A ROMAN PRELATE ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
ARCHBISHOP RIORDAN, of San Francisco, a prelate of influence in the Roman Church, says, as reported in the Examiner of June 5, in speaking of our public schools:— "Twenty years ago our schools were sufficient. Then we required only an intelligent voter. Now we want a conscientious voter—and it is often very hard to find one." "We do not say that the schools given us are not good enough, but we require better, and when you see in the newspapers and hear in conversation that the church opposes the public schools, you read what is suggested by ignorance and by bigotry." And the kind of education which will fit one to be a conscientious voter is, according to the archbishop's belief, the education given by the Roman Catholic Church. "Man must be able to feel his accountability to God, and while we are anxious to spread education for all, are also anxious that it should be permeated with religion." Of this education "permeated with religion" the prelate especially lauds the Jesuits. He says:— "The man who in this nineteenth century asserts that the Jesuit Fathers are not the friends of science is ten hundred years behind the age. He who, seeing these great colleges existing in all parts of the globe, yet says that the Catholic Church does not favor enlightenment, doesn't know the history of his age." All of which summed up means that, while we like the public schools for a century ago, we demand that now they shall be supplemented by religious teaching, and that Rome shall do the teaching. And this is consistent with Rome's principle. She would doubtless admit it. She is against the public schools for to-day.