2S 029 445 881 5' Hollinger Corp. pH8.5 I . } THE ONLY TRUE AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM ADDRESS Delivered before the Convention of Young Men's Catholic Societies, Philadelphia, September 24, 1901 . . . ... . 5 CENTS A COPY ^ *<* J* $2.50 PER 100 THE MESSENGER OFFICE 27-29 West \ 6th Street — I NEW YORK . .1'- -■■ - V\. CL. ^c-%»y** THE ONLY TRUE AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM. By the Rev. Thomas J. Campbell, S.J. AN enthusiastic but poorly inspired prophet in the West, has in- formed the world that the relig- ion of the future is not to be, as he puts it, a matter of godology but of manol- ogy. Apparently his theology is on a par with his philology, and doubtless he would be surprised to learn that the more even he knows of man, the more he will be compelled to know of God, for the image must always refer back to the original from which it is copied. " Let us make man after our own image and likeness," God said in the beginning, and whether it be in the intellect's in- finite avidity for truth, or the inviola- bility of the human will, or the imper- ishability of the human soul, that like- ness must remain to the end, and with it an intimate and eternal relationship between the Creator and creature. From that relationship obligations on the part of man ensue. That is religion ; and without it, man is simply unthink- able. What is true of individuals is true of nations. Religion is indispensable. "You may find," says Cicero, "cities without palaces, without towers and without walls, but never without a temple or without worship." Or as Bonaparte when building up his em- pire, paradoxically but emphatically, though somewhat blasphemously ex- pressed it: "If there were no God we should have to create him." Not only are all nations convinced of its necessity, but we have at least one example of a political power actually arrogating divine honors to itself, erect- ing tesnples for its cult and immolating hundreds of thousands of victims on its altars. Ave Roma immortalis was but the expression of a belief that the Em- pire had the immortality of God. In the modern dispensation, the relig- ion that is essential to the prosperity and existence of the State is Chris- tianity. History proves that beyond question. The Jews who rejected it saw Judah's sceptre broken and the once chosen people scattered as wan- derers over the world; it was persecuted by the Caesars and the great Empire crumbled to the dust; where it has been expelled, you have the barbarism of Mohammed devastating and degrading the fairest countries of the earth; Eu- rope owes its civilization to Christianity, and where it is in honor and associated with the State, you have, as a distin- guished Churchman lately pointed out, three of the strongest nations of to-day : England, Russia and Germany ; while those countries which once ruled the world in arms, as well in arts and letters, but whose governments have Wbeen seized by a set of freebooting infidels, anarchists and foes of Christianity, a^e now scoffed at by their enemies and taunted with being of the decadent and moribund Latin race. How does our own country stand in this matter ? Though there is not a word about Christianity in the Declara- tion of Independence, or the Constitu- tion, we are undoubtedly a Christian na- tion. The intense religiousness of the original Colonies, the opening of the Fed- eral and State Legislatures with prayer, the annual proclamation of a Day of Thanksgiving to God, and, just at this terrible moment through which we are passing, the touchingly pious death of the last President who fell under the bul- lets of the assassin, followed as the The Only True American School System. tragic event was by the deeply reli- gious messages of the new President and the Governors of the various Com- monwealths, all go to show that we are a Christian nation. But on the other hand the appalling fact revealed by the statement of the most representative Protestant paper of the country, the Independent, that out of our 75,000,000 people only 23,000,- 000 belong to any Christian denomi- nation, Catholics included, and sec- ondly the startling and ever in- creasing emptiness of our churches, coupled with the scandalous revolt of so many ministers of religion against what was considered hitherto as the essential tenet of Protestant Christianity viz. : the authority of the Bible, and the rejection by so many of them of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ whom they accept merely as a religious teacher, force upon us the dreadful conviction that what Christi- anity there is in the country is fast disap- pearing. Does that mean that our existence as a nation is menaced ? We might an- swer that question by another. Have we any right to expect any other result than what has happened elsewhere under similar conditions ? Washington in his Farewell Address has warned us that ' ' reason and ex- perience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclu- sion of religious principles." And where there is no national morality, there is national ruin. Gladstone has said the same thing of England. Other great men have expressed themselves in a similar strain ; and for the mat- ter of that, though so easily lost sight of, it is almost a self-evident proposition. But are there facts to support this pessimistic theory ? They are not wanting. Neglecting such agents of corruption as the litera- ture of the day which exerts a most malign influence even upon our children, and which such a competent^judge as Marion Crawford declares to be "the worst, the vilest, the most degrading, and the most criminal literature that has ever disgraced civilization' ' ; omitting the influence which the stage exerts on what is now a theatre-loving people, and which, if half that is said of it be true, seems designed to excite the foul- est passions and inculcate the vilest principles of human conduct ; passing by all that, we are confronted with the fact that the vast majority of our school children never hear a word of Christi- anity during the entire school-week, and never enter a house of worship on Sun- day. What will the Christianity of these future men and women be? What is it now ? And yet the destinies of the United States will be in their hands in the next generation. Con- spicuous men among us, who are not Catholics, have already raised the note of alarm. Add to this the ominous condition of American life in the matter of marriage, in which there is not only a falling off, but a wholesale apostacy from the spirit and legislation of Christianity. The condition of things is not only humiliat- ing and shameful, but appalling. Mul- hall in his Dictionary of Statistics tells us (and his authority is unimpeachable) that ' ' the actual number of divorces granted, in the twenty years that pre- ceded 1886, was in the United States 328,716, while in the same period throughout the entire Continent of Eu- rope there were approximately 258,000. The population of Europe at that time was 350,000,000, while ours was a trifle over 50, 000, 000. ' ' That is to say Europe had seven times as many people as we, and yet we — distanced it by nearly 70,- 000 divorces. Is Christianity waning or not? That was fifteen years ago, and we have gone down deeper in the abyss since then. It is wise to remem- ber that the world-wide empire of Rome, the most stupendous political structure ever built, dated its destruc- The Only True American School System. tion from the multiplication of its divor- ces. Can we promise ourselves a dif- ferent fate? The record of crime is still more dis- tressing. In 1880, our prison popula- tion was 59, 259; that is, 1,180 for