ROME AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
CATHOLIC hostility to public schools is not easily located and bounded. It exists in varying degrees of intensity in different parts of the land. A considerable fraction of the Catholic population of the Union send their children to the public schools, unhesitatingly, where there are no parochial schools; with fear and trembling where the latter exist. Probably, if there were no priestly influences to the contrary, the number of Catholic children in the public schools would rapidly increase, and the parochial schools would be pretty generally abandoned. The inferiority of the latter is easily apparent to the intelligent observer. But there are such priestly influences at work in nearly every parish. Occasionally we are called upon to note an individual exception to the rule. Even a bishop has been known to say kind words of the public-school system. The prevailing feeling among the priests and their superiors, however, is one of hostility. And it prevails for the very reason confessed by Cardinal Manning (who is no more un-American than many prelates and priests who live in America), namely, that the public-school system lessens the control of the priests over the people. Believing that the Pope is the divinely appointed master of all human concerns, spiritual and temporal, he wants the Pope's bishops and priests to have absolute sway over children and parents, homes and schools. The same desire is shown by divers American bishops, who have refused absolution to Catholic parents for preferring the public to parochial schools. The priests, as a rule, eagerly second the repressive measures of the bishops. All this tends to diminish the regard of Catholic laymen for public authority and institutions, and to fasten tighter upon them the bonds of Papal rule. It becomes the more offensive and deplorable, now that the plans for a Catholic university at Washington are being worked out. Soon we shall have a fully organized Catholic educational system, from primary grade up to the highest attainable. The whole thing will be welded together, and the parochial school at the base will become a most important part thereof. Protestant universities and colleges are content to receive the youth who come to them from the public schools. In that way they recognize and respect the duty of the State to provide for the primary education of its oncoming generations. And this is one of the marks of difference between those who honor the Government which protects them, and those who will pay it and its institutions only so much honor as the Pope of Rome permits.—Interior.