Chapter LVI: Part III (6)

Well, then, the Greek Church _is_ in harmony with our test-symbol to a certain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy. And since she teaches the devotional use of representations, particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly, although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender _mother_ in their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother the church.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real Presence is a living fact with them. So that they _may_ see in the Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.

The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point, she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in harmony with it at no point.

Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point: viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a _divided_ church. But the Madonna can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe _one_ Catholic and Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be _visibly_ “one,” are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an invisible church. That a visible church, of which _oneness_ is a mark, need not be _visibly one_!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go further?

Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or something which it consciously rejects.

What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a church are a _bishop_ with a clergy and laity in his communion. The bishop is its nucleus, and _makes_ the church in the sense in which the head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession. So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they set at defiance both authority and logic.

A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St. Bernard; and the bishop is the _complete_ priest, as having the power to confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so, too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother; and, if the priest, much more the bishop.

There is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as a symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this mean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a multitude of single churches, has equally the form of the Madonna-and-Child—is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in other words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one universal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at least in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the bishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of this principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the supremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point, as much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the other Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as neither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.

* * * * *

So at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the Madonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at all points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes in the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He sees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and, again, the church our _mother_ with her Christ-child at her breast; and, lastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the Pope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the _Sancta Sedes_.

With regard to this last point we think it strange that controversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of the Apocalypse.[164] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of the Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.

Footnote 164:

Chap. xii.

COLLEGE EDUCATION.

The schools of the country have held their days of exhibition or of graduation, the young men are enjoying their holidays, and the teachers are preparing themselves for a new year of work. It would seem to be a favorable moment to say a word about the question that more or less occupies all who think seriously of the future—education. This word, so often used, conveys different ideas, according to the person who speaks. Its etymology undoubtedly gives it a certain definite meaning: _educo_, _erudiri_ are two words that signify the bringing forth from a negative state to a positive one—from ignorance and rudeness to knowledge and culture. But this general idea does not cover the whole matter. We have to consider the end to which this process is directed in order to have an adequate idea of what it should be. Now, this end we shall have clearly before us if we call to mind the end for which man is here on earth. Christians all acknowledge and teach that man is here to know, love, and serve God and save his soul. These two, therefore—redemption from ignorance and a rude state, and the end for which man is here—give us the right idea of what education ought to be. The appreciation of both will enable us to avoid two fatal obstacles—presumption and error. The proper state of mind of any one beginning a course of education is the recognition of his want of knowledge. There is nothing so hurtful as a spirit of pride; for this blinds the mind, makes one overweeningly confident of his powers, attached to his own opinions, and loath to receive instruction. We have heard in our day young people discussing the question whether a man were not able to work out the most difficult problems of human science of himself; whether he absolutely stood in need of the guidance of others; and whether there were any branch of human knowledge or achievement of past times _any one_ might not be able to attain to or accomplish, provided he turned his attention to it, and circumstances were favorable. And when a young man had succeeded in mastering a certain amount of learning or science, we have been witnesses of the very remarkable phenomenon of seeing him set himself up as one whose opinion should cut short every discussion, and form the law of belief or action for those around him. Any one having had any experience of truly learned men, who even may not have been models of virtue, must have been struck at the humility of mind they give proof of. They, more than others, appreciate how little they know of what it is possible to know; they see the vast field of knowledge of which they individually can but cultivate a part, and common sense keeps them from thinking themselves possessed even of all that can be known of what they are actually engaged in. They agree in spirit with the celebrated master of Plato, whose saying is familiar to us: “I know only this: that I know nothing.” The first requisite, therefore, for sound education is a humble state of mind, a disposition to be taught and receive the lessons with docility—a disposition not only needful in a beginner, but required even more the further one advances into the domain of knowledge. When one adds to the original and relative ignorance of us all the further fact of the ease with which we go astray, fall into error—a facility so great as to have given rise to the adage in universal use, “_Humanum est errare_”—it is impossible a man of sense should not recognize the necessity of keeping down the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and confess that, in not having controlled himself in this respect, he has given the most complete proof of the adage in his own case. We are therefore all in the same condition, all in need of learning, and stand in want of a teacher to instruct us and lead us in the path of truth. What is the truth we are to seek after, who the teacher we are to go to, results from the study of the end to which education is to be directed. We have seen that the end of man is to know, love, and serve God and save his soul, and this tells us what education should be. Anything that conflicts with this end is to be rejected; whatever aids us in attaining it is to be embraced; and as all truth is in harmony with that end, it follows that education can embrace all sciences that are truly such, while it must eliminate all error; for error has a logical effect of keeping us from the attainment of that end, especially where that error regards the higher branches of speculative education.

