Untitled article by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 9, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 40

The Veritable Facts.

By Editor

WHAT we want, and ask for, is facts. We can supply principles, and offer their application; but we must get the facts by information. We cannot invent or deduce them.

We tried to get the facts about the relation of the Roman Catholics to our public schools; but we did not get all of them in our issue of three weeks ago. We gave an account of the more noted cases, those that had come to our knowledge; but some were not included in the many articles then published. We will add a few obtained since from Iowa.

Having seen in the Advance a brief reference to the public schools in Dubuque as allowing the Catholic catechism to be taught in some of them, we wrote to the Superintendent of Public Schools of that city, and received from Mr. Hardie, Secretary of the Board of Education, an absolute denial. That seemed conclusive. But it appears that the Advance had confused the city of Dubuque with the country districts in the same and an adjoining county, and that what was not true of Dubuque was true of the neighborhood about it. We give the facts as stated to us by a correspondent; and so full and circumstantial are they that we cannot help believing them. Here we have an extraordinary illustration of what the Catholic Church has done in a community of Catholic foreigners cast upon these shores, unaffected by American ideas and American civilization.

The Rev. Charles O. Brown, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Dubuque, writes us the following facts, from his own personal observation and investigation, about which there can be no doubt:—

At Key West, three miles southwest of Dubuque, the public school is in the same yard with the Catholic church, and is taught by nuns, who teach the Roman catechism as a regular study. At the time of the writer’s visit school was dismissed that the children might “go riding with the sisters” to a neighboring convent.

At New Mallory and Prairie Creek, the Roman Catholic catechism is regularly taught, the writer himself having been present at one of the recitations on the observance of mass. At Bernard a similar state of things exists. At Wilton, near Asbury, three miles northwest, several years ago a priest ordered, and secured, the removal of the public school from its own to a building of his selection, where he regularly heard recitations in the Catholic catechism, and where he was accustomed to order the whipping of different pupils.

At Holy Cross the public school building was sold years ago, and the public school is now in a building on church property, taught by nuns. All of the above places are in Dubuque County. The following places are in Jackson County. At Spring Brook a state of things very similar to that in Holy Cross exists. At Spruce Creek, Otter Creek, Butler, and many other places, the catechism is taught. At La Motte the school is a building next to the Catholic church, which the former bishop, Smythe persuaded the directors to erect on church land. This was done and the house paid for with public money. The present bishop upon coming into the diocese, laid claim to the property, and has since controlled it. At one time a lawsuit was imminent; but the Catholic who dared to oppose his bishop died, and so the matter was dropped. It is needless to add that the Roman catechism is taught there. At the time of the writer’s visit to that neighborhood, school was dismissed that teacher and pupils might attend a “mission” which priests from Chicago were conducting. But it is reserved for Tete-de-Morte, a little village about eight miles north of Bellevue, to cap this sheaf; for there the public school of District No. 2 is in a four-storied nunnery, which is flanked by a Catholic church and cemetery with a life size image on the cross, in the same yard! Of course, the school is taught by nuns, and equally of course, the Roman catechism is taught. These are only instances. Many more might be given. In many of these schools not only is the catechism taught, but Roman Catholic text-books, filled with exaggerations and perversions of American history, are in use. Facts which have more recently come to the writer persuade him that Clayton and Delaware Counties are also suffering from similar abuses; but to what extent he is not at present ready to say.

Now these facts are just what we wanted to know, and what we wanted the public to know. Here are religious schools, with undoubted sectarian instruction, paid for out of the public funds. The great State of Iowa ought to put an immediate stop to it. We doubt not it is contrary to the State Constitution. If the reading of the King James version of the Holy Bible in the public schools is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, what shall be said of the teaching of the Roman Catholic catechism in the public schools of Iowa? We urge the citizens of Iowa to purge out this injustice and to give their children really undenominational public schools.

Catholics have complained, and justly complained, that Protestant religious services were held in the public schools. We have admitted that they were right, and that injustice has been generally ended. But here we have a disheartening example of what the Roman Catholic Church has done with the public schools when it had the power. Can Catholics justify it? Will they not join with us in correcting the abuse?—New York Independent, Sept. 25.