The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
it demonstrated that neither insult nor disparagement was intended
by regulations which might be looked on as scarcely different from
those which prevented a lecturer in mathematics from giving his
class a dissertation upon Isaiah, and denied a clergyman of the
establishment the privilege of interpolating his reading of the
litany with a chapter from the Apocalypse. The establishment clergy,
with a few notable exceptions, asserted it as their right and duty
to use the Scriptures at all times in their schools, and declared it
to be a sin to consent to suspend, even during the hours of combined
secular instruction, their office of teachers of divine truth. By
adopting this course they lost whatever claim to public estimation
they might otherwise have had as helpers of education, and hastened,
undoubtedly, the fall of their establishment. It has lately, through
the publication of Archbishop Whately's biography by his daughter and
of the journals of Mr. Senior, been fully disclosed that a desire
for proselytism, although in his lifetime he publicly professed
the contrary, was at the bottom of that able prelate's energetic
support of the national system. The religious and moral teaching
of the books used for combined secular instruction had, so argued
Whately in private, a strong tendency to implant truths which must
lead to the reception of Protestantism. Give free scope, so reasoned
the archbishop, to the national system, and, although the priests
may not perceive their danger, Ireland must cease to be a Catholic
country. When publicly advocating the national system, Whately's
language was, of course, far different. Then he maintained stoutly
that the books were thoroughly impartial, he repudiated with affected
loathing any dishonorable desire to make converts to Protestantism,
and he professed the most scrupulous respect for the consciences of
those who differed from him in religion. The posthumous publication
of Whately's real sentiments--destructive as that publication is
of much of his reputation, and especially of his character for
straightforwardness--forms a valuable vindication, not merely of
the behaviour of those more honest commissioners of education whose
refusal to adopt the Whately tactics led to Whately's retirement
from the board, but also of the conduct of the Catholic bishops and
clergy who have found it necessary emphatically to demand a radical
change in the system of national instruction so far as Catholics are
concerned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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