Catholic Church -- Education -- United States; Education -- United States
It is clear that this plan takes away the right of parents, whom God has
charged with the care of their children, and it must necessarily
interfere with the proper management of families. In the second place,
it ignores the rights of the Church, to whom Christ gave the commission
to teach all nations. In the third place, since governments, as
constituted at present, have no religion, the teaching they give must
tend to infidelity. In the fourth place, if governments take into their
hands the management of things which do not appertain to them, the
probability is that they will neglect, or carry on badly, the great
temporal affairs which it is their duty to attend to. In the last
place, experience shows that education carried on by the State is most
expensive, and that it opens the way to intrigues and frauds. To confirm
all these observations, it is sufficient to refer to France, where State
influence has been supreme for the last seventy years in university
education, and where the Government has exercised an exorbitant control
over every branch of public instruction. What has been the result?
Literature has fallen away, the number of schools has decreased, the
French language has decayed, whilst moral corruption has penetrated the
heart of the country, and infidelity of the worst kind has been
patronized and encouraged among the teachers of youth, and the highest
honors have been decreed to Littres and Renans, and other decided
enemies of Jesus Christ. May we not read the condemnation of all such
proceedings in the lurid flames of the burning Capital of modern
civilization? Now, is it not clear that the primary object of education
must be frustrated in the mixed system which proposes to unite children
of all religions in the same school, and to treat of nothing in the
class hours that could offend any of these discordant elements? If
there be a Jew in the school, you cannot speak of the Gospel; if there
be a Mahometan, nothing could be said against polygamy, and other
degrading doctrines of the Koran; due respect must also be paid to the
teaching of Arians and Socinians, who deny the Trinity of persons in
God, and the Divinity of Christ; and to the opinions of Calvinists and
Lutherans, of Methodists and other sectaries, who assail almost every
point of revealed religion. In this case, how can the atmosphere of the
school be religious; and must not children living in it grow up in
ignorance both of the dogmas and practices of religion?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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