Chapter II (6)

"The matter, as we have stated it, would be too plain for
argument were it not for those magical words, _secular_ and
_sectarian_, that some are so fond of using. 'The state knows
no religion,' they say; it is wholly 'a private concern'
between the _individual_ and his Maker. 'The state knows no
God.' They wonder the zealous bigot cannot see how clear this
makes every thing. If he would only assent to propositions so
easy, so self-evident, we should have peace. But set these
confident logicians to define what they mean by terms so
fluently employed, or ask them to show us how the state can
keep clear of all action, direct or indirect, for or against an
interest so vital as religion, so all-pervading, so intimately
affecting every other, and how soon they begin to stammer! What
is secular? The one who attempts to define it would perhaps
begin with a negative. It is that which has no connection
with religion; no aspects, no relations, no tendencies, no
suggestions, beyond this world, or, the narrowest view of it,
this _age_ or _seculum_. Now, let him apply it to particular
branches of education. There is the learning of the alphabet,
spelling, reading. But what shall the child read? It would be
very difficult to find a mere reading-book--unless its contents
were an empty gabble, like the nonsense Latin verses of some
schools--that would not somewhere, and in some way, betray
moral or immoral, religious or irreligious ideas, according to
the judgment of some minds. But let us waive this, and go on.
Arithmetic is secular. Geography is secular; though we have
seen things under the head of physical geography that some
classes of religionists might object to as betraying a spirit
hostile to the idea of the earth's creation in any form. But go
on. Including the pure mathematics, as being pure mathematics
and nothing else, we have about got to the end of our
definition. No thinking man would pretend that the departments
of life and motion, chemistry, dynamics, physiology, could be
studied apart from a higher class of ideas. But secularity
would interfere here in a very strange way. When these roads of
knowledge thus tend upward toward the eternal light, it would
shut down the gate and eject the book. Natural philosophy, as
taught by Newton and Kepler, gets beyond secularity. When,
on the other hand, after the manner of Humboldt, Lamarck,
and Darwin, its progress is in the direction of the eternal
darkness, the study of it becomes entirely _unsectarian_; it
violates no rights of conscience!

"In other departments, it is still more difficult to set the
secular bound. History, the philosophy of history, political
philosophy, psychology, ethics, however strong the effort
to dereligionize them, do all, when left to their proper
expansion, spurn any such bounds. Art, too, when wholly
secularized; poetry stripped of its religious ideality; how
long would they resist such a narrowing, suffocating process? A
lower dogma was never maintained than this of a wholly secular
education, or one more utterly _impracticable_. The subject
must inevitably die under the operation, and religion must come
back again into our schools and colleges, to save them from
inanity and extinction.

"There may be stated here some reasons why this plea of
neutrality, though so false, is yet so specious and misleading.
It arises from the fact that the statement of moral, religious,
and theological ideas demands clear and positive language. The
hostile forms, on the other hand, are disguised under vague and
endlessly varying negations. They are Protean, too, in their
appellations. They take to themselves the names of literature,
art, philosophy, reform. This procedure shows itself in
reading-books intended for our primary schools; in text-books
prepared for the higher institutions; in essays and periodicals
that strew the tables of reading-rooms attached to our colleges
and academies; and, above all, in the public lecturing, male
and female, which may be said to have become a part of our
educational system. For example, should the writer of this
attempt to explain before such an audience 'the doctrines
of grace,' as they are called, or that unearthly system of
ideas which can be traced through the whole line of the
church--patristic, Roman, and Protestant--in their production
of a strong unearthly character, then would be immediately
heard the cry of bigotry, or the senseless yell of church and
state. And now for the _opposing_ 'dogmas,' as they really are,
notwithstanding all their disguises. They make their entrance
under endlessly varied forms. Pantheism has free admittance;
but that is not dogmatic--it calls itself philosophy. In some
lecture on progress, or history, the most essential of these
old 'doctrines of grace' may be sneeringly ignored or covertly
assailed; but that is literature. Darwinism is expounded, with
its virtual denial of any thing like creation; or Huxleyism,
which brings man out of the monkey, and the monkey out of the
fungus; that is science. Or it may be the whining nonsense
which glorifies the nineteenth century at the expense of the
far honester eighteenth, and talks so undogmatically of the
deep 'yearning' for something better--that is, the 'coming
faith.' And so goes on this exhibition of impartiality, with
its exclusion of every thing dogmatic and theological."

Neither Catholics nor Protestants who believe at all in religion will consent to be taxed to support infidel, pantheistic, or atheistic education; and all so-called purely secular education is really nothing else. The temporal separated from the eternal, the universe from its Creator, is nothing, and can be no object of science. The first suggested solution must then be abandoned, and not be entertained for a moment by the state, unless it is bent on suicide; for the basis of the state itself is religion, and is excluded in excluding all religious ideas and principles.