every million inhabitants. Already in 1899, the number had risen to 82,329 and of these 7,386 were charged with homi- cide. In 1886 alone, 1,499 murders were committed, while in Germany in the same year, with its population of 48,000,000, as against our 60,000,000, there were only 337 homicides. Four years after, namely in 1890 alone, we have the horrible record of 3,567 mur- ders. The Chicago Tribune quoted by Mulhall says that in the six years be- tween 1 884- 1 889 there were no less than 14, 770 murders and 975 lynchings, which of course are murders in an ag- gravated and atrocious form, with the guilt of blood on all the abettors. Nor is this frightful increase in homi- cide due chiefly to the foreign element. The World Almanac of 1901 informs us as to the nativity of the 4,425 white homicidal criminals in jail, that "3,157 were born in the United States, and 1,213 foreign born." The 2,739 ne- gro murderers are of course native to the soil. With regard to the scenes which are occurring in certain parts of our country with such alarming frequency and with circumstances of such unexampled ferocity, we say nothing except to note that it is not an imported crime, and that if the negroes against whom the fury is raging had been Catholicized, they would not be regarded now as wild beasts. It is a boast in the South, that the foreign element has not entered there. We may well heed the warning of the Protestant Bishop of Western Texas, who is quoted in the New York Sun as saying: ' ' The conditions around us are to lead in a few decades to a struggle the like of which has never been seen in this country, and it will be with a generation that will not believe in anything at all." There is no denying the danger ahead of us. The question is, how is it to be averted. Why of course, we are told, "by the churches." But they are empty, and it is a physical impossibility to reach the people through that agen- cy. They are not there to hear, and even if they were, the jarring and dis- cord of the preachers would soon drive them out. "Let men think then, and their reason will guide them aright." As a matter of fact, it is a prevailing im- pression with our more than self-suffi- cient fellow countrymen that each man is a law unto himself, quite competent to formulate his religious views and frame his code of morals. If we have a national religion, it is that. However flattering such an assump- tion may be to our self-conceit, it is in flat contradiction with reason and ex- perience. Think out his own religion ! Can the mud-stained laborer who per- haps has taken his dinner in the ditch and who stumbles home after his hard day's work to a miserable tenement amid a swarm of squalling children to snatch a few hours rest for the toil of the morrow, do any independent think- ing on the abstruse matters of morality or religion? Can the mechanic who slaves at his bench, or the clerk at his desk, or the merchant, engrossed in money making, or even the lawyer or physician absorbed by the anxieties of his profession, sit down and ponder the vast mysteries of the spiritual world ? Taking man as he is, actuated by passion, absorbed in business pursuits, apathetic from constitutional sluggish- ness and averse to anything outside the domain of sense, though he may attain to some religious knowledge there are a thousand chances to one that he will not bestir himself at all, and there are more chances still that if he does, he will blunder in the most elementary truth. But above all that, there are The Only True American School Systern. mysteries which no man can fathom and for which instruction is indispensa- ble. We ask a policeman or a passer- by to guide us in a strange city; can we all unaided find the path that leads over the limitless universe of the un- seen? If the meanest handicraft as well as the most learned profession re- quires an instructor who perhaps has spent years in acquiring the knowledge he possesses, surely an acquisition of the sublime truths of religion requires similar assistance. The mere motor- man, or the man with the hoe needs some one to show him how. It is in the very nature of things. We cannot or do not evolve knowledge out of our helpless ignorance. Aid must come from above, and as the beneficent sun- shine beaming on the cold and lifeless earth calls up the flowers and the fruitage that delight and sustain the world, so in the realm of the intellect, the brightness of the knowledge that our fellow-men as well as the generations that have preceded us have acquired, must dispel the darkness of our mind and make it beautiful and safe with the light it imparts. Where shall we find this teacher in religious matters ? Where shall we find him especially for our children, who assuredly are not independent thinkers in any thing and most of all in matters of religion. ' ' There are two ways to solve the problem," says the Educational Review which voices the best non-Catholic views on this particular subject. ' ' One is to teach religion in the churches, Sunday-schools and homes, and such is the average Protestant position; the second is to teach it in the schools as Catholics and Lutherans insist." With regard to the first, he makes the astounding admission that " Prot- estants are shockingly lax in fulfilling their obligations in this respect, and still more shockingly incapable of rising to an appreciation of their responsi- bility." "The other," he continues, viz. : ' ' that of teaching religion in schools, is fraught with too many diffi- culties to be even thought of." Deploring ' ' the shocking laxity of the average Protestant in appreciating his responsibility," and animadverting that Catholics and Lutherans are not alone in insisting upon religion being taught in the schools (for Methodists and Episcopalians and Congregational- ists "and Friends, the Evening Post of August 31, 1 90 1 assures us, are doing the same thing), let us ask what are the reasons why the project as Lutherans and Catholics view it, cannot be even thought of. The first reason alleged is the uproar which the proposition caused when first mooted • in the recent revision of the Charter of the City of New York. To this we reply that it is a humili- ating confession for men who boast so much of the strenuous life to be balked in any honest project by a little noise. After admitting that religion is an es- sential element in education, that at- tempts to substitute an independent morality are fatuous and have signally failed; that the project which the aver- age Protestant favors holds out no hope of realization; that it is indispensable for the welfare of the nation, and that Catholics and Lutherans and others, have successfully adopted it; and then to retreat because a few noisy and ob- streperous demagogues are averse to it, is to act in a manner that is not credit- able to American manhood. If the course is just, necessary and feasible, if the country's salvation depends on it, why not follow it at any cost ? Its op- ponents counted precisely on this faint- heartedness and must be greatly amused at the haste of its adherents to display the white feather. The second reason against teaching religion in schools, though not explic- itly formulated, is that it is not Ameri- can. If it is not, it ought to be. But it is American and essentially so ; and only re- cent times have brought about the pres- The Only True American School System. ent dangerous conditions. Harvard was founded for training Calvinist ministers; Yale was intensely Calvinistic as were all the subsidiary schools which supplied both colleges with students. The old New England primary schools were thoroughly religious, and in the quaint Puritan phraseology