The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, February, 1865
History
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, February, 1865
Catholic Church -- Ireland -- Periodicals; Catholic Church -- Periodicals
The Archbishop also urges against the national system, its tendency to
throw the education of this Catholic country into the hands of a
Protestant government, whose past history proves that it has been
always hostile to Catholic interests. Model and training and
agricultural schools, which are completely withdrawn from Catholic
control, have this tendency. Are not inspectors and other managers of
the system altogether government nominees? When books were to be
selected, was not the same object promoted by deputing to compile them
Protestant archbishops, Presbyterian ministers, and other Protestants,
who banished from them everything Catholic and national, and made them
breathe a spirit of English supremacy and anti-Catholic prejudice? May
not the experience of past ages be appealed to to prove that education
under such government control becomes hostile to true religion, tends to
introduce a spirit of despotism, and to rob the subject of his liberty?
This was the tendency of all government enactments on education in
Ireland for centuries. The Archbishop observes:
"Robespierre and other French despots fully understood all
this, when they proclaimed that all children were the
property of the state, to be educated under its care, at the
public expense. When the instruction of the rising
generations and the direction of schools falls under the
absolute control of the ruling powers of the Earth, that
sort of wisdom which Saint Paul calls earthly, sensual,
diabolical, soon begins to prevail; the wisdom from above
falls away, and neither religion nor true Christian liberty
can be safe".
Having examined in this way the present defects and shortcomings of
education in Ireland, as far as it receives aid from the state, the
Archbishop insisted that Catholics have a decided claim to a Catholic
university, with every privilege and right conferred upon Protestant
universities, to Catholic training and model schools, and to a system of
education under which the faith and morals of Catholic children would be
safe from all danger. In England[24] the schools for the people
supported by government are denominational, and the Catholics, though
only a fraction of the population, have all the advantages of a Catholic
system of education. Why should Ireland be deprived of rights which are
freely granted to every class of people not only in England and
Scotland, but in all the British colonies? Are the Catholics of this
country to be degraded and insulted on account of their religion? Would
such a mode of acting be in conformity with the liberality of the
present age?
Since the Archbishop made the foregoing observations, the Holy Father,
our supreme guide in matters of religion, has published a series of
propositions which he had condemned and reprobated on various occasions.
We insert three of those propositions which bear upon education:
The forty-fifth is as follows:
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