2. The second solution suggested is to adopt in education the voluntary system, as we do in religion, and leave each denomination to maintain schools for its own children at its own expense. We could accept this solution, as Catholics, without any serious objection; but we foresee some trouble in disposing of the educational funds held by several of the States in trust for common schools, academies, and colleges, and in determining to whom shall belong the school-houses, and academy and college buildings and fixtures, erected, in whole or in part, at the public expense. Besides, this would break up the whole public school system, and defeat the chief end it contemplates--that of providing a good common education for all the children of the land, especially the children of the poorer classes. Catholics, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians would establish and support schools, each respectively for their own children; but some other denominations might not, and the infidels, and that large class called _nothingarian_, most certainly would not. Only they who believe in some religion see enough of dignity in man, or worth in the human soul, to make the sacrifice of a penny for education. The Darwins, the Huxleys, the Lyells, and other unbelieving scientists of the day, were never educated in schools, academies, colleges, or universities founded by infidels. They graduated from schools founded by the faith and piety of those who believed in God, in creation, in Christ, in the life and immortality brought to light in the Gospel; and if they have devoted themselves to severe studies, it has not been from love of science, but in the ignoble hope of being able to dispense, in the explanation of nature, with God the Creator, and to prove that man is only a monkey developed, a condensed gas, or, as Dr. Cabanis defined him, simply "a digestive tube open at both ends."

Moreover, though we deny the competency of the state to act as educator, we hold that its duty toward both religion and education is something more than negative. We hold that it has positive duties to perform in regard to each. It cannot decide what religion its citizens shall accept and obey; but it is bound to protect its citizens in the free and full enjoyment of the religion they adopt for themselves. We cannot, for the sake of carrying a point which we hold to be true and certain to be of great importance, ally ourselves with infidels, or lay down as a universal principle what our church has never approved, and what we may in the change of the tide be ourselves obliged to disavow. The state, with all its powers and functions, exists for religion, and is in all its action subordinated to the eternal end of man. As the church teaches, and as the New England Puritans held, this world is never the end; it is only a means to an end infinitely above itself. We will never dishonor truth so much as to concede for a moment that the state is independent of religion; that it may treat religion, as a coördinate power with itself, with indifference, or look down upon it with haughty contempt, as beneath its notice, or to be pushed aside if it comes in its way. It is as much bound to consult the spiritual end of man, and to obey the law of God, which overrides all other laws, as is the individual.

We, of course, deny the competency of the state to educate, to say what shall or shall not be taught in the public schools, as we deny its competency to say what shall or shall not be the religious belief and discipline of its citizens. We, of course, utterly repudiate the popular doctrine that so-called secular education is the function of the state. Yet, while we might accept this second solution as an expedient, we do not approve it, and cannot defend it as sound in principle. It would break up and utterly destroy the free public school system, what is good as well as what is evil in it; and we wish to save the system by simply removing what it contains repugnant to the Catholic conscience--not to destroy it or lessen its influence. We are decidedly in favor of free public schools for all the children of the land, and we hold that the property of the state should bear the burden of educating the children of the state--the two great and essential principles of the system, and which endear it to the hearts of the American people. Universal suffrage is a mischievous absurdity without universal education; and universal education is not practicable unless provided for at the public expense. While, then, we insist that the action of the state shall be subordinated to the law of conscience, we yet hold that it has an important part to perform, and that it is its duty, in view of the common weal, and of its own security as well as that of its citizens, to provide the means of a good common school education for all its children, whatever their condition, rich or poor, Catholics or Protestants. It has taken the American people over two hundred years to arrive at this conclusion, and never by our advice shall they abandon it.

3. The first and second solutions must then be dismissed as unsatisfactory. The first, because it excludes religion, and makes the public schools nurseries of infidelity and irreligion. The second, because it breaks up and destroys the whole system of free public schools, and renders the universal education demanded by our institutions impracticable, or unlikely to be given, and in so far endangers the safety, the life, and prosperity of the republic. We repeat it, what we want is not the destruction of the system, but simply its modification so far as necessary to protect the conscience of both Catholics and Protestants in its rightful freedom. The modification necessary to do this is much slighter than is supposed, and, instead of destroying or weakening the system, would really perfect it and render it alike acceptable to Protestants and to Catholics, and combine both in the efforts necessary to sustain it. It is simply to adopt the third solution that has been suggested, namely, that of dividing the schools between Catholics and Protestants, and assigning to each the number proportioned to the number of children each has to educate. This would leave Catholics free to teach their religion and apply their discipline in the Catholic schools, and Protestants free to teach their religion and apply their discipline in the Protestant schools. The system, as a system of free schools at the public expense, with its fixtures and present machinery, would remain unimpaired; and a religious education, so necessary to society as well as to the soul, could be given freely and fully to all, without the slightest lesion to any one's conscience, or interference with the full and entire religious freedom which is guaranteed by our constitution to every citizen. The Catholic will be restored to his rights, and the Protestant will retain his.

This division was not called for in New England in the beginning; for then the people were all of one and the same religion; nor when only those who used the schools were taxed for their support. It was not needed even when there were only Protestants in the country. In demanding it now, we cast no censure on the original founders of our public schools. But now, when the system is so enlarged as to include free schools for all the children of the state at the public expense, and Catholics have become and are likely to remain a notable part of the population of the country, it becomes not only practicable, but absolutely necessary, if religious liberty or freedom of conscience for all citizens is to be maintained; and it were an act of injustice to Catholics, whose conscience chiefly demands the division, and a gross abuse of power, to withhold it. It may be an annoyance to Protestants that Catholics are here; but they are here, and here they will remain; and it is never the part of wisdom to resist the inevitable. Our population is divided between Catholics and Protestants, and the only sensible course is for each division to recognize and respect the equal rights of the other before the State.