of the day were mainly ' ' to circumvent the devices of Satan. ' ' The Evening Post of Septem- ber 7, 1 90 1, says that at the present day, of the 1,957 secondary schools with their 200,000 pupils and 9,410 teachers (and of course the number is vastly larger in the primary grades), more than one-half are strictly religious. Are they un-American ? To say that we are tampering with the Palladium of Ameri- can Liberty by advocating religious teaching, is not to know the school history of this country, and to be blind to the, fact that not only can there be no liberty without religion, but that it is a descent into paganism with its horrible and necessary tyranny of soul and body. Instead of being a Palladium of Liberty, irreligious and unreligious schools become the Wooden Horse that will destroy the city. The enthusiasm for the schools as at present constituted, springs from a groundless assumption of their superi- ority to any other system that any one has hitherto conceived ; and this im- pression is sedulously cultivated in the minds of the pupils themselves and of the public at large, and with it, of course, a corresponding contempt for what are commonly known as parochial schools. The esteem and the contempt are both without foundation. In the first place we might animad- vert that it is a peculiar grace of God to see ourselves as others see us, es- pecially if those others are our friends. Other men's views about us are often revelations. Thus the N. Y. Evening Post of March 19, 1900, in a review of a book on the History of Education condemns ' ; the unstinted praise that is given to modern school books and modern systems of education. It is enough to enter a modern school room and see how these systems are applied, with the very minimum of genuine re- flection and good sense, to understand at once why it is that the rising gener- ation produce iipon men in the after- noon of life such an impression of feeble- ness.'" The President of the School- master's Association of the United States frankly declared in the annual convention that ' ' it would be better to read a novel of Balzac than to attempt to master some of the pedagogical stuff that is inflicted on the teachers of the present day." Charles Stuart, the ex- School Commissioner of Ohio, writing in the Eorum admits that " our popular education is superficial and does not de- velop mind or character." The Times Supplement of March 31, 1900, informs its readers ' ' that the great political lead- ers of France and England are literary men and inquires why similar cases are rare in the United States." It makes answer that ' ' with us there is more edu- cation but less scholarship," which is an admission of poor education. Besides, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the lamentable condition of many of our public schools as they now exist. Even in the Capital of the coun- try they called from the Senate Investi- gation Committee the scathing report quoted in the N. Y. Tribune April 19, 1900, that "the result of a thorough and fair trial showed a deplorable want of training in the grades the young peo- ple were supposed to have mastered. In history and arithmetic the general aver- age made was not much over fifty per cent. The penmanship was poor and the spelling miserably bad." Senator Stewart, the chairman of the committee, said : ' ' The children seem to have had very indifferent instruction. The teach- ers of to-day are victims of a bad system ; the old fashioned schools did much better work in spite of the fact that the path of learning has been made smoother and many things simplified." In Ala- The Only True American School System. bama the State Board of Examiners have discovered ' ' the most deplorable ignorance, even among men who had received teachers' certificates." The Educational Review May i, 1900, quoting the Courant of St. Paul, Minn. , gives what it terms ' ' a melancholy picture of the deplorable condition of the public schools of that city. ' ' The N.Y. Commercial Advei'tiser, April 14, 1 goo, reports that " charges were made by the Board of Education of Chicago, that the teachers of the public schools fail to instruct the pupils in the most necessary branches of learning ; one trustee asserting that half the teachers, most of whom are said to be graduates of the local high schools, could not speak or write English, or spell cor- rectly. The superintendent admitted that many of the teachers were deficient in these points, but that the fault was with the system in which they were in- structed and in which they were in- structing others." Finally the dis- tinguished Dr. Eliot, of Harvard, la- ments that even the public schools of Boston, which were supposed to be irre- proachable, "are not what they were fifty years ago. ' ' This ought to be sufficient to dispose forever of that ridiculous old fetish, before which so many have been down on their knees for years past and to which they have ascribed so many mar- vellous and supernatural powers. On the public school question the average American is curiously superstitious. Such being the case, and in the face of such authority it would be silly to deny it, it is manifestly improper to look with disdain upon schools which are not of the public schqol system and to taunt them with inferiority. The retort is in order ' ' Physician cure thyself. ' ' It is annoying, on the other hand, to hear such reproaches from Catholics, espe- cially when their personal qualifications scarcely fit them for passing judgment in such matters. Moreover it is alto- gether unfair to pile a mountain on a man and then reproach him with inac- tivity. P Catholics all over the land, al- though crushed by school taxes for other men's children, have been com- pelled to burden themselves besides with heavy outlays for their own. Aided by thousands of religious men and women who have without compensa- tion consecrated themselves to the work, , they have erected schools that at times equal in their equipment some of the best built by the State ; out of their hard earnings, they have disbursed mil- lions of dollars, and without the cost of a penny to the State are educating now more than 1,000,000 children. Not only that, but they have saved the country from dishonor before the civ- ilized world. There are thousands of children on the street to-day, for whom the public schools have no accommoda- tions ; vast numbers of others can have but a half session for the same reason. Suppose the million Catholic children of the parochial schools were added to this abandoned multitude. Catho- lics assumed the burden of educating them. The service is not recognized but suspected, ^r Nor is the education of Catholic schools below grade. We have not heard that their graduates have any difficulty in securing admission to the High and Normal schools. On the contrary, the percentage of success is remarkably large. In competitions for West Point and Annapolis, parish schools easily carry off the prize and where there has been a trial of strength with the same text-books and the same course, as in Poughkeepsie and else- where, Catholic schools were invar- iably in the lead. In fact, there is a suspicion abroad that the cancelling of school contracts in some places was due to that fact. We have no means at our disposal to institute a comparison all along the line ; but Catholics are the same the world over, and the recent Examina- tion Results in Ireland, for example, The Only True American School System. show the exclusively Catholic Univer- sity College of Dublin, far and away be- yond all the others. Similar success is noted in England, and the troubles in France emphasize the same truth. There is not a