This careful provision for the spiritual wants of so extensive and important a class we of course approve to the full. The idea of a reformatory where no religious instruction is given the inmates would be a contradiction. The State empowers those into whose hands it entrusts the keeping of its wards to impart religious instruction--in short, to do everything that may tend to the mental, moral, and physical advancement of those under their charge. All that we concede and admire. But the State never empowers those who have the control of such institutions to draw up laws or rules for them which should in any way contravene the law of the State, least of all that article of the constitution wherein the free exercise of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, is allowed to all mankind in this State for ever. But it is just in this most important point that our public institutions signally fail. Here is our point: In our public institutions there is, in the case of Catholic inmates, a constant and persistent violation of the constitution of the State regarding freedom of religious profession and worship. In those institutions there is a stereotyped system of religious profession and worship, which all the inmates, of whatever creed, are compelled to accept and observe. They have no freedom of choice in the matter. They may not hold any religious intercourse with the pastors of their church, save, in impossible instances, on that stereotyped plan. Practically, they may not hold any such intercourse at all. Once they become inmates of these institutions, the freedom of religious profession and worship that they enjoyed, or were at liberty to enjoy, before entering, is completely cut off, and a new form of religious profession and practice, which, whether they like it or not, whether they believe it or not, they are compelled to observe and accept as their religion until they leave the institution, is substituted. No matter what name may be given this mode of worship and instruction, whether it be called “non-sectarian” or not, it is a monstrous violation of human conscience, not to speak of the letter and the spirit of the constitution of this State. Its proper name would be the “Church Established in Public Institutions.” From the day when a Catholic child crosses the threshold of such an institution until he leaves it, in most cases he is not allowed even to see a Catholic clergyman; he is certainly not allowed to practise his religion; he is not allowed to read Catholic books of instruction; he is not allowed to hear Mass or frequent the sacraments. For him his religion is choked up and dammed off utterly, and his soul left dry and barren. Nor does the wrong rest even here; for all the while he is exposed to non-Catholic influences and to a direct system of anti-Catholic instruction and worship. He is compelled to bow to and believe in the “Church Established” in the institution.