One objection of a practical character has been brought against the division by the New York _Tribune_. That journal says that, if the division could be made in cities and large towns, it would still be impracticable in the sparsely settled districts of the country, where the population is too small to admit, without too great an expense, of two separate schools, one Catholic and one Protestant. The objection is one that is likely to diminish in force with time. In such districts let each school receive its _pro rata_ amount of the public money: if too little, let Catholic charity make up the deficiency for the Catholic, and Protestant charity for the Protestant school. Besides, in these sparsely settled districts there are few Catholics, and their children are far less exposed than in cities, large towns, and villages.

The more common objection urged is, that if separate schools are conceded to Catholics, they must not only be conceded to the Israelites, but also to each Protestant denomination. To the Israelites, we grant, if they demand them. To each Protestant denomination, not at all, unless each denomination can put in an honest plea of conscience for such division. All Protestant denominations, without a single exception, unless it be the Episcopalians, unite in opposing the division we ask for, and in defending the system as it is, which proves that they have no conscientious objections to the public schools as they are now constituted and conducted. The division to meet the demands of the Catholic conscience would necessitate no change at all in the schools not set apart for Catholic children; and the several denominations that are not conscientiously opposed to them now could not be conscientiously opposed to them after the division. We cannot suppose that any denomination of Protestants would consent to support a system of education that offends its own conscience for the sake of doing violence to the conscience of Catholics. Do not all American Protestants profess to be the sturdy champions of freedom of conscience, and maintain that where conscience begins there the secular authority ends? If the present schools do violence to no Protestant conscience, as we presume from their defence of them they do not, no Protestant denomination can demand a division in its favor on the plea of conscience; and to no other plea is the state or the public under any obligation to listen. If, however, there be any denomination that can in good faith demand separate schools on the plea of conscience, we say at once let it have them, for such a plea, when honest, overrides every other consideration.

But we are asked what shall be done with the large body of citizens who are neither Catholic nor Protestant? Such citizens, we reply, have no religion; and they who have no religion have no conscience that people who have religion are bound to respect. If they refuse to send their children either to the Hebrew schools or the Catholic schools, or, in fine, to the Protestant schools, let them found schools of their own, at their own expense. The constitutions of the several States guarantee to each and every citizen the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; but this is not guaranteeing to any one the freedom of not worshipping God, to deny his existence, to reject his revelation, or to worship a false God. The liberty guaranteed is the liberty of religion, not the liberty of infidelity. The infidel has, under our constitution and laws, the right of protection in his civil and political equality; but none to protection in his infidelity, since that is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. He cannot plead conscience in its behalf, for conscience presupposes religion; and where there is no religious faith, there is, of course, no conscience. It would be eminently absurd to ask the state to protect infidelity, or the denial of all religion; for religion, as we have said, is the only basis of the state, and for the state to protect infidelity would be to cut its own throat.

These are, we believe, all the plausible objections that can be urged against the division of the public schools we demand; for we do not count as such the pretence of some over-zealous Protestants that it is necessary to detach the children of Catholics from the Catholic Church in order that they may grow up thorough Americans; and as the public schools are very effectual in so detaching them, and weakening their respect for the religion of their parents, and their reverence for their clergy, they ought on all patriotic grounds to be maintained in full vigor as they are. We have heard this objection from over-zealous Evangelicals, and still oftener from so-called Liberal Christians and infidels; we have long been told that the church is anti-American, and can never thrive in the United States; for she can never withstand the free and enlightened spirit of the country, and the decatholicizing influence of our common schools; and we can hardly doubt that some thought of the kind is at the bottom of much of the opposition the proposed division of the public schools has encountered. But we cannot treat it as serious; for it is evidently incompatible with the freedom of conscience which the state is bound by its constitution to recognize and protect, for Catholics as well as for Protestants. The state has no right to make itself a proselyting institution for or against Protestantism, for or against Catholicity. It is its business to protect us in the free and full enjoyment of our religion, not to engage in the work of unmaking our children of their Catholicity. The case is one of conscience, and conscience is accountable to no civil tribunal. All secular authority and all secular considerations whatever must yield to conscience. In questions of conscience the law of God governs, not a plurality of votes. The state abuses its authority if it sustains the common schools as they are with a view of detaching our children from their Catholic faith and love. If Catholics cannot retain their Catholic faith and practice and still be true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, it must be only because Americanism is incompatible with the rights of conscience, and that would be its condemnation, not the condemnation of Catholicity. No nationality can override conscience; for conscience is catholic, not national, and is accountable to God alone, who is above and over all nations, all principalities and powers, King of kings and Lord of lords. But the assumption in the objection is not true. It mistakes the opinion of the American people individually for the constitution of the American state. The American state is as much Catholic as it is Protestant, and really harmonizes far better with Catholicity than with Protestantism. We hold that, instead of decatholicizing Catholic children, it is far more necessary, if we are to be governed by reasons of this sort, to unmake the children of Protestants of their Protestantism. We really believe that, in order to train them up to be, in the fullest sense, true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, such as can alone arrest the present downward tendency of the republic, and realize the hopes of its heroic and noble-hearted founders, they must become good Catholics.