shadow of a doubt that the popularity of the Catholic schools de- termined their suppression and im- pelled the infidel government to seize the establishments and turn out the teachers as beggars in the street. The correspondent of the Evening Post of September 3, 1901, impliedly admits it. Why should they not achieve such results ? Religion does not make peo- ple stupid. The brightest minds that modern civilization has known have been the product of religious schools ; and Catholics especially have sacrificed too much to be satisfied with an infer- ior education. Give us a fair field and no favor. That is all we ask. This leads us to the third and real reason of the opposition to religious teaching in the schools viz. : the fear of Catholicity; the dread that Catholics will profit by it most. ' ' Well what if they do profit most ? " " Why, such a result would be a menace to the coun- try." "Indeed!" "Yes, there is some- thing about every Catholic that pre- vents him from being a genuine Ameri- can." If not expressed in so many words there is a vague undefined feeling in men's minds that such is the case. Strange fatality ! I am a Catholic and cannot be a true American. I am thus a man without a country, and yet with greater rights perhaps than others to possess one. In this connection there are some cherished memories almost romantic but nevertheless deeply religious which cluster around a certain obscure hill that juts out on the southern bank of the Mo- hawk. As we stand on its crest the eye follows the leisurely windings of the river and rests on rich meadow lands that come down to the water edge heavy with the harvest, while glimpses are caught of far off farms and homesteads high up on the slope of the receding mountains. Out of the great marts which commerce has built all along the valley, from the Hudson to the Lakes, the rumbling trains speed with their precious freight along the iron roads, either side of the stream, on their way to the great Metropolis and the ocean beyond. The commingling of all these beauties of untouched and culti- vated nature with the frequent appari- tions of the great convoys of industry which traverse but do not invade this beautiful region, affords an ever vary- ing delight to the eye, all day long, but mostly in the brightness of the early morning, or when the setting sun clothes the scene with splendor. But the picture fades into another — a gloomy one of the long past when that country was a wilderness, two-hundred and sixty years ago. The hill on which we are standing was covered with In- dian wigwams, and in the midst of the squalid camp, toiled a man to whom much of the transformation that we now see around us is to be attributed. It is mid-winter ; he is almost naked and pierced to the bone by the bitter cold. Long scars on his limbs show where the savages had cut the quivering flesh to eat it before his eyes; burning coals had left their marks on him ; and the livid bruises revealed the places where the ponderous clubs had struck him. His fingers had been torn off by the teeth of his captors and for a year and a half he labored among them striving to force some gleam of Christianity into their degraded natures until at last his head was cloven by the blow of the toma- hawk. On a stake of the palisade that ghastly head was fixed and his mangled body flung into the waters of the river. That man died for the civilization of this country, and it was twenty years before the English sailed into the har- bor of New York. He was a Catholic, a priest and a Jesuit. Was he, there- fore, an enemy of this country ? Were not those characteristics the very reasons The Only True American School System. why he gave up his life for his fellow- men and the redemption of this land of ours in whose civilization and greatness we now rejoice ? Even if he were the only martyr that the Church has given to America (and there are many) his blood would have written upon this land of ours that a Catholic is not an alien here. The first pioneers of civili- zation in this western world were Catholics, and the Catholic cross was planted on these shores, not only by Columbus in San Salvador, but centu- ries before by Lief -Eric- in Massachu- setts. The names of Catholic saints and Catholic mysteries are stamped upon our rivers and lakes and moun- tains, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the right of occupation was admit- ted long before those of other faiths entered Boston harbor or the river James ; Catholics were conspicuous in the Revolutionary struggle; they fought for their country in 1812 while Puritan New England was ringing bells for English victories ; they led the nation's troops in the war of Secession and died by thousands as privates in the ranks, from Bull Run to Appomatox ; they fought against Catholic Mexico, and later on against Catholic Spain ; they have covered the country with monu- ments of charity in their asylums and hospitals, giving hostages thus of loy- alty to their native land; hundreds of thousands of their chosen ones have relinquished all the delights of home to succor the poor and afflicted ; as a class they are remarkable for their ab- sence from the ranks of those enemies of all government, the Socialists and Anarchists ; they are honored in every walk of life for their ability, integrity and success, and yet, in spite of all this, are objects to many of suspicion and distrust. In fact, have we not been called upon in the press by one who is, apparently, a public man, and who admits the great benefits accruing to this country from Catholicity, notably, ' ' because it trains the young in a way to secure good morals and respect property rights and the rights of others," to demand that the Head of the Church should declare that he har- bors no designs against this nation. In other words, we are saving our country and yet are suspected of de- stroying it. He did not mean it, of course, for his purpose is apparently benevolent, but these are the tactics of the man who seizes a purse and cries : ' ' Stop thief, ' ' in order to distract at- tention from himself. Not we, but you who are refusing religious education to the rising generation, and preventing us from giving it to our own, are bring- ing ruin on the country. We really are true Americans and not you. Far from conflicting with the patri- otic spirit, Catholicity fosters and pro- tects it. Is an Irishman less Irish be- cause he is a Catholic ? a Spaniard less Spanish ? a Frenchman less French be- cause he is a Catholic ? On the con- trary, their nationality is intensified be- cause of their faith; for Catholicity incul- cates patriotism not as a sentiment but as a sacred duty ; and if an American is a Catholic, or rather because he is one, he not only does not yield to any man in love of his native land, but impelled by the teaching of his church will be more loyal, and more self-sacri- ficing in time of peace or stress of war than others who are not of the faith. In this connection it may be well to quote the opinion of Senator Hoar, the venerable statesman, whose long years of noble and unselfish devotion to the country's best interests entitle him to a hearing. He was endorsing the nomi- nation of the Governor of Massachusets and in referring to the subject of an- archy, said : "I believe if every Protes- tant were to be stricken down by a lightning stroke, our brethren of the Catholic faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of true and liberal freedom. I believe if every man of native birth were to die this day, the men of foreign birth who have come The Only True American School System. here to seek homes and liberty under the shadow of the Republic would