Here, then, comes in the most important element in the education of man—religion; religion, that is, to teach his head and train his heart. If, as is most certainly the fact, man was made for God and for immortal life hereafter, education that would exclude this element—religion—which regulates the relations of man with God, and teaches him how he may gain that everlasting state for which he has been created, is wanting most deplorably in the one thing needful. Such an education fits a man only for matter; is of the earth earthy. It has no higher aim than the objects around him; it is a guide that does not bring into the presence of the King, but takes one no further than the domain over which the King’s power is exercised. However much it may delight the eye with grandeur of scenery, proofs of power and of wisdom, it has no right or ability to introduce into a close communion with the Sovereign, the source of all it beholds. It is simply an unworthy servant banished for ever from the face of his Master. This kind of education, which we shall style secular, professedly excludes all religious control of any kind whatsoever, and it consequently relies only on reason and scientific examination. Now, reason has been found wanting. In the brightest examples of pagan times, familiar to students of history, are to be found not only actions nature itself condemns, but principles laid down by them subversive of natural society and of all Christian virtue—pantheism and immorality. And we owe it to Christianity that we have been rescued from the social life in which such principles prevailed and were in practice. Any one nowadays who knows something of men will bear witness to the fact that both the one and the other—pantheism and immorality—are on the increase and show themselves publicly in the speech of the men and women of to-day. This can be owing only to one cause—the divorce of religion from education. And because this is so, because secular education does not lead us to God, but takes us from him, a dividing line must be drawn between religious education and secular education; an insuperable barrier exists between them, which must and ought to keep all that believe in revelation on the side of a training under the eye of religion. And if this be the case with regard to all who profess belief in Christ, how much truer is it with reference to those who have given their names to the Catholic Church and look to her infallible voice for their guidance! In saying this we do not wish to speak disparagingly of the learning, the ability, or the zeal of those engaged in the cause of education who are not with us. We respect all those who are striving to increase the treasure of human knowledge or dispense it to their fellow-men. We join hands with all who are earnest in their study of true science, and rejoice in their success. We have no right to question their sincerity. But between their efforts and success in discovery, or in acquiring and imparting learning, and the way in which they educate, there is a difference most vital and essential. The one investigates the works of the Creator, while the other leads men practically, where it does not absolutely tell them as much, to ignore the Creator himself. Godless science can only fill a man with himself, while it offers no guarantee for the preservation of his morals and the attainment of his last end.

On the other hand, religion goes before the education which is allied with her. With her torch of faith she illumes the darkness of men’s minds. She shows them how much more beautiful is the Author of all the beautiful things they contemplate than are the objects themselves. She makes them behold in him the original essential beauty of which the universe is only a faint participation, and yearn for the possession of that Beauty and sovereign Good she tells them is within their reach; and she shows them how, under her direction, they may not be carried away by transient allurements, by what they see around them, but attain to an indissoluble union with that Beauty and sovereign Good—with God himself.

But it may be said religion has nothing to do with natural science; it cramps man’s mind, fetters his intellect, stops his investigation. It will do well enough in its sphere, but its action is hurtful to scientific pursuits.

Is this true? It is not true; and we can refute the charge by principle and by fact.