But this is a question of which the state can take no cognizance. We have under its constitution no right to call upon it to aid us, directly or indirectly, in unmaking Protestant children of their Protestantism. Of course, before God, or in the spiritual order, we recognize no equality between Catholicity and Protestantism. Before God, no man has any right to be of any religion but the Catholic, the only true religion, the only religion by which men can be raised to union with God in the beatific vision. But before the American state, we recognize in Protestants equal rights with our own. They have the same right to be protected by the state in the freedom of their conscience that we have to be protected by it in the freedom of ours. We should attack the very freedom of conscience the state guarantees to all her citizens, were we to call upon it to found or to continue a system of public schools, at the public expense, intended or fitted to detach Protestant children from the religion of their parents, and turn them over to be brought up in the Catholic religion. We should prove ourselves decidedly un-American in so doing. Yet, we regret to say, this is precisely what the non-catholic majority, inconsiderately we trust, are doing; and, if the popular ministers of the several sects, like Dr. R. W. Clark, Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Bellows, Henry Ward Beecher, and the sectarian and secular press have their way, they will continue to do to the end of the chapter to us Catholics. They probably are not aware that they belie the Americanism they profess, and abuse the power their superiority of numbers gives them to tyrannize over the consciences of their fellow-citizens. This strikes us as very un-American, as well as very unjust.

We place our demand for separate schools on the ground of conscience, and therefore of right--the right of God as well as of man. Our conscience forbids us to support schools at the public expense from which our religion is excluded, and in which our children are taught either what we hold to be a false or mutilated religion, or no religion at all. Such schools are perilous to the souls of our children; and we dare avow, even in this age of secularism and infidelity, that we place the salvation of the souls of our children above every other consideration. This plea of conscience, which we urge from the depth of our souls, and under a fearful sense of our accountability to our Maker, ought to suffice, especially in an appeal to a state bound by its own constitution to protect the rights of conscience for each and all of its citizens, whether Protestant or Catholic.

One thing must be evident from past experience, that our children can be brought up to be good and orderly citizens only as Catholics, and in schools under the supervision and control of their church, in which her faith is freely and fully taught, and her services, discipline, and influences are brought to bear in forming their characters, restraining them from evil, and training them to virtue. We do not say that, even if trained in Catholic schools, all will turn out to be good practical Catholics and virtuous members of society; for the church does not take away free-will, nor eradicate all the evil propensities of the flesh; but it is certain that they cannot be made such in schools in which the religion of their parents is reviled as a besotted superstition, and the very text-books of history and geography are made to protest against it; or in which they are accustomed to hear their priests spoken of without reverence, Protestant nations lauded as the only free and enlightened nations of the earth, Catholic nations sneered at as ignorant and enslaved, and the church denounced as a spiritual despotism, full of craft, and crusted all over with corruption both of faith and morals. Such schools may weaken their reverence for their parents, even detach them from their church, obscure, if not destroy their faith, render them indifferent to religion, indocile to their parents, disobedient to the laws; but they cannot inspire them with the love of virtue, restrain their vicious or criminal propensities, or prevent them from associating with the dangerous classes of our large towns and cities, and furnishing subjects for the correctional police, our jails, penitentiaries, state prisons, and the gallows.

We are pointed to the vicious and criminal population of our cities, of which we furnish more than our due proportion, as a conclusive argument against the moral tendency of our religion, and a savage howl of indignation, that rings throughout the land, is set up against the legislature or the municipality that ventures to grant us the slightest aid in our struggles to protect our children from the dangers that beset them, though bearing no proportion to the aid granted to non-Catholics. Yet it is precisely to meet cases like ours that a public provision for education is needed and supposed to be made. Protestants make the great mistake of trying to cure the evil to which we refer by detaching our children from the church, and bringing them up bad Protestants, or without any religion. The thousand and one associations and institutions formed by Protestant zeal and benevolence for the reformation or the bringing up of poor Catholic children, and some of which go so far as to kidnap little papist orphans or half orphans, lock them up in their orphan asylums, where no priest can enter, change their names so that their relatives cannot trace them, send them to a distance, and place them in Protestant families, where it is hoped they will forget their Catholic origin, all proceed from the same mistake, and all fail to arrest, or even to lessen, the growing evil. They necessarily provoke the opposition and resistance of the Catholic pastors, and of all earnest Catholics, who regard the loss of their faith as the greatest calamity that can befall Catholic children. So long as faith remains, however great the vice or the crime, there is something to build on, and room to hope for repentance, though late, for reformation and final salvation. Faith once gone, all is gone.

It is necessary to understand that the children of Catholics must be trained up in the Catholic faith, in the Catholic Church, to be good exemplary Catholics, or they will grow up bad citizens, the pests of society. Nothing can be done for them but through the approval and coöperation of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic community. The contrary rule, till quite recently, has been adopted, and public and private benevolence has sought to benefit our children by disregarding, or seeking to uproot, their Catholic faith, and rejecting the coöperation of the Catholic clergy. The results are apparent to all not absolutely blinded by their misdirected zeal.

The public has not sufficiently considered that by the law excluding our religion from the public schools, the schools as established by law are Protestant schools, at least so far as they are not pagan or godless. We do not suppose the state ever intended to establish Protestantism as the exclusive religion of the schools; but such is the necessary result of excluding, no matter under what pretext, the teaching of our religion in them. Exclude Catholicity, and what is left? Nothing of Christianity but Protestantism, which is simply Christianity _minus_ the Catholic Church, her faith, precepts, and sacraments. At present the state makes ample provision for the children of Protestants, infidels, or pagans; but excludes the children of Catholics, unless we consent to let them be educated in Protestant schools, and brought up Protestants, so far as the schools can bring them up.