carry on the Republic in God's ap- pointed way." Y The Catholic Church has no designs on the Public Schools. It is satisfied to leave them as they are for those who wish them, but it does not want and will not have for its children, in the peri- od of their defencelessness, an educa- tion which it is convinced will ultimately make those children a curse to their country, by robbing them of those prin- ciples of morality which are indispen-' sable in forming them into honorable and pure men and women. It has lost too much, even here in America, by contact with irreligion ; it has lived too long in the world not to know that religion is nec- essary to prevent the ruin of a nation, and it has too many horrible examples in the crimes of the apostate govern- ments of to-day, to allow it to sit idly by, without attempting to prevent simi- lar disasters here. It will not be satis- / fied with the odious hour after school, which in the child-mind makes religion penal, but it wants the atmosphere of its schools to be such that religion will enter as a motive and a guide of what is to be done and avoided. It wants the child to begin to be what he ought to be later on in life, honest, pure, faithful in his duty to his God and his fellowmen, as the light of his religion points out and as its sacramental helps assist him to become. It does not want the child to imagine that religion is an affair of Sunday and has nothing to do with the rest of the week. ^\ It does not comprehend the offer of a well-known President of a Protestant University to teach Catholicity by lectures. Such a pretence displays a deplorable inability to appreciate what religion really is. Faith is not truth alone but life. But in the most positive and aggres- sive tones we are told : ' ' Separate schools are absolutely out of the ques- tion. What we want is homogeneity of education in order to blend the diverse nationalities of our land into one com- mon Americanism." It may be noted in passing that this proclamation is often made by men who have had no public school education, or who have never been inside Ameri- can schools at all. To this challenge we reply that ho- mogeneity of education is absurd ; it is undemocratic ; it is socialistic ; it is un-American ; it is often a political scheme, and it is unchristian and irre- ligious. You might as well try to have the trees of the forest with the same sized leaves ; you might as well insist upon men belonging to the same political party, or pursuing the same occupation, living in the same kind of house, eating the same food or wearing the same style of dress, or thinking the same kind of thought and arriving at the same con- clusions by the same methods. You have no more right to make me homo- geneous with you than I to make you homogeneous with me. A resemblance sometimes may be very undesirable. The strength and beauty of the uni- verse and of everything in it, whether of the natural or spiritual order, is not a unity of monotony and sameness, but a unity of variety, a unity achieved by an autiiority and influence that holds the infinitely divergent types together and makes them all cooperate to a common end. In that the beauty of the world consists, but our apostles of homo- geneity conceive it as an asphalt road over which the educational roller has passed. It might be good to remember that streets of tar, in spite of the roller, become rivers of fire in a conflagration. Bryce, in his American Commo>nvealth, pointed out that ' ' our greatest social danger lay in the production of dead levels." Besides, who are you, my friend, that, you decide off hand that your type of the homogeneous is cor- rect ? And lastly, why are you con- tinually proclaiming that the aim of the American school is to develop indi- IO The Only True American School System. viduality, while in the same breath you demand homogeneity ? The two quali- ties are contradictory. Secondly, the scheme is violently undemocratic. If homogeneity of edu- cation is really and honestly essential for true Americanism, then abolish forthwith all your great institutions like Yale and Harvard, which are supposed to differentiate their pupils, socially at least, from all other Americans, and which are even differentiated from each other in tone and tradition. The ' ' Yale spirit" is not Harvard's, nor Harvard's Princeton's, nor Princeton's Cornell's. More than that. Close all your ex- pensive private schools which are es- tablished everywhere by Americans, yet which are so many sacred and inviola- ble preserves for the children of the rich — for no plebeian enters there — and dismiss your private governess or be ready to let the public official knock at your door and inquire if what she teaches corresponds in time and matter with the programme of the State. Does this seem absurd ? It is done in Germany now and such inspection was seriously proposed in a recent school law before the Legislature of the State of New York. If your rich man does not send his children to the public school lest they should sit side by side with the children of his servants, or of the mechanic or laborer, why should I not be allowed (not that I avoid the poor, for we are mostly poor) to with- draw mine for greater than social or sanitary reasons ? Or does the scheme propose that only the children of the poor should be thus homogeneously huddled together ? If so, and such is its intent, it is class legislation ; it is undemocratic and unjust. Thirdly, homogeneity is a foreign importation. It is French and not American. It is precisely what Wal- deck Rousseau is imposing on France with an iron hand at the present mo- ment. He uses the same shibboleth of homogeneity and is perpetrating this great crime of the century by robbery and expatriation. It is the old political scheme of Napoleon Bonaparte, who carried it out so vigorously that his Minister of Education could boast that at any hour of the day he could tell what every child in France was reciting. And the project of a national university in the United States with its centre in Washington as mooted here, is nothing but a recrudescence of that discredited foreign plan of intellectual and political slavery. We object to all this homo- geneity, 'whether in nation, state or city, because it is absolutely un-American, because it is state socialism and because, just as Bonaparte brutally declared that the fundamental purpose of his national university was to inculcate loyalty to the Napoleonic dynasty, so in the same way, homogeneity in city, state or nation will tend infallibly to perpetuate the sway of the political party that hap- pens to be in power. In point of fact, the declaration of the National Edu- cation Association which is furthering this project bluntly avows that its pur- pose is "to lead public sentiment into legislation when necessary." This is novel in America, but is not American. We object to it most emphatically for educational reasons also ; because just as the Napoleonic university has wrecked genuine education throughout France, as official investigations have shown, the same results are sure to follow here if this scheme is carried out. No better proof of it could be given than the very Declaration which is launched by this National Association of American Edu- cation. Its framers style themselves "educational experts," and yet are guilty in several parts of the document of an obscurity of thought, an inconse- quence of reasoning and an incorrect- ness of language that would disgrace a dull boy in a common school. We object to it likewise for patriotic reasons. And this position of ours ought to have especial force at this ter- rible moment of our country's history. The Only