ROMAN CATHOLICS ON EDUCATION.
By Editor
LET no one be deceived by any claim that any Roman Catholic may make that that church is in favor of our public schools. The simple fact is that they are opposed to them, and opposed to them for this reason, that the influence of the public school weans children away from the church. Their plea is a logical one. Education ought to take in the whole round of the child's instruction, physical, mental, moral, spiritual. The religious element, however, is that with which the state can have nothing to do. But the true education of the child ought to include religion. Here, however, is where Roman Catholicism and true Protestantism are at antipodes. The true Protestant holds that the child should be taught religion, but they know that it is not within the province or purview of the state to give such instruction. Roman Catholics believe that it is, but always with this proviso, of course, that the state shall be Catholic. They demand parochial schools and they also will demand, when they have the power to enforce their demands, that these parochial schools shall be supported by the state.15In a lecture recently given at Youngstown, Ohio, by the Very Reverend M. A. Hehir, published in the Catholic Mirror of September 1, 1906, the speaker said: "In the middle ages primary and secondary schools flourished under ecclesiastical supervision." Again, "The true education is at the home, the school and the church; each must do its part; each must foster religion, so that the child may be enabled to secure its eternal salvation, in comparison with which the worldly aims are of only secondary importance. The enemies of Christianity would banish all religious training from the schools." "The late Cardinal Manning, writing in 1883, says, 'Let no one be deceived by thinking that secular and religious education can be reconciled, they are mutually exclusive; we must choose between them.' In 1884 the English bishops in a joint pastoral wrote, 'We have already declared that education without Christianity is impossible.'" The united hierarchy of Australia declares that parents must send their children exclusively to Catholic schools else no Catholic confessor can absolve them. The hierarchy of Canada ordains the same, Catholic parents should not send their children to non-Catholic schools, otherwise confessors are to refuse them absolution." Believing as they do, they can take no other course than to oppose public schools. The Signs of the Times believes in religious education, but it does not believe that the state has any right or authority to use state funds or state teachers for the purpose of giving such education. It involves an absolute union of church and state to do it. The only school that the state can conduct is a purely secular school; for that reason we believe in the public schools of America; and yet those parents who feel that religion is the paramount thing, as every Christian must, have the right to conduct their own schools in those lines. The true Protestant will do that, and yet will cheerfully pay his taxes for the support of the public schools.