Now, we protest in the name of equal rights against this manifest injustice. There is no class of the community more in need of free public schools than Catholics, and none are more entitled to their benefit; for they constitute a large portion of the poorer and more destitute classes of the community. We can conceive nothing more unjust than for the state to provide schools for Protestants, and even infidels, and refuse to do it for Catholics. To say that Catholics have as free access to the public schools as Protestants, is bitter mockery. Protestants can send their children to them without exposing them to lose their Protestantism; but Catholics cannot send their children to them without exposing them to the loss of their Catholicity. The law protects their religion in the public schools by the simple fact of excluding ours. How then say these schools are as free to us as they are to them? Is conscience of no account?

We take it for granted that the intention of the state is that the public schools should be accessible alike to Catholics and Protestants, and on the same risks and conditions. We presume it has had no more intention of favoring Protestants at the expense of Catholics, than Catholics at the expense of Protestants. But it can no longer fail to see that its intention is not, and cannot be realized by providing schools which Protestants can use without risk to their Protestantism, and none which Catholics can use without risk to their Catholicity. As the case now stands, the law sustains Protestantism in the schools and excludes Catholicity. This is unjust to Catholics, and deprives us, in so far as Catholics, of all benefit to be derived from the public schools supported at the public expense. Were the law to admit Catholicity, it would necessarily exclude Protestantism, which would be equally unjust to Protestants. Since, then, Catholicity and Protestantism mutually exclude each other, and as the state is bound to treat both with equal respect, it is not possible for it to carry out its intention and do justice to both parties, but by dividing the schools, and setting apart for Catholics their proportion of them, in which the education shall be determined and controlled by their church, though remaining public schools supported at the public expense, under the provisions of a general law as now.

This would be doing for its Catholic citizens only what it now does for its Protestant citizens only; in fact, only what is done in France, Austria, and Prussia. The division would enable us to bring all our children into schools under the influence and management of our pastors, and to do whatever the church and a thoroughly religious education can do to train them up to be good Catholics, and therefore orderly and peaceful members of society, and loyal and virtuous American citizens. It would also remove some restraint from the Protestant schools, and allow them more freedom in insisting on whatever is doctrinal and positive in their religion than they now exercise. The two classes of schools, though operating separately, would aid each other in stemming the tide of infidelity and immorality, now setting in with such fearful rapidity, and apparently resistless force, threatening the very existence of our republic. The division would operate in favor of religion, both in a Catholic sense and in a Protestant sense, and therefore tend to purify and preserve American society. It would restore the schools to their original intention, and make them, what they should be, religious schools.

The enemy which the state, which Catholics, and which Protestants have alike to resist and vanquish by education is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, disguised as secularism, or under the specious names of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, which not only strike at all Christian faith and Christian morals, but at the family, the state, and civilized society itself. The state has no right to regard this enemy with indifference, and on this point we accept the able arguments used by the serious Protestant preachers and writers cited in the number of _The Christian World_ before us against the exclusion of the Bible and all recognition of religion from the public schools. The American state is not infidel or godless, and is bound always to recognize and actively aid religion as far as in its power. Having no spiritual or theological competency, it has no right to undertake to say what shall or shall not be the religion of its citizens; it must accept, protect, and aid the religion its citizens see proper to adopt, and without partiality for the religion of the majority any more than the religion of the minority; for in regard to religion the rights and powers of minorities and majorities are equal. The state is under the Christian law, and it is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, spiritism, free-lovism, pantheism, or atheism.

The modern world has strayed far from this doctrine, which in the early history of this country nobody questioned. The departure may be falsely called progress, and boasted of as a result of "the march of intellect;" but it must be arrested, and men must be recalled to the truths they have left behind, if republican government is to be maintained, and Christian society preserved. Protestants who see and deplore the departure from the old landmarks will find themselves unable to arrest the downward tendency without our aid, and little aid shall we be able to render them unless the church be free to use the public schools--that is, her portion of them--to bring up her children in her own faith, and train them to be good Catholics. There is a recrudescence of paganism, a growth of subtle and disguised infidelity, which it will require all that both they and we can do to arrest. Fight, therefore, Protestants, no longer us, but the public enemy.[14]

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _The Christian World._ The Bible in the Schools. February, 1870. New York: Bible House.

[14] We desire to call attention to another point which could not be discussed in the foregoing article, and to which we can at present only allude in the briefest manner. Large sums of money have been granted by legislatures to universities and colleges which are controlled by the clergy of different Protestant denominations, in which they teach their religious opinions without restraint, and which they make, as far as they can, training-schools for their theological seminaries. Now, if the outcry against any grant of public funds to schools in which the Catholic religion is taught is taken up and sustained by Protestants, it follows that they must advocate the total secularization of all institutions, without exception, which enjoy any state subsidies, and, if they wish to keep control of religious instruction in any of the above-mentioned colleges, must refund to the state every thing which they now possess by grant from the state, and give up all claim to receive any further endowments. Catholics would never disendow or despoil these Protestant institutions, even if they had full power to do it; but if the party of infidelity ever gains, by the help of Protestants, full sway over our legislation, the latter may prepare themselves for a wholesale spoliation.

