The Government and Sectarian Schools
By L. A. S.
SOME years ago a battle was fought out in Congress over the question of governmental appropriation of public funds to sectarian schools. It was found at that time that the Catholic Church was profiting more than any other denomination by this gift of public money, having by some means been able to secure from the government, each year, a sum almost equal to the amount secured by all the Protestant denominations combined. On the ground of the violation of Constitutional law and republican principles of government which such appropriations involved, the battle was fought and won by the opponents of the scheme, the appropriations were stopped, and apparently there was an end of the matter unless Congress should yield to sectarian pressure, and reverse its policy. Now, however, a new chapter has been opened in the history of this misappropriation of public money, and proceedings are brought to light which are thoroughly characteristic of the spirit which prompts the effort to reach sectarian hands into the public treasury. It appears that there were funds held in trust by the Department of the Interior for certain Indian tribes, the use of which was regulated by treaties with the tribes and by a federal statute which provided that “treaty funds can not be diverted from the objects for which appropriated without the consent of the tribes, expressed in general council, which consent, stated in writing, must be approved by the Secretary of the Interior.” Papal officials who had fostered the policy of sectarian appropriations to their Indian schools saw in the existence of these funds an opportunity to continue to draw money for their use from another source than the Catholic Church treasury. Nine allotments of money from these funds have been made to Catholic Indian schools, and in most, if not all of these cases, it is admitted, there was no consent in general council of the tribe whose funds were thus diverted, to the proceeding; while on the other hand, it is affirmed that petitions against the allotment, more numerously signed than those calling for the same, were ignored. But more than this: the money so allotted should represent only the pro rata proportion of the tribal money to5which the individual Indians petitioning for such an appropriation are entitled. But what are the facts? According to the agent of the Indian Rights Association, Mr. Brosius, one of these mission schools, that at Pine Ridge, which is entitled to only $700, receives this year $21,600, drawn from the funds collectively belonging to the whole tribe of which the petitioners are members. He states further that the three mission schools at Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Crow Creek, taken together, which under a pro rata division would be entitled to $1,803, actually receive $55,620. It was very innocently represented by those who manipulated the matter that the money was to be taken, at the request of the Indians, not from any congressional appropriations, but from their own funds; but, as stated, no consent in general council of the tribe was obtained, and what was actually done was to appropriate income belonging to the entire tribe to the benefit of a few who, under Catholic influence, made the request for it. There was deception practised upon the Indian Bureau, and it appears that Catholic political influence was brought to bear upon the responsible parties to secure this dishonest division of Indian funds. On this point we note the following in an editorial in The Independent:— Quite suspiciously enlightening in the matter is the acknowledgment of Professor Scharf, a distinguished Catholic clergyman, that he called the attention of a Republican senator to the fact that there were twenty close districts where Catholic votes might assure Republican success, if the present government did not yield to the objections made by the A. P. A. to these appropriations, and that he would indicate the Catholics who would control the vote.
And in The Outlook we note this still more explicit statement, quoted from Mr. Brosius, who presented it in writing before a committee of the United States Senate, at a hearing held January 31 last:— A statement has been made to me by an honorable senator which will be amplified before the committee on Indian affairs, if requested, to the effect that a Mr. Scharf, a representative Catholic [Prof. E. L. Scharf, of the Catholic University at Washington], submitted a table of twenty close congressional districts with the alleged Catholic vote in each, and a written proposal to deliver the necessary votes to carry these districts that might be selected by the Republicans if the appropriations for Catholic Indian schools to the amount of $200,000 were continued for two years longer. Even threats were made by this Mr. Scharf that the defeat of certain congressmen would be brought about unless opposition to sectarian appropriations was withdrawn.
I will state further that a member of the House of Representatives who was opposing legislation which provided for support of Indian contract schools from government funds was approached by the same Mr. Scharf, and threatened that if he did not withdraw his opposition to the legislation, he (Mr. Scharf) would see to it that the Catholic Church organization would defeat him at the next election. I am authorized to make this statement to this committee.
President Roosevelt, backed by Attorney-general Moody, takes the position that a pro rata allotment of Indian trust funds to sectarian schools is not illegal, and states that “the practise will be continued by the Department unless Congress should decide to the contrary, or, of course, unless the courts should decide that the decision of the Department of Justice is erroneous.” This view, however, overlooks the broad Protestant principle underlying the whole subject of governmental appropriations to sectarian schools, under whatever form, which all such appropriations violate; namely, that the best interests of both church and state demand their complete separation from each other. The bearing of this principle upon the matter is well stated by The Outlook, as follows:— We contend that it [the appropriation to Indian schools] is unjust to the Indians, unwise for the government, and injurious to the churches. Any kind of a business partnership between the government and the church, whether the government is acting for the people at large, as it does in an appropriation bill, or as a trustee for a small group, as in this particular case, is inevitably pernicious in its result. Jealousies, heart-burnings, deceptions, wire pulling, and sectarian conflicts and animosities follow in its train. The fact that in this case Roman Catholic schools were the chief beneficiaries, . . . and that the money was not divided among the Indians pro rata, as the President rightly says it ought to be, has nothing to do with the general principle involved.
We should, says The Outlook, “avoid by every possible endeavor the dangers, perplexities, and annoyances which the people of France and England are in the midst of at the present moment because in England the government and the Protestant church, and in France the government and the Roman Catholic Church, are trying to carry on an educational partnership. No such partnership is wanted in this country.” These facts show the persistent activity of the spirit that is working for church and state union in this nation, and the ready way in which politics lends itself now, as formerly, to the furtherance of such an end. “We are fighting over again the battles of the fourth century;” and “old controversies will be revived, and new ones will be added.” All these things are heralds of the approaching end.