True American School System. ii We find in the Herald of September 12, 1 90 1, that the fourth article in the anarchist programme is " unreligious schools." Is not that reason enough to multiply our religious schools as a breakwater, and to force all men to co- operate in that federation of churches which is called for by some of the most distinguished men in New York (New- York Sun, September 12, 1901), "in behalf of the spiritual, physical, educa- tional and social interests of family life. ' ' We have all along seen the perils which are now striking such terror into the heart of the country. Lastly, it is idle to say that the homo- geneity intended is merely one of lan- guage or of Americanism. Can these results not be achieved just as well in de- nominational schools ? Diversity of language among the children of the im- migrants need not worry us. A walk in Mulberry street, in the Italian quar- ter, will convince us that the sidewalk does more than the school in that re- spect. The children of the second or even of the first generation do not speak the language of their parents. Nor do they want to be Americans with a prefix. They are not German or Irish or Italian Americans, but just as ardent Americans as those whose par- ents were immigrants a hundred years ago. That is not the result about which any sensible man should concern himself, but there is one which must in- evitably follow as a consequence of this unintelligent jumbling together of the children of divergent and conflicting re- ligious beliefs ; a result which we dare not say was intended or perhaps even foreseen by the majority of our people, but which, nevertheless, as Protestant educators all over the land, as well as Protestant bishops and ministers, are pointing out, is threatening the very existence of the nation; a homogeneity, namely, not of language nor of Ameri- canism, but a homogeneity of irreligion; the elimination and practical negation of all Christian beliefs during five con- secutive days of every week of the child's life, with nothing to counteract it on Sunday ; for these children, like their parents, are not church goers. It is the cancelling of Christianity from the life of the nation. This is homo- geneity. Is it Americanism ? And are we to be looked upon with suspi- cion because we do not send our million of children to join the throng upon whom this robbery is being committed ? Perhaps you have not intended or foreseen it here ; but it looks as if you have, for you are ruthlessly at work with the same axe in the Philippines, where without diversity of sects to ex- cuse you — for they are all Catholics there — without the plea of an ignorant population — for they are better edu- cated than many of our own natives — in spite of promises and treaties and merely to satisfy the demands of this blind idolatry, you flood the country with teachers who cannot fail to sneer at the religion of their pupils in spite of your injunctions to the contrary, and you contemptuously sweep out of their school-rooms every symbol of Catholic faith with the necessary result of dis- paraging it in the eyes of the children. This is homogeneity. Is it American- ism ? Be quite sure that if you make bad Catholics out of the Filipinos you will not make them good Americans. Meantime, in those same regions, you not only do not interfere in the slightest with the subjects of the Sultan of Sulu, who are nothing but degraded Ma- hometans and who practise their relig- ion, polygamy included ; you do not force upon them your homogeneous education, but carefully, and by law, protect them in all they choose to do, along with their horrible institution of slavery. Is that Americanism ? Is it Americanism to treat your fellow-Chris- tians worse than idolaters and Mahom- etans ? It is not even homogeneity. We blush for the illiberality, bigotry and injustice of our countrymen both here and abroad, or at least for their 12 The Only True American School System. inability to see what they are doing and we wonder what has become of our fa- mous American boast: " Americans love fair play. " Or is it all bluster ? That we are permitting ourselves, blindly or not, to be de-christianized is clear from the Report of the National Educational Association held in Chi- cago February 27, 1900, where this dreadful utterance was made, appar- ently assented to by the Association and published subsequently in the Edu- cational Review over the signature of Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia College, New York. "Five men," it declares, "Rous- seau, Hegel, Frcebel, Pestalozzi and Herbart, have given to the nineteenth century education most of its philosoph- ical foundation and not a few of its methods. From them have come the main influences which have shaped education for a hundred years." In amazement and distress, we may well apply to the National Educational As- sociation, which formulated this state- ment or permitted it, the words of Christ on the Cross : ' ' Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Putting aside Pestalozzi and Frcebel who were personal failures as educators, we find in this list Hegel who was a frantic pantheist ; Herbart who was a disciple of that other pantheist Fichte and who said of God that ' ' He could not be known and for practical pur- poses it was not desirable that He should be " ; and at the head of the list we find to our horror Jean Jacques Rousseau who is properly put as the chief coryphaeus in this national dance of death. Listen to what he says, if you can do so with patience. ' ' The child who is being educated is to acknowledge no authority. If you compel him to take your word you teach him to be a dupe later on in life ; he is to indulge his de- sires unchecked," — gluttony is given as an example, and he says, ' ' even if the child harms himself, do not reprove him — which implies that of course he is to be given free rein in the other cravings of nature ; self-love is the only natural quality to be recognized in the child and not only indulged but cultivated ; he should hear nothing whatever about God ; he is to be inspired with con- tempt for the ministers of religion who ought to be expelled from the commu- nity, as not only useless but pernicious to the State. ' If I had to paint a pic- ture of disgicsting stupidity, ' he says, ' I would paint a pedant teaching cate- chism to his pupils ; and if I wanted to make a child a fool I would oblige him. to explain what he says in reciting his catechism. Getting him to accept mysteries is accustoming him early to lie. ' He is not to be taught any relig- ion, and if there is to be a common creed it must be made up of the funda- mental dogmas of Judaism, Mahom- etanism and Christianity, and the one who shall teach anything contrary to it is to be banished from the country. The pupil must be taught that the ex- ercise of authority is tyranny ; the possession of property, robbery, and the laws of the nation fetters on his liberty." These are Rousseau's own words who, be it remembered was a man whose life was disgustingly immoral, and who in one of his books was shame- less enough to enter into the most lubricous details of what he did. His teaching, openly and professedly incul- cates immorality, atheism, anarchy, and of course by an immediate deduction, assassination. X And yet we are told by the National Educational Association that "his is the main influence which has shaped the education of the nine- teenth century." X Do you want your children to be edu- cated under such influences ? Do you want them to be the future anarchists who will wreck the domestic and politi- cal fabric of this country, and be the frenzied assassins who will assert their The Only True American School System. 