THE NEW ENGLANDER ON THE "MORAL RESULTS OF THE ROMISH SYSTEM."[15]

The reply of the _New Englander_ to our articles of September and October last is bristling with the most palpable and absurd mistakes. We call them "mistakes" through the utmost stretch of Christian charity, for there is really no excuse to be made for them. We cannot excuse them by allowing either their author or the editors of the _New Englander_ the benefit of the plea of ignorance; for they were bound to inform themselves on a grave matter which they profess to treat of; nor that of haste and carelessness. They have had at least three months for a reply, and were at liberty to take three months more, if necessary; and to plead carelessness in such a matter is equivalent to a confession of culpable negligence and want of moral principle. They were bound by the principles of the Christian religion not to exaggerate or convey in any way a worse impression of their fellow-Christians than the exact truth would warrant, according to the words of St. Paul, "Charity is kind, thinketh no evil, ... is not puffed up;" which we might paraphrase in this way: Is not pharisaically inclined to exalt one's self at the expense of one's neighbor, or at the sacrifice of the truth. The _New Englander_ has made use of every artifice; and, trusting to the unsuspecting ignorance or uncritical spirit of the community, of a shameful perversion of the truth to effect this unworthy and unchristian object. We speak severely because it is time the public, both Catholic and Protestant, should frown upon such practices, and endeavor to approach Christian unity by the practice of the most ordinary Christian virtues. We shall now proceed to make good our allegations against the _New Englander_.

1st. The _New Englander_ makes a comparison of the provinces of Catholic and Protestant countries, prefaced by the following introduction:

"The author of _Evenings with the Romanists_, writing in 1854,
gave the names and official returns of ten principal cities
of Protestant Prussia and of ten principal cities of Roman
Catholic Austria.... THE CATHOLIC WORLD admits the statements,
... and claims, with that air of injured innocence, which is so
favorite a weapon in Romish polemics, that, if the returns of
the provinces were brought into the account, they would more
than redress the balance of the cities. We proceed to put his
proposition to experiment."

Would our readers credit it, that he has done nothing of the kind? He has not compared the Protestant and Catholic provinces of Protestant Prussia and Roman Catholic Austria, between which, and which alone, the parallel comparison of cities was made; but substituted another comparison, entirely his own, introducing provinces belonging to other countries to weigh down the Catholic scale, and excluding half the Catholic provinces of Austria for the same purpose. This we will show to a demonstration. Here is the table of the _New Englander_:

_Illegitimacy in German Provinces._

PROTESTANT. PR. CT. ROMAN CATHOLIC. PR. CT.

Brandenburg 12 Austria (Upper and Lower) 29.3
Hanover 9.6 Bohemia 16.3
Pomerania 10 Baden 16.2
Prussia 6.7 Bavaria 22.5
Saxony 15.9 Carinthia 11.7
Würtemberg 16.4 Carniola 45
Moravia 15.1
Posen 6.8
Rhineland 3.4
Salzburg 29.6
Styria 30.6
Trieste, Gorz, etc. 9.9
Tyrol and Vorarlberg 6
---- ----
Average 11.7 Average 18.6

We repeat, the question as put by the _New Englander_ itself is not about _German_ provinces, but of the Protestant and Roman Catholic provinces of Prussia and Austria. Moreover, the table as it stands is grossly untrue. The rate of illegitimacy of the province of Prussia is 9 instead of 6.7, which materially alters the general average.

The averages of the table are falsely given as,

Protestant 11.7 Catholic 18.6

The true averages found by balancing the populations and the rates, according to the rules of arithmetic, are:

Protestant 12 Catholic 16.9

Besides these grave blunders, the _New Englander_, professing to give a statement of the _German_ provinces by taking _Germany_, "province by province," has omitted many German provinces, which omission very materially affects the result. We take the liberty of putting them in to show how "economical" of truth the _New Englander_ has been.

_Provinces omitted for which returns were given._

PROTESTANT. PR. CT. CATHOLIC. PR. CT.

Saxon Prussia 10 Austrian Silesia 13.8
Brunswick 18.9
Mecklenburg-Schwerin 20.7
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach 15.6
Saxe Altenburg 16.9
Hesse 17.2
Bremen 7.2

We shall now proceed to do what the _New Englander_ professed to do, but merely shifting the question, has not done, namely, compare the Catholic and Protestant provinces of Protestant Prussia and Roman Catholic Austria, province by province, as they existed previous to the last war, to correspond to the comparison of the cities of these countries which were contained within these limits. Milan, as well as Lemburg and Zara, are put down among the Austrian cities. We shall give the corresponding provinces:

_Illegitimacy in Prussian and Austrian Provinces._

POPULATION
PROTESTANT. IN MILLIONS. PR. CT.

Brandenburg 2.62 12
Pomerania 1.44 10
Prussia 3.01 9
Saxony (province) 2.04 10
---- ----
9.11 10.2

POPULATION
CATHOLIC. IN MILLIONS. PR. CT.