All that exists belongs to God. All science, all truth comes from him, the great First Cause, from whom all things proceed, in whom there can be no contradiction. His works, therefore, cannot contradict him nor contradict each other. Natural truth and revealed truth must, then, be in harmony, and we do not fear a conflict between them. The Catholic student of science is as fearless an investigator as is his rationalist _confrère_; but the former will not rashly give himself up to speculations the other’s further experience will oblige him to retract. The facts of science will never be in opposition to revelation, though the interpretation of scientific men may be, to their discomfiture later on. Even if the teacher of revelation, the church, should by any possibility, as is asserted in the case of Galileo, fail in a _disciplinary_ decree with regard to scientific research, such decrees not being infallible utterances of the Holy See, there remains always the remedy of a reversal when the incontestable proof of the contrary, such as he did not bring forward, shall be produced. So spoke Cardinal Bellarmine, one of Galileo’s judges. Though we may safely say that those in charge of the interests of the church do well in being exceedingly careful how they interfere with scientific investigation, it nevertheless may become necessary at times to curb the license of those who undertake to interpret the truths of revelation according to their ideas or appreciation of science. How many scientific theories fall to pieces every day! And is it not reasonable that those who believe in a revelation should not be left at the mercy of every clever scientific man who is pleased to have a tilt against it? Let any scientific truth be fully proved, and the Catholic Church will be the first to applaud, for it redounds to the glory of her Head.

We need not, however, confine ourselves to this negative way of advocating the cause of revelation as friendly to science, for there is no dearth of positive proof of the fact.

Revelation is positively of advantage to the study of science. It is clear that any one who keeps me, when on a journey, from going out of my way saves me an amount of time and trouble. Instead of wandering in the woods and bypaths, I am enabled to keep the highway and so reach sooner my destination. This is one of the important services revelation renders science. It tells us: Don’t direct your attention hither or thither; for you will find out you are wrong, after losing precious time and making yourself a laughing-stock. Don’t go in search of the “missing link,” for you won’t find it. Don’t divide the unity of the human race, for it is one—of one man and one woman. Don’t grovel with the materialists; for man has a spirit, and he is destined for a better life hereafter. Such like warnings we have from revelation, and, instead of going astray with evolutionists and so-called philosophers, we employ our time and talents on points that are serious and practical in science and nature; and Heaven knows there are plenty of these to engage us. The result is useful knowledge that does not undo but builds up society and perfects civilization. For this our grateful thanks are due revelation.

Then, again, revelation opens up to us new fields of thought. It gives us an insight into what we could not otherwise know. It is as if chance discovered to us some principle of art or science no one had before suspected. Once presented, reason can occupy itself on it, explore it as far as possible, make deductions and applications. How much human ethics have gained in clearness and usefulness by the light of the command to love our neighbor, and by the example of the Redeemer of man! How much speculative philosophy with regard to personality, responsibility, good and evil, and the future life! The crude theories of pagan times excite our compassion nowadays, though we honor the ability of their original propounders; yet these same theories we see now broached by those who have cast aside revelation, but often with less depth and less wisdom than the pagan in whose mind not all the light of natural religion was quenched. No! revelation is the friend of science; science divorced from religion, the vaunted glory of to-day, is the enemy of progress; retrograde in all save the energetic talent that is lost in its service.

A few examples will show what revelation or the church has done and is doing for the cause of education; whether it has checked the development of man or favored it.