1 3 contempt for all authority by putting bullets in the bodies of your future Presidents ; and who will surely, if God does not intervene, bring about the same horrors in this country as the teachings of this very man effected in France a hundred years ago in causing that almost diabolical uprising, the French Revolution ? If you do, we Catholics do not ; and for that reason we want religious edu- cation. That is our only reason for opposing the system which, in our opinion, if the National Educational As- sociation's programme alone be taken as a test, although there are many others at hand to excite the same fear, is an awful menace to our country. The New York Herald of September 22 in a striking cartoon represents a little girl as standing before the door of a public school which is shut against her because of the inability of the State to give her an elementary education, and she is uttering the words : "I see this country's finish." No, poor child! not because you cannot learn a little spelling or arithmetic do ' ' you see this country's finish." It is better for you to remain out on the street, if inside the school, the principles are taught and the methods adopted of those enemies of God and humanity who revile au- thority, despise religion and blaspheme God. We hope that the statement of the National Educational Associa- tion is not universally true, but if that influence prevails then not merely every sensible man but even the child at the door can truly say : "I see this coun- try' s finish." Appalled by the recent disaster that has befallen the nation in the assassin- ation of the President, there is already talk of a common religion being taught in the public schools, and it is strongly urged by prominent Protestant clergy- men and even by a bishop. This is nothing but Rousseau's idea and a fur- thering of his infamous project. It is the modern substitute for State Pagan- ism. When the Caesars were perplexed by the multitudes of beliefs in the world, they obtained uniformity of worship by commanding an universal worship of the state. That hastened the ruin of the empire. Caesarism of any kind, espec- ially in religious matters, is dangerous in a nation, but most of all in a free re- public. Moreover any such mad scheme is absolutely unrealizable. It is a pagan idea and has been revived in modern times by one who hated both religion and the state. Because we love our country we oppose that project. It is un- American and unchristian. It is especially, we insist, because of this feature that Catholics are antago- nistic not, remember, to the public schools as such, but as they are at pres- ent conducted. Am I not perfectly within my rights ? Am I not wise and prudent, and sincerely and truly patri- otic? At the very moment that the leading Protestant educationalists throughout the land are clamoring for religion in education as a safeguard for the Republic, I find that under the pre- text of homogeneity and fictitious Amer- icanism, there is a scheme to rob my child in the hours that he is away from me, of what I regard as his best posses- sion ; to cheat him out of what I have labored to put in his little mind, the religion, namely, for which I have paid so dearly, and on account of which I am still suffering. Meantime, I ask my- self, why if I am endeavoring to bring up my child a Christian, I should be punished for it? And why from the schools which I support should Christi- anity be ostracized ? Are we not being de-christianized rapidly enough with- out having our public servants at high salaries accelerate the work. But I am told : ' ' You are not com- pelled to send your children to the pub- lic schools. " ' ' If I cannot avoid doing so except at a considerable expense, I am. Surely that is compelling me. " "Do you expect the state then to pay for your schools ? " " Certainly. " " Never, 14 The Only True American School System. I am answered promptly and harshly ; not a penny of the public funds for sectarian purposes." "Softly, Mr. Official, if it is public money, I have a right to my share. I am of the people. You are the servant and not the proprie- tor, and are to distribute the public funds justly and not according to your moods and prejudices. " " It is no prej- udice," is the reply, " it is against the whole spirit of the country to pay for the support of any religious theory. You might as well ask us to support your churches." (New York Sun, Sept. 16, 1901.) " As to its being against the whole spirit of the country we may dis- agree, but do not worry about the churches. The ' religious theory ' is taught there, and nothing else. We are not asking you to help them. But in the schools it is different. I am giving all the secular training that is given in the State Schools. Why should not that be paid for ? As for teaching the religious theory, I'll pay for that." "But you must pay the public-school tax like every one else. " Every dollar of it ; only, I object to paying it twice, which no one else does. But if I teach my children the same things that are taught in the common schools and teach them better, and add, over and above, of my own volition and at my own expense, something which not only elevates their characters as men and women, but is absolutely necessary to the country's salvation ; if I make them genuine Americans and base their patriotism on a more solid foundation than you can ; if while you are com- pelled to accept any teacher that may be foisted on you by political or other influences, whether he be a Christian or a scoffer, and about whose manner of life I have only your guarantee, whose opinion I possibly may not value, while I can select those of whose abilities and exalted character I am almost absolutely sure ; if you are guided in your system by incapable men whose whole time is taken up in commercial pursuits, or political schemes ; while I am enjoying the privilege of the learning and ex- perience of those whose whole life is not only devoted but consecrated to the work ; if with all that, I am perfectly willing to admit government inspectors, either of the structure or of the re- quirements of hygiene, and even of the studies (barring of course religion, with which the state has nothing to do) why, pray, when I am conferring such inestimable advantages on the state, which even those who are not friendly to me acknowledge, should I not get the benefit of the school-tax which I pay to the state ? This is what puzzles me. That I am a sectarian is none of your business ; that I am an American citizen ought to ensure me my rights. As to the ' garb' of my teachers, that is as much my privilege as it is the state's to uniform its letter- carriers, or a private corporation its of- ficials. But more than that I am taught in American History that my country severed its connection with England because it was taxed without represent- ation ; that is to say, because it was left without the power of determining how the taxes which were levied on them should be applied ; but now I dis- cover that you, who are presumably not an Englishman, not only do not permit me to say how they should be applied, but you give my money to somebody else. Is this a new phase of American- ism ? If I were a criminal I could un- derstand how I should be debarred, but I am an honest hardworking man for whom every dollar counts ; who never have been before the courts, who have the interests of my country at heart, who never can get away from it like my rich friends; who have never stopped at any sacrifice to bring up my children honestly, and if I with my co-religionists have spent millions of money to give them the education which the wisest men in the land, Prot- estants as well as Catholics, admit now to be not merely the best but the only The Only True American School System. 