Austria (Upper and Lower) 2.47 29.3
Bohemia 5.11 16.3
Carinthia .34 45
Carniola .47 11.7
Moravia 1.99 15.1
Posen 1.52 6.8
Rhineland 3.35 3.4
Austrian Silesia .49 13.8
Salzburg .15 29.6
Styria 1.09 30.6
Trieste, etc. .56 9.9
Tyrol .88 6
Hungary 10.68 6
Galicia 5.10 8
Dalmatia .44 5
Croatia .95 5.5
Lombardy and Venice 5.55 5.1
----- ----
41.14 10.3

We have thus shown, by a mathematical demonstration, that the words which the _New Englander_ found convenient to put in our mouths, though we really said nothing of the kind, that "if the returns of the provinces were brought into the account, they would more than redress the balance of the cities," are sufficiently made good. We are glad he "proceeded to put our proposition to experiment," and we caution him when he makes any more experiments of this kind to reflect that, whatever may be the judgment of an uncritical public prepared to take his statements without examination, his artifices, misstatements, and false conclusions are sure to be detected by any well-informed reader who will take the trouble of examining them. The result of the comparison of the Protestant and Roman Catholic provinces of Austria and Prussia sums up in this fashion:

_False Average of the New Englander._

Protestant 11.7 Catholic 18.6

_True Average._

Protestant 10.2 Catholic 10.3

We have thus finished this part of our task, strictly confining ourselves to the provinces in question; but as it seems more complete to add the other German provinces on both sides, of which returns are given, we do so with the following result:

_Provinces already given._

POPULATION
PR. CT. IN MILLIONS.

Protestant 10.2 9.11
Würtemberg 16.4 1.75
Smaller German States[16] 14.8 6.40
---- -----
12.5 17.26

POPULATION
PR. CT. IN MILLIONS.

Catholic 10.3 41.14
Bavaria 22.5 4.81
Baden 16.2 1.43
---- -----
11.7 47.38

We dismiss the _New Englander_ from the examination of provinces with the conviction that he ought now to become a wiser if not a better man.

2dly. The _New Englander_ gives us another division of his work, entitled thus, "3. _Comparison of mixed populations_," the object of which seems to be two-fold: 1st, To show the wonderful effect of a little Protestant salt in a mass of Catholic corruption; and 2dly, to push up the rate of Catholic Austria to a high figure by excluding the best half of it, and thus to come out with flying colors in the grand tabular statement of all the European countries. He commences with the following round but very novel statement: "The empire of Austria includes a population of 31,655,746; of these, 21,082,801 or two thirds, are non-Romanists, belonging to the Protestant church or Greek Church."

The population of the empire of Austria is really divided as follows:

Catholics 26,728,020
All others 7,703,976

by which specimen we may form a good judgment of the general accuracy of the _New Englander_.

He goes on, "In nine of the Austrian provinces the population is almost exclusively Roman Catholic. In seven, the Roman Catholics are, on an average, in a minority of 46 per cent." He proves these assertions by a table of

_Mixed Provinces._

ROMANISTS. ILLEGITIMATE.

Hungary 52 per cent. 6 per cent.
Galicia 44 " 8 "
Bukowina 9 " 9 "
Dalmatia 81 " 5 "
Militärgrenze 42 " 1.4 "
Croatia, etc. 82 " 5.5 "
Transylvania 11 " 7 "
-- ---
Average 46 " 6 "

accompanied by the following remark: "This falling of the rate of illegitimacy from twenty-one to six, when the proportion of Romanists to the population falls off from ninety-seven to forty-six, indicates the salutary effect of Protestant Christianity, not only on its own followers, but also on the working of Romanism itself." But suppose the population does not fall off from ninety-seven to forty-six per cent, and that in most of these provinces, and where the rate of illegitimacy is the lowest, there are no Protestants at all, and a small proportion in the rest; what is shown, then, unless it be the ignorance and bad faith of the _New Englander_, which professes to be the "recognized exponent of those views _of religious life_ which have given character to New England, and its essays to be among the best fruits of thought and opinion which the education given at Yale is adapted to foster"? Alas! Messrs. Editors, you have unceremoniously dropped nearly 4,000,000 of Roman Catholics from your computation. Are you not aware that the United Greeks are Roman Catholics? If you are not, we beg leave to enlighten you, and correct the table you have so ostentatiously paraded before the public:

_Jews & Schismatic_
_Catholics._ _Protestants._ _Greeks._

POP. IN PR. POP. IN PR. POP. IN PR.
THOUS'DS. CT. THOUS'DS. CT. THOUS'DS. CT.

Hungary 5965 61 2349 24 1449 15
Galicia 4150 90 31 1 449 9
Bukowina 43 10 none 0 381 90
Dalmatia 338 81 none 0 77 19
Militärgrenze 454 43 20 2 587 55
Croatia, etc. 721 85 none 0 130 15
Transylvania 775 40 510 27 637 33
------ -- ---- -- ---- --
Total 12,446 65 2910 15 3760 20

The "salutary effect of Protestant Christianity in" Galicia, Bukowina, Dalmatia, Militärgrenze, Croatia, etc., is wonderful, and indeed little short of miraculous, considering how exceedingly small the quantity of it is. If the presence of one per cent of Protestants can so ameliorate the condition of things in Galicia, what a land of heavenly purity Connecticut must be! But we arouse ourselves to finish our task, or we shall become entirely absorbed in these sublime reflections.

The _New Englander's_ "experiment" with mixed populations is an entire failure. We will give a much more reliable table, to show the influence of the Catholic and Protestant religion among people of the same race, and living together in the same communities, and under the same laws. The census of illegitimacy has been taken in Prussia according to the religious faith of the people.

_Illegitimacy in Prussia._

AMONG AMONG
PROTESTANTS. CATHOLICS.
Pop. in Pop. in
thous'ds. pr. ct. thous'ds. pr. ct.

