Roman Catholics and Education
The Western Watchman of April 10, replying to an inquiry regarding a division of public school funds, takes occasion to say: “We have no interest in the Protestant Bible. We have no interest in the Protestant religion. We have no interest in anything Protestant. Educated Catholics do not think that Protestantism is better than no religion at all, any more than they think a false multiplication table and a false table of logarithms is better than none at all. Catholics do not want either Catholicism or Protestantism in the public schools. The denominational system, in doing justice to the Catholics, wrongs all Protestants. If the state is to conduct a system of public education, it must be either Catholic or secular. In this country it can not be Catholic; therefore it must be secular.” What the editor demands is this, that if the religious schools do as good secular work as the state schools, they ought to receive the same financial support as the schools of the state, and that other religious schools, if they taught the same things and taught them as well as the state schools, ought to receive support also. But they want this understood, that— “Catholics will not enter into any agreement to secure similar treatment for Protestant schools. We do not place Protestant schools on the same footing with Catholic schools; but we place Protestant and Catholic citizens on a basis of civil equality, and what the state should do in paying for the secular education imparted in Catholic schools, it should do for any schools having the same claims for recognition, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, or so-called Modern. We do not want our secular schools made religious; but we want our Catholic schools recognized as secular in all things in which they are secular.” That would probably mean the entire support of Catholic schools in which it would be contended that a good secular education was given and the Catholic religion taught free; but the state can not do this, and the only logical education that the state can give is secular education. Yet after all, the only true education that can be given is religious education. Roman Catholics are right in the principle, but the state can never yield to the demand for religious education, or the support of religious schools, without departing from the very fundamentals of freedom. The quotations above, however, show clearly just how the Western Watchman regards Protestants.