erected and equipped such a building, costing over $150,000, and should have pledged itself to support the school and ultimately to discharge the remaining mortgage indebtedness of $50,000.

There is unfortunately much misunderstanding and criticism among our fellow-citizens of other denominations in regard to the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards the important and far-reaching subject of the education of children in the public schools, and the Catholic point of view is frequently misrepresented.

In the first place, it is constantly asserted that Catholics are opposed to the public school system of America. On the contrary, Catholics approve and support the public schools, and willingly vote and pay their share of the taxes necessary for the maintenance of these schools. They believe that the state should provide free common schools for the education of children, so that every American child not only shall have an opportunity of securing a free education but may be compelled to take advantage of the opportunity thus provided. They recognize that in this country it is generally impracticable in the common schools to teach the tenets of religious faiths, because to compel children indiscriminately to study the doctrines of any particular religion in which their parents do not believe would destroy all religious freedom and would be contrary to fundamental rights. They recognize further that to attempt to teach in the public schools the tenets of the Catholic, the Jewish and the numerous Protestant denominations, would be quite impossible and inevitably would lead to religious chaos. They realize that absolute equality or religious freedom can be secured only by making the public schools non-sectarian. Catholics, therefore, favor the maintenance of the system of free common schools; they have heretofore supported and will continue to support the system, although they object to some of the details of management, and they will send and do send their children to these public schools wherever there are no Catholic schools. In fact, fully one-half of the Catholic children of our country are now attending public schools because of the lack of Catholic schools.

Thousands of well-to-do Protestants and Jews—many in our own immediate neighborhood—send their children to private schools, whether day or boarding schools, in many of which the Protestant faith is taught. Yet no one suggests that, because these parents send their children to private schools, they are in any sense acting in hostility to the public schools, or to American institutions, or to the best interests of their own children. As parents, they have and ought to have the right to send their children to such schools as they think will afford them an education more complete and more conducive to the formation of moral character than they can secure at the public schools. Catholics are but exercising the same common right, and what, moreover, they believe to be their duty as parents, when they send their children to the parochial schools which are erected, equipped and maintained at their own expense.

Another misrepresentation, and one which Catholics resent, is the statement that the parochial and other Catholic schools do not inculcate patriotism, and that they teach anti-American doctrines. Any candid investigator will readily find that this charge is wholly unfounded. In Catholic schools, patriotism, obedience to the law and loyalty to the Constitution are taught as a religious even more than a civic duty; the best and highest ideals of American patriotism and citizenship are exalted. No true American Catholic can be other than a good and patriotic American citizen. Children are taught in these schools that loyal obedience to the laws and religious tolerance are the two essential elements of good Catholic citizenship, and in every form and aspect they are impressed with the obligation as a religious duty to render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's and unto God the things which are God's and to be ever thankful that in this country these two separate obligations are wholly reconcilable.

The fundamental and controlling reason or motive for the establishment and maintenance of parochial schools is the profound conviction on the part of all Roman Catholics, in which conviction clergy and laity are a unit, that the welfare of the state, the stability of the Union, the continuance of civil and religious freedom, and the lasting happiness of the individual depend upon the code and standards of morality, discipline, self-restraint and temperance taught by religion. The student of history well knows that social order and civilized society have always rested upon religion; that there has never been a civilized nation without religion; that free government has never long endured except in countries where some religious faith has prevailed, and that our own country for three centuries has been an essentially religious country, by which I mean that the great majority of citizens have been believers in God and in some Christian religion. When the Constitution of the United States was established, the Americans were a truly religious people, and as a whole held firmly to one form or another of Christian faith. It has been recently pointed out by Archbishop Ireland in the Cathedral of St. Paul that in those days, "to stay away from religious service on Sunday was to invoke upon one's self serious public criticism." It is quite true that the great majority of Americans were then Protestants, but they were a religious majority. The Catholics can never forget that they owe the blessing of the religious liberty and tolerance which they now enjoy to a generation that was overwhelmingly Protestant and that it was first granted at an epoch when religious liberty and tolerance were practically unknown in Europe, whether in Catholic or Protestant countries.

Lord Bryce in his great work on "The American Commonwealth" has reviewed the influence of religion in this country, and has declared that "one is startled by the thought of what might befall this huge yet delicate fabric of laws and commerce and social institutions were the foundation it has rested upon to crumble away." That foundation he recognized to be religion, and he admonished us that "the more democratic republics become, the more the masses grow conscious of their own power, the more do they need to live, not only by patriotism, but by reverence and self-control, and the more essential to their well-being are those sources whence reverence and self-control flow."[69] Catholics believe that those sources of reverence and self-control are to be found in religion, and that if we sow in irreligion we shall reap in irreligion. Hence the firm and uncompromising determination of Catholic clergy and laity that thorough and efficient religious instruction, so far as lies in their power, shall be a vital and essential element in the education of every American Catholic child.

I very much doubt whether any respectable number of sensible and reflecting American citizens in our day would challenge the truth that morality is essential to the maintenance of civilized society and government, that the greatest influence for morality is to be found in the churches of the various denominations throughout the country, and that in teaching morality the churches are rendering a patriotic service and promoting the best interests and the highest policy of the state. I venture to assert that the only reasonable difference of opinion possible among candid and just men is as to the best way of inculcating religion in the young and the extent to which religious instruction is essential as a part of the complete education of children. On the one hand, there are those who conscientiously assert and sincerely believe that their children can receive all the religious training they need at home or at Sunday school and that they do not require any religious instruction in the daily schoolroom; on the other hand, there are those who conscientiously assert and sincerely believe that religion is the most essential part of the education of the child and of the forming of its moral character, that few parents have the time or the ability to teach religion to their children, and that religion can properly be taught only by making it part and parcel of the early schoolroom and of every day's instruction and study, while the mind and character of the child are plastic. The latter view is that of Catholics and of constantly increasing numbers of Protestants who send their children to private schools in which the doctrines of their faith are taught.