Catholic Schools and Public Funds
*The New York Christian Advocate for March 1* contains the following item of interest: “An important movement is to be started in this city. There are sixty parochial schools in Manhattan and the Bronx, attended by more than forty thousand pupils. The schools are maintained by the contributions of Catholics, and they now invite all Christians and Jews to make common cause with them in securing a system of schools that will take in all the children of New York, securing to all secular instruction, yet giving opportunity and time to their religious guides and teachers to do their useful work with them; also so that they may not become clever unbelievers. The Catholics say that they do not wish help from the state in doing their spiritual work, but only such a plan of secular schooling as will not ignore religion. Father McSweeney, of St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic church, says that he does not expect much help from Catholic politicians, as when they depart from the Catholic church on Sunday, they seem to leave their Catholicity behind them, safely laid away for the next Sunday—that is, if they go to mass at all, and have any real Catholicity in stock. He charges that many of them have been elected by Catholic votes, three of them even to the high office of mayor; that not one word of recognition, not to talk of praise, did any of them vouchsafe to the Catholic schools. He seems to aim at the establishment of denominational schools to be entitled to a share of the public funds devoted to educational purposes. This scheme needs to be watched. There is no place in which to unite church and state in a republic.”