We will go to the “dark ages,” in which those who oppose the church as an educator are wont to find their _cheval de bataille_, their bugbear to frighten off those inclined to trust her. We say nothing of the unfairness of Protestants who wilfully ignore the sad state of the Roman world consequent on the barbarian invasions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, and the struggles with the Saracens, who penetrated even into Italy—a condition of things most inimical to the quiet requisite for study; who pass over the conquest of those barbarians and their civilization by the church; who pretend to know nothing of what was done by the monks to preserve learning in their monasteries, to whom the preservation of the classic, philosophic, and ascetic works of antiquity and of the early church—the Bible among them—is due. We come to the thirteenth century. There we see, burning with a light that is celestial, a luminary not of the church only but of human reason—St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. There was hardly a branch of intellectual pursuit of which he was not a master. His works are wonderful, and have always been a precious and useful legacy in every subsequent age. His great work, the Sum of Theology, has remained the text-book of theologians. In fact, no theologian is master of his subject who has not made St. Thomas the object of his constant study. Though at times somewhat neglected, we may safely say that at present there is an increasing appreciation of his works. Certainly this is true of his philosophical treatise _Contra Gentiles_. There is now a wide-spread movement in all civilized nations to return to the use of the metaphysical and ethical teachings of St. Thomas, and it will be the means of regenerating such philosophical studies in this epoch of individual self-assertion, of _ipse dixits_, when every man of talent who lists puts forth his own hazy speculations as the truth, and strives to force down his deductions as the _ne plus ultra_ of science. Domenico Soto, at the Council of Trent, defined scholastic theology to be reason illumined by faith; we may, like him, style scholastic philosophy reason kept in its right path by the torch of faith. In the works of St. Thomas will be found the refutation of the pantheism of Spinoza and the present German school, of the materialism of Hobbes and Büchner, of the utilitarian ideas of Mill, Spencer, and others of the followers of Puffendorf. We shall find, too, in his writings the ablest defence of revelation, and the sound principles that will enable us to put to flight the whole host of mythical theorists of the age. So much for theology, metaphysics, and ethics.

If we wish to speak of the work of the church in poetry, science, and literature, we have a monument of what she could do, even in the middle ages, in Dante. We hardly know which to admire most in this extraordinary man—his native genius, his extraordinary powers of imagination, the beauty of his imagery, the remarkable knowledge of theology and philosophy he exhibits in his writings, or the beauty of the language he created. His culture was due to the church; his inspiration was drawn from revelation; and his science he drank in at the great schools established and carried on by the church in Italy, in France, and in England. So pre-eminent is this writer, philosopher, and poet, that even in the nineteenth century our own poet whose works are read and justly appreciated wherever the English language is spoken—Henry W. Longfellow—has deemed it well worthy of his own genius to be his translator. Yet Dante is the product of the Catholic Church.

But the fashion to-day is to extol physical science. Of a truth, physical science does not hold, and should not hold, the first place. If man were only matter, it might and should; but he has a soul, and the spiritual and intellectual world is his proper sphere. Scientific knowledge is useful for the arts that serve to make commerce prosper, and should be sought after; but to make commerce and what pertains to it, and the material comforts of man, the main object of his thoughts and aims is a monstrous disorder.

However, even in this sphere of physical science the church is not afraid of her competitors. We leave to one side old Friar Bacon and other patriarchs of science, and we come to our own day. The church can point to Angelo Secchi, one of the first of living astronomers and physical scientists, and a member of a society that counts among its members men distinguished in every branch of human knowledge—the Society of Jesus. So great is the pre-eminence of this distinguished _savant_ in his native Italy that, since the city of Rome has been in the hands of the present rulers, they have left nothing undone to gain him over to their side. And it is a pleasure to us to pay this public tribute to the noble fidelity he has shown to his faith, his church, and his society, giving as he does a splendid example of the alliance between the most advanced physical science and the Catholic Church.

As faithful adherents to revelation, though not Catholics, we may mention the late Prof. Faraday and the no less distinguished Dr. Carpenter, who show that revelation and science do not war against each other.

But we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not hostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put her before the world in her true character as the real friend of man, the guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his intellect and of the freedom of his will. _In medio stat virtus_—Virtue avoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too little, and we need something to keep us from either of these two extremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and much-needed office.

There was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that attributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave to man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely spread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or the help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to their most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was an excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is contradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: “I am the vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.” And St. Paul says: “We are not able to think of anything [conducive to salvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.” And St. Augustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as impossible, writes: “God does not command what is impossible; but commanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do what is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.” In this case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the intellect and will within its true limits.

In the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and rebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it reduced man’s nature. Luther’s dogmatic system had, and has—for it lives in Protestantism—the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light to the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not sinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that it depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever it does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which, like Esau’s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state of things and the imputation of sin.

