Catholic Education by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 30.

Catholic Education.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

THIS was the subject of the first of a series of ten lectures in San Francisco, by the eminent Catholic propagandist, Monsignore Capel. We were never so impressed with the cunning of Jesuitism, as while listening to the lecture. By the aid of oratory and Jesuitical craft, the lecture was well calculated to accomplish its purpose—to disarm anti-Catholic influence, and capture the minds of nominal Protestants.

So far as the lecture concerned education itself, no fault could be found with it. That true education comprises physical and moral, as well as mental, culture, no one will deny. All will agree that education consists in knowing how to think to some purpose, and not merely in a knowledge of what others have thought. But when the Catholic Church claims a monopoly of that sort of education, we vigorously dissent. Those who are alive to what the Catholic Church desires, can see the object of such a claim. But the unthinking will say, "If that is the kind of education Catholics believe in, let them go ahead."

The animus of the speaker was shown near the close of the lecture, when he begged that Catholics might "have a chance" to demonstrate their theories. This desired "chance" is nothing more nor less than State support for Catholic schools. Said the speaker, "The Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians have schools where they educate their own children, and what we ask is in line with that." It is doubtful if very many of the immense audience stopped listening to the speaker's silvery tones long enough to think that the State does not educate Episcopalians, nor Methodists, nor Presbyterians, and that Catholics have the same right to educate their children in their own way, that Methodists and Presbyterians have to educate theirs. But the Catholic Church is not content unless it absorbs everything.

Monsignore Capel is a master of Jesuitical sophistry, and well fitted for the work intrusted to him. Before long, the thousands of professed Protestants who are fascinated with his elegant oratory, will find out that the velvety cat's paw conceals claws of deadly sharpness. E. J. W.