15 safeguard of my country, because it in- culcates religion, why should I not be fairly and squarely dealt with and get the benefit of what is levied on me for education ? ' ' " It cannot be done," you say. " It is impossible to make any such division. ' ' Amazing ! You had no difficulty in collecting the funds in spite of the diversity of the sources from which they are derived ; and when I take up my paper in the morning I read that the Board of Apportionment regularly and without trouble assigns money to hospitals, asylums, roads, lamp-posts, schools, etc. Is there any insuperable difficulty in proceeding further with the division, or is the famous American in- stinct for mathematics disappearing? Can you divide by two but must you no longer be asked to divide by four ? Besides you exempt these schools from taxation because of the benefits they confer on the Commonwealth. That is subsidizing them. What is to prevent you then from doing a little more and making your recognition keep pace with the good you receive. He is not a very generous man who is satisfied that I should enrich him and who takes all I give without thanks. One ought to pay for what he gets. Moreover the distribution is very feasible. For the last few years we have been wearied to death by hearing that we are all Anglo-Saxon and that our ed- ucation especially has that stamp on it. If that be really so, why can we not do what Anglo-Saxon countries are do- ing in this respect; namely England and Germany which are not only intensely Protestant, but where Protestantism is the state-religion, to attack which or even to differ from which, was at one time high treason? England has its denominational schools ; the various sects insist on having them ; the Protes- tant Bishops in a recent memorial af- firmed as a principle that all elementary education should be paid for from the public purse; and the Government not only does not object but assists most liberally. It has no fear of Englishmen lacking the proper kind of homogen- eity. Even in Calvinistic Scotland which has been notoriously rancorous against Catholicity since the Reformation, a similar and even better condition ob- tains. The London Tablet of August 3, T901, reports Mr. Balfour as saying in Parliament: "I come from a coun- try in which education is under popular control. It is almost universally relig- ious ; and not only that but it is dog- matic. It knows nothing of the strange compromises which are the subjects of debate in the English school boards. Frankly under proper control in Scot- land are taught the Shorter Catechism in the great majority of schools, the Anglican Catechism in other schools, and Roman Catholic Theology in still others. So that we have dogmatic theology reconciled with that popular control which the right honorable gen- tleman desires." Could we ask more from bitter old Scotia ? What is most convincing is that in Germany, which is admittedly the greatest Protestant nation of the world and which distinguished itself by a re- lentless persecution of Catholicity a generation ago, the Government not only permits but fosters separate schools for the various sects of the Empire, Catholicity included. With them education without relig- ion is inconceivable, and the Govern- ment insists upon it even against the will of the parents ; so much so that in a recent case where a Socialist protest- ed against religious instruction, the court ruled that the child should be sent to the school of the denomination which the father had left. Laymen are trained especially for the work of teach- ing catechism, and in the case of Cath- olic schools, the priest is generally school inspector, and the parish priest has the right to enter during school i6 The Only True American School System. hours and teach ; which he generally does once or twice a week. In the several hundred neutral or mixed schools, religion is part of the curric- ulum. The same holds good for col- leges or gymnasia where religious in- struction is obligatory. What is most curious about it all is that during the persecution of the Kul- turkampf, while Bismarck was shutting up churches and sending bishops and priests to exile or prison, the schools were not interfered with. Had he done so, Catholicity would have been oblit- erated from Germany. It was God who prevented him, for in such an event Germany would not now have its staunch Catholic defenders against socialism and anarchy. The great Prot- estant Empire did not fear to have its ruler appoint a Catholic Chancellor who was the brother of a Roman Cardinal. We broadminded Americans are a long distance from that attitude of good sense. What do our fellow-countrymen want? Religion is indispensable for the salvation of the nation. It is not taught to the vast majority of the peo- ple in the churches. It can be taught only in the schools. The most con- spicuous men among us, clergy and laity alike, of all denominations, demand that it must be taught there, or we are lost ; and that a religion must be taught which is not a composite hodge-podge of all religions, viz. : a natural religion which has been pronounced by the most competent educational authorities to be " fatuous, "and after being tried, a miserable failure. Lastly, it is beyond all question true, that the establishment of separate religious schools is feasible ; for the most intensely Protestant na- tions of the world insist upon them ; have no difficulty in adjusting them- selves to the diversity of creeds, and have found by experience that instead of dividing the country the method welds it together, by permitting men to have their dogmatic differences, while at the same time inducing them to make their otherwise conflicting sects unite, each in its own way, to swell the great current of morality, which, precisely because it comes from these different and distinct sources, reaches, as nothing else can, every class and condition of society. Are we to confess ourselves inferior to Germany, England and Scotland in practical matters? Are we, perhaps, intellectually dull, or have we grown to be unfair ; or in spite of the present alarming condition of things are we losing our senses ? We have indeed lost our senses to some extent ; but the awful crisis through which we are passing has re- vealed to us the precipice yawning at our feet. As for ability in practical matters, we have it to a greater degree than other people, and can more easily adjust ourselves to circumstances ; and lastly, though perhaps misin- formed, we are not wilfully unfair. It can be safely admitted that if these truths are placed squarely be- fore the American people, they will frankly acknowledge and honestly ad- mit them. But this is to be done, not by underhand methods, not by dicker- ing with politicians who will smile and smile, and promise, and then leave us on our back as helpless as before, but by reiterating our position and compelling the people to see that our demand for religious education is not prompted by any sinister design against our fellow- countrymen or their liberties, but by an ineradicable conscientious conviction which events are proving to be well founded, that religion is necessary for- the preservation of our country, that it must be implanted in the hearts and the lives of the growing generation, and that there is no other way of doing it than by resorting to the rational, feasi- ble and the now widely admitted method of teaching it in the separate schools of the various denominations. 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