Here was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.

The church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man’s intellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not essentially changed, and that all man’s acts are not sinful. She recognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and Romans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they had been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy dignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return not by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.” She bade man remember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified by the grace of God, and that “in those that please God there is nothing defiled.”

Luther’s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted even Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to be in union with the church.

In the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that some of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given to fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the Pelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was heard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later on came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of universal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative infidelity—that is, idolatry in good faith—is not a sin; that consequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can do many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those which are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did the church prove herself the friend of human dignity.

Further on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused by the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power of discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace everything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not received from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition. And this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher, discountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of Wisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the contemplation of this visible world.

We will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion that the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in this same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be said that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful analysis and deduction; that intuition—vision—is the lot of the blessed, and therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the blessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there are reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the infection of the world of thought prevalent in his day—the disesteem of human nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the system of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a psychological effect—a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led so to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of occasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not—a doctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would thereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation of the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing truth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be given, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned; and it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See has been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas, whose principle, clearly laid down, is: “Operatio intellectus præexigit operationem sensus”—“The operation of the intellect prerequires the operation of sense”—I. 2, quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie est cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu; cujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex his quæ exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam rei”—“Our intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is (its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper objects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what appears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.” Of course sense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the perception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which are the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no natural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially inherent powers of his mind—perception, abstraction, generalization. God sees by intuition everything in himself—this is essential in him; created intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in God, reflected from creation as from a mirror.

From these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always been the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of faculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the search of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind for what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the confidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.

We come now to a more directly practical part of our assumed task, and shall consider it our duty to speak plainly, and perhaps in a way to be censured by some; but we do it in what seems to us the interest of our people and country. The Rev. Father. T. Burke, O.S.D., while in this country some years ago, addressing a society of young men, told them that Americans could not expect to take their position among the civilized nations of the world unless they studied, and studied not superficially but well. For our part, we thank him for this word. It is time to put out of our heads that we are the most cultivated, civilized, well-informed people of the world. We are not. Alongside the generality of the educated men of Europe the generality of the educated men of America do not appear to advantage. Who and what is to blame for this?

In the first place, we blame parents. They ought to know better; they have had experience of the world. They are the natural guardians of their offspring, and should provide by their experience a remedy for the inexperience of youth. Yet they, and especially Catholic parents, are those who put the greatest obstacles in the way of those engaged in teaching. They want their boys hurried through school; they can’t see the use of Latin, much less of Greek. As for philosophy, a man can make a fortune without philosophy; as if a fortune were the only thing worth living for! If that were the case, your California stage-driver who has struck a “bonanza” is the type of what a man should be intellectually. Heaven save the mark! We have had such men say to us: “I assure you, sir, it is a very great misfortune my education was neglected; I have wealth and don’t know how to enjoy it.” There are numbers of unhappy wealthy Americans travelling in Europe whose children are looking forward to brilliant futures, but who themselves rush from one place to another, tortured by the necessity of having to come in contact with educated people and learn daily their own inferiority. We have met such people, and, out of sheer pity for their unhappy lot, have done what was in our power to make them forget for a while their troubles.

The fact is, no greater boon can a wealthy parent bestow upon his child than a thorough, careful education, and every effort should be made to secure such education. And one of the first steps to be taken is that parents second the efforts of zealous educators in our Catholic institutions. These institutions have their defects, but those defects can hardly be remedied without the co-operation of parents. What that co-operation should be will be seen further on.

There are defects in our institutions of education. This is our next point. These defects are in the manner of teaching and in what is taught.