Brandenburg 2509 12.05 66 8.40
Silesia 1704 12.03 1756 10.07
Saxony 1903 10.35 130 6.05
Pomerania 1401 10.35 15 9.31
Prussia 2137 9.67 815 7.45
Posen 502 7.06 950 6.82
Westphalia 740 4.18 907 3.35
Rhineland 826 3.35 2494 3.67
------ ----- ---- ----
Total 11,722 10.01 7123 6.4

We take our leave of the "comparison of mixed populations." If the _New Englander_ is satisfied with our treatment of the subject, we are sure we are with his; for it enables us to put this matter once more before an enlightened public, leaving them to form their own opinions about it.

We now come to the _New Englander's_ final division of the subject: "4. Comparison of nations."

Here is the grand extinguisher of all Catholic pretensions. The whole question is to be put in a nut-shell in the following table, and that according to the very criterion proposed by THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

_New-Englander's Table of Illegitimacy in European Countries._

PROTESTANT. PR. CT. CATHOLIC. PR. CT.

Denmark 11 Baden 16.2
England, Scotland, and Bavaria 22.5
Wales 6.7 Belgium 7.2
Holland 4 France 7.5
Prussia, including German Austria 18.1
Saxony & Hanover 8.3 ? Italy (defective) 5.1
Sweden, with Norway. 9.6 ? Spain (defective) 5.5
Switzerland 5.5
Würtemberg 16.4
---- ----

Average 8.8 Average 11.7
Or rejecting Italy
and Spain 14.5

What strikes us first of all is the richness of these averages. Dear _New Englander_, you will be the death of us with your averages. Not that we shall literally be killed off by them; but when we think of the "best fruits" of the scholarship of Yale College producing such averages, by adding up a lot of rates of all sorts of countries, big and little, and dividing the sum by the number of countries, the idea is absurd enough to kill any one with laughter. Exuberance of fancy has evidently exercised an unfavorable influence on the mathematical ability of the author of this article, and neutralized the effect of the excellent mathematical course given at Yale College.

We find in the table Italy and Spain marked with a note of interrogation, as much as to say, "What business have you here with such low averages? You ought to look a great deal worse than that, being such black and benighted Romanist countries as you are." And after them the word "defective" in brackets. No doubt the best of reasons will be given for this. Let us see. "The returns for Italy and Spain are utterly defective and untrustworthy. Assuming the ordinary birth-rate, the returns show that in Italy _more than one fourth_ of the births fail to be registered." Why does not the _New Englander_ give the figures, that we may judge for ourselves? What he has not done we will do for him:

_Births in Italy._

1863 881,342
1864 859,663
1865 878,952
-------
Average 873,319

The population of Italy is 24,231,860, and the birth-rate of Europe, according to the _New Englander_, is 1 to 28. Dividing the number of the population by 28, we get 865,608. The number of actual births _exceeds_ the number expected, instead of being _defective by "more than a fourth."_ As the reason alleged proves to be utterly false, we shall strike off the marks of interrogation from Italy, and leave out the "defective" in the brackets.

In like manner, the returns for Spain are treated. "As for Spain, its census returns, if quoted at all among statistics, are quoted at even a larger discount than its financial securities. The sum of the Spanish censuses for the last forty years has been up and down after the following zigzag fashion:

"1828 13,698,029
1837 12,222,872
1842 12,054,000
1846 12,164,000
1850 10,942,000
1861 16,000,000
1864 15,752,807"

Not having found our friend of the _New Englander_ very precise heretofore in his figures, we did not exactly take them on trust this time, but looked in our "Handbuch," and found the following

_Table of Censuses in Spain._

1822 11,661,865
1832 11,158,264
1846 12,162,872
1857 15,464,340
1860 15,673,536

which does not exhibit any great "zigzag" propensity.

The following table of births does not show any mark of being either untrustworthy or defective, but is uncommonly complete and steady:

LEGITIMATE. ILLEGITIMATE.
1858 516,118 30,040
1859 525,243 31,080
1860 541,231 32,222
1861 577,484 34,125
1862 573,646 33,416
1863 565,144 32,997
1864 586,993 34,458
1865 581,686 33,227

So much for the romancing of the _New Englander_, which we might appropriately designate as building "castles in Spain."

We beg our readers' pardon for these long lists of figures, but they are really necessary for the correct understanding of the matter. As to Austria, we shall take the liberty to bring down her figure from 18.1 to 11.1; not that it would make so very much difference in the general average of the nations, except in the clap-trap mode of calculation adopted by the _New Englander_, but because justice, as we have amply shown, demands it.

We shall now present a true table of the European countries, slightly modifying some of the rates, to correspond to later and better information, and inserting all the omitted countries of which returns are given:

_Table of Illegitimacy in European Countries._

POPULATION
PROTESTANT. PR. CT. IN MILLIONS.

Denmark[17] 11 2.73
England and Wales 6.5 20.07
Scotland 10.1 3.06
Holland 4 3.53
Prussia 8.6 18.94
Sweden and Norway 9.6 5.81
Switzerland 5.5 2.51
Würtemberg 16.4 1.75
Other German States[18] 14.8 6.40
---- -----
Average 8.7 64.80

POPULATION
CATHOLIC. PR. CT. IN MILLIONS.

Baden 16.2 1.43
Bavaria 22.5 4.81
Belgium 7.2 4.98
France 7.2 38.07
Austria 11.1 34.98
Italy 5.1 24.23
Spain 5.5 15.67
---- ------
Average 8.4 124.17