We acknowledge that there have been great improvements in the manner of teaching since we were boys; but with all this the want of uniformity, scarcely attainable in this country, will always leave the door open to defects in teaching. As a rule, the mind of a boy is too much taxed with speculative matter, and his memory comparatively neglected. The memory is one of the first faculties to show itself active, and it is also capable of wonderful development. In the earlier education of the child the exercise of the memory should predominate; as little strain as possible should be put on the mind yet tender. As the education progresses the exercise of the memory should be kept up; choice extracts from the best poets and writers should alternate with the useful storing in the mind of facts and definitions. The preliminary education should consist in the learning of languages, which are means of acquiring further knowledge by intercourse and reading, not by any means the sum total of education. We wish our Catholic parents would understand this; for when a boy succeeds in knowing a little French and German they seem to think everything done. These languages are only the keys to the treasures locked up in the writings of other nations. They are principally to be acquired by memory; and, in fact, this is the way the most successful and generally used method—that of Ollendorf—adopts. There is no reason why the boy should not be put at a very early age to learning foreign languages. There is, too, one great advantage in this: that his work at such languages will be lighter and less absorbing when he comes to be engaged in scientific study. Again, care should be taken not to put into the hands of a child books of an abstruse or relatively difficult character; for excessive caution against straining the mind of such a scholar can scarcely be taken. A great deal of harm is sometimes done from the too high standard exacted by school-boards of the various categories of boys. We have never ceased to praise the judicious interference of our father, who, finding us with an analytical arithmetic put into our hands at seven years of age, took it away and placed it on the highest shelf of his closet.

When a boy is well under weigh in the languages—we do not speak of religious education, which we take for granted—he may very properly be introduced to the study of experimental science and the more difficult problems of analytical arithmetic and mathematics. But these branches should not be arranged in such a way as to compete, as it were, with that much-neglected study, so lightly thought of—mental philosophy. If one visits our different Catholic institutions of learning, and examines their system, still more looks into the practical working of it, he will find that the year of philosophy, much talked of, is employed in a most perfunctory manner. We would not be understood as attributing any _culpa theologica_ to the instructors. We consider this state of things owing first to parents, and consequently to their children, and in part to the want of appreciation of the need of such philosophical training on the part of the teachers; though also, sometimes, to want of competency in the teachers themselves, whose previous education has been on the old plan. We conceive that too great attention and zeal cannot be expended in the correction of these defects. Corrected they can be, and they must be, if we wish to take and keep our proper standing. We cannot have a university for the present, and therefore it is all important that the one essential thing a university can give—a higher mental training—should be given to our young Catholic men. They must receive this in our colleges; they will not have it elsewhere. Of the need of it there can be no question. The great number of able, educated Europeans who, from political causes, have had to leave their native country and come to us, and the large number of Americans who nowadays study in European universities, all of whom, in conversation and through the press, retail to us the wildest phases of infidel, metaphysical, and social doctrine, is a sufficient argument to decide the matter, should any one hesitate. The church, to be sure, is our infallible guide, but there are many questions she does not treat, or, if she has treated them, her decisions can be understood only by careful study and explanation in the language of philosophy. So far from discouraging the study of philosophy, of metaphysics, and of ethics—possibly the more important of the two—she encourages us to make a good use of this handmaid of theology. It is therefore a duty incumbent on those in whose hands is placed the education of our young men to pay more attention than ever to this kind of instruction. We know of efforts in some instances that have been made in this direction, but which have failed. We are afraid they were not very numerous. In some instances a tincture of metaphysics was deemed enough; ethics were wholly neglected. How this could be has always been a puzzle to us. But it should not be any longer. A careful course of metaphysics that would embrace particularly the refutation of pantheism and materialism, besides establishing thoroughly the existence of God and the spirituality and immortality of the soul; and an equally careful course of ethics that would refute the utilitarians and socialists of the day, while making clear the claims of authority, the nature of law, the origin of right in the eternal fitness of things as seen in the divine Mind, and such kindred questions, should be the object of the most earnest solicitude of the superiors of our Catholic colleges. The young students should be made to apply their knowledge thus received either by short compositions in addition to the repetition of the lessons taught; or, far better still, by academic exercises in which one student defends in the school-room before his teacher and fellow-students a thesis or proposition already explained, while one or two others object against it all they can think of or learn, and this, too, in strict syllogistic form. Exercises such as these would be of the greatest advantage in training the mind to the ready use of logic, and to refuting the arguments possible to be urged against sound doctrine. Nothing better than this would tend to take away the reproach so often, and perhaps in some cases most unjustly, made against our educational institutions, of incompetency for thorough education. Did it depend on us to have the recasting of the system of education, we should be inclined to add on a year of further study as a requisite for graduation, and during the last two years of a young man’s course we would employ him entirely in the study of metaphysics and ethics, including the principles of political economy, of the philosophy of history—in which the great questions of history, as far as possible, might be reviewed—and in the further polish of his literary English training. The philosophy of history is most important, for it is a powerful teacher. History is not to be studied as a bare narrative of facts; the facts have a language of their own which needs an interpreter. The polish of literary education is of great necessity, as it is the one thing those educated in the non-Catholic colleges may be said to excel us in. We do not dwell much on scientific education, because that is really of secondary importance, and it is impossible to give boys more than an elementary training in this branch, which may serve as a ground-work for further pursuit of it, if one is destined to turn his attention in that direction. To enable the superiors of our colleges to carry out such a plan would depend upon the parents of young students having the fortitude to oblige their sons to remain the requisite time and make a diligent use of their opportunities. Herein lies their co-operation in the great work of the future education of the young Catholic men of America; and our word for it, if they follow this counsel, they will never have cause to repent. They will give us, too, far abler champions of truth than our young men have shown themselves to be in the past.

THE DANCING PROCESSION OF ECHTERNACH.
FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.

In the year of our Lord 690 a vessel from the island of Britain left upon the coast of Catwyk, in Holland, twelve young Anglo-Saxons who had abandoned their newly-converted country to carry the blessing of the Gospel to their brethren of the Continent. Chief among these young men, several of whom were of noble birth, was Willibrord, predestined from his mother’s womb to be a glory to the church and famous in the estimation of men. The young strangers separated, to work, each in his own way, in the vineyard of the Father. Willibrord began that very day the long and heroic apostolate of fifty years which ceased only with the pulsations of his heart. If we except his two journeys to Rome, where the great servant of the Papacy twice received the blessing and encouragement of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not relax for a single day his labors in the vast region which stretches from the mouths of the Elbe and the Rhine to the banks of the Moselle. At his voice nations sitting in darkness rose up to behold the light, idols crumbled before the amazed eyes of their worshippers, churches arose from the soil and gathered about their altars multitudes of Christians, lay society organized itself little by little after the model of spiritual society.[165]

Footnote 165:

_V._ Alcuin in _Vita Willibrordi_ ap. Mabillon. _Acta Sanctorum_, Ord.
S. Benedicti, t. iii. p. 567, Venetian edition.

Tradition and history show us by turns the great Anglo-Saxon apostle in Friesland as the master of St. Boniface; in Denmark, preceding by more than a century the famous St. Anscarius; in the island of Helgoland, destroying the idol of Fosite and braving King Radbod’s wrath; in the Isle of Walcheren, where he nearly fell a victim to his heroism and apostolic zeal; in Campine as the friend of St. Lambert, another untiring athlete of Christ; and, finally, in Luxembourg, where even more than elsewhere his name is glorified and revered. For half a century he stood with Lambert and Boniface in the breach, the father of civilization in Western Germany and one of the most signal benefactors of mankind.

The common people, though they forget great poets and great generals, preserve the memory of saints. Seventeen churches in Belgium and fifty-eight in Holland are under his patronage, without counting those in the valleys of the Moselle and the Rhine, where his fame is equally wide-spread. Sixty-three leagues apart, a small section of St. Willibrord’s vast itinerary, two villages to-day preserve in their own names the undying memory of his works: Wilwerwiltz on the sterile moors of the German Ardennes, and Kleemskerk on the low, fertile plains of maritime Flanders.[166] Drawn, as it were, from nothingness by this great man, these two localities, were other witnesses wanting, would tell to later ages the glory of their sublime founder. Answering one to the other across the whole extent of Belgium, they testify to his vast labors and his devotion to the Roman Church, which we unworthily defend to-day against the barbarism conquered by him twelve centuries ago.

Footnote 166:

Wilwerwiltz is a contraction of Willibrordswiltz. As to Kleemskerk
(Clement’s Church), we know that in Rome Willibrord received the name
of Clement, as did Winfrid that of Boniface, under which he is
venerated.

I.

During his apostolic missions through the forests of Luxembourg Willibrord remarked one of the most charming and romantic spots in that fine country. It was at a turn of the Sûre, which even to-day flows on beneath the shade of savage rocks and deep forests. The valley, widening at this place, must at that time have presented a most imposing aspect, while it offered every facility for a settlement of human habitations. Indeed, the dwellings were even then of ancient date. The place bore a name recalling incontestably its first Celtic occupants: Epternacum. There, too, the Romans had left traces of their passage. A short league from Echternach archæologists may still read beneath the great shadowy oaks and thick brushwood that half hide it the following inscription engraved on the base of a monument:

DEÆ DIANÆ
Q. POSTVMIVS
POTENS. V. S.

The upper part of the monument is gone, but enough remains to show that it represented two persons—no doubt the goddess and her worshipper, with a hunting-dog crouched at Diana’s feet. He who overthrew the false gods of Helgoland and Walcheren must have crushed in holy ire this monument of the paganism he had just destroyed.[167] At all events, the image of Diana, once proudly throned above the valley at the edge of the wood, now hides, degraded and mutilated, in the dank gloom of brambles and brushwood—an eloquent emblem of St. Willibrord’s work in this country. Echternach, where even then two little Christian oratories stood on the site of the two churches of to-day, attracted the great man’s attention and heart. He built there a Benedictine monastery, which was favored from its foundation by the bounty of two royal families, the Merovingians and Carlovingians. Around this focus of Christian life habitations gathered, and, as always happened, the monastery expanded and became a town. Such was the origin of the commune of Echternach, one of the most flourishing in that happy country of Luxembourg which knows neither great cities nor great miseries.

Footnote 167:

This, at least, is the plausible conjecture of a scholar of the first
rank—F. Alexander Wiltheim—in his fine book, _Luxemburgum Romanum_.

The monastery of Echternach was always dearer to its founder than his other foundations. There he loved to pass his rare hours of repose. There, on the 6th of November, 739, at the age of eighty-one years, he reached the term of his mortal career. His remains were laid in the basilica of the abbey among his monks and his people. Even in the tomb he continued to be the father of that country and to exercise over men the sovereign authority which his virtues and labors had won. Death has no hold upon the saints; when we lower their bodies into the grave we rear their images upon our altars. St. Willibrord, more than any other patron of the country, is one whose sepulchre may be called glorious. Few tombs have inspired a veneration so extraordinary, attracted the faithful in such crowds, excited acts of faith so intense. No sooner was he laid in his grave than multitudes came to invoke the apostle of Luxembourg, and frequent miracles bore witness to his powerful protection. A century had not elapsed when this wonderful devotion was spoken of by the greatest writer of his time—Alcuin, the biographer of our saint.[168] His festival was celebrated by an immense concourse, who filled the air with his praise. “See, brethren,” says St. Alcuin. “Behold the glory of serving God. Our holy patron, for love of Christ, left his native country and led the life of a pilgrim. He trampled under foot the riches of this world; he loved, he clung to poverty. And you know the glory he acquired among men. But preferable far is that which he possesses for all eternity among the angels.”[169] And the illustrious friend of Charlemagne, speaking to his contemporaries of facts of which he had been an eye-witness, told of the iron fetters on the wrists and ankles of devout pilgrims which burst asunder when they came to do penance for their sins at the venerated tomb.[170]

Footnote 168:

Ibi usque hodie divinâ operante misericordia signa et sanitates ad
sancti viri et sacerdotis reliquias fieri non cessant.—_Alcuin O.C._,
iii. p. 571.

Footnote 169:

Id. in _Mabillon_, iii. p. 575.

Footnote 170:

Id. ib. iii. p. 572.