Part 5. Conflict of Roman Catholicism With the State in the Sphere of Public Education (Cont.) (4)

In the general principle, Protestantism makes itself known already in the fact that the school adopted by the state is a secularized school, that is, one in which education is removed from organic connection with religion. Such an organization of public education does not contradict Protestantism; on the contrary, it constitutes the logical conclusion from its basic nature as a religion of “faith” separated from “works.” Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism holds the exactly opposite principle, by which there must be an organic connection between religion and life, between Church and school, between faith and works; and therefore a secularized school for Catholicism is an impossible thing, standing in contradiction to its fundamental principle. The state, in adopting a system in accord with the principles of Protestantism and contradicting the views of Catholicism, thereby sided with the former, to the detriment of the latter. The school is thus in principle Protestant and consequently hostile to Roman Catholicism. It appears Protestant also in the portion of the religious element which has been introduced into the secularized school. That “Common Christianity” which the state chose as its state religion is undoubtedly possible only from the Protestant point of view and is in essence Protestant religion, albeit abstracted from its various forms. For Roman Catholicism such “Common Christianity” is unthinkable; it recognizes only such Christianity as is embodied in an unchanging, strict, historically developed and consolidated form, outside of which any other form is, for it, a deviation from the one true form, is Protestantism and thereby a denial of Catholicism. Those particular forms in which this “Common Christianity” is introduced into the school again necessarily bear a Protestant character. According to the Massachusetts statute of 1826, adopted in most states, the religious element enters the school in the form of “the Bible, prayers, hymns, and piety.”[1] This is obviously a very vague definition and in this connection a Roman Catholic organ rightfully could pose such questions: “What does this mean? Will our children be instructed in religion according to the parliamentary doctrine of the Anglican Church, or trained in the complete madness of the followers of Calvin? Will they be obliged to deny the divinity of Christ with the Unitarians and the eternity of torments with the Universalists? Can it really be that our children are given to us so that we subject them every day to instruction in the wanderings of Methodism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Muggletonanism, Mormonism, or any of the thousands of other isms born of that fertile mother of discord, the vaunted and notorious Reformation? Or are we to teach them a portion of each of them in turn, depending on what teachers political revolution throws to the surface? This idea is obviously absurd.”[2] Meanwhile, in public schools exactly such an arrangement can and does exist. The Bible in them is accepted only as the one which Catholics consider corrupted and spurious,[3] and hymns are sung which in the opinion of Catholics constitute nothing but “blasphemy” against the divine persons.[2] In schools it is allowed for Catholic children to use the translation of the Bible recognized by them—the Douay; but the choice of one or another translation is determined chiefly by the composition of the teachers, and the latter, as appointed to their posts by ballot of the trustees and superintendents, are naturally for the most part Protestant, and therefore are most likely to use the commonly accepted Protestant translation. Moreover, the use of the Catholic translation of the Bible, given the preponderance of Protestant children, would be an injustice to the latter. More than that, in schools for economy’s sake a Bible has been adopted which is, in the view of Catholics, even worse than the unrecognized or King James translation—namely, “the translation (as says a Catholic author) concocted by the Bible Society. The very Lord’s Prayer in this so-called Bible is, in the opinion of all scholars, spurious; and if it is spurious, as all American translators acknowledge, then it is blasphemous, and yet in a sectarian spirit of proselytism they forcibly introduce it into schools.”[4] Such proselytism is not merely a product of Catholic imagination; it is acknowledged by Protestants themselves. “We cannot expect the conversion of parents,” says a Protestant pastor; “but between two millstones—the Bible and public laws—we will grind Catholicism out of their children.”[5] Protestantism makes itself known not only in the adopted Bible and in the organization of religious education in school, but also in the secular textbooks themselves. “Veiled mockery of Catholicism,” writes a historian-publicist, “appears in some of them even now. A Catholic child in vain searches for even in the best of them a single word of praise for the great ancient church of his fathers, or his glorious faith. We know one educated young Catholic who received his education in public schools and for a long time was convinced that Catholics had never written anything worthy of being included in school anthologies. And it could not be expected that he would have a better opinion.”[6] All these facts do not go beyond the realm of possibility and are an inevitable result of the numerical superiority of Protestants both among students and teachers. Collision between Protestantism and Catholicism, as between two opposing principles, is inevitable even in the purely scientific sphere, and in such collision any reconciliation must necessarily favor Protestantism if it is impossible to remove the subject of the dispute itself. And its removal is often completely unthinkable without harm to science itself. Undoubtedly the collision between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism can be strongest of all in the field of history as a science, whose recent facts consist largely of the struggle between these two denominations. “Regarding history,” a Roman Catholic organ justly declares, “even with the most careful regard to accuracy, it is impossible to reproduce it without constantly touching upon disputed events and characters regarding which Protestants and Catholics can never agree with each other. Can one imagine a history of modern Europe from which were omitted the great facts of the Church’s civilizing mission in the Old World, the establishment of the temporal power of the popes, the ‘peace of God’ and the crusades of the Middle Ages, the great uprising against spiritual authority, mistakenly called the Reformation, the persecution of Irish Catholics, and the French Revolution? At best such a book would be a wretched compilation of numbers and distorted facts, and yet any exposition of these great epochs in European history, with all possible accuracy, would inevitably be an offense to the opinions or prejudices of Protestants or Catholics. If history is ‘philosophy teaching by examples,’ then we must seek it somewhere else, not in our public schools.”[7] It was of course impossible to avoid these facts in history textbooks and they were included in them, and their exposition could not but appear in a form recognized as true only by Catholics, and consequently they appear inevitably with a Protestant tint, at least in the eyes of Catholics, for whom everything non-Catholic is thereby Protestant. Finally there have been cases when Catholic children found themselves in conflict even with school discipline due to its Protestant character. Catholics have holidays which Protestants do not recognize and which therefore have not been taken into account in the school program, and in such cases Catholic children are placed in a difficult position between two opposing requirements—the Church and the school. “A case that occurred in Vermont,” says a Catholic author, “proves that in some places Catholic children cannot attend public schools and at the same time fulfill the requirements of their religion. Because they dared to go to Mass on the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1875, they were expelled from the public schools in Brattleboro. The matter was brought to court. But the law (?) supported the side of the fanatic board of education. From this it is clear that the child must cease to be a practicing Catholic, otherwise it will be banished from public schools.”[5] In general, the entire system of public education is hostile to the spirit of Roman Catholicism. “On the basis of the oldest and best Catholic testimonies, it can be confidently asserted that, with few respectable exceptions, Catholics educated in mixed schools may be respectable and honest people, according to the Protestant sense of this word; but as actual, religious, faithful observers of the rules of their Church they cannot be. They are Catholics in name, Protestants or semi-pagans in fact.”[8]

Thus the opposition of Catholics to the present system of public education has real grounds. The school system, contrary to the Constitution of the country, which secures equal and identical rights of religious conscience for all denominations, has turned out, by force of the inevitable laws of might, in all its parts to be Protestant, and as such it is undoubtedly harmful to Roman Catholicism. And yet it exists, and the state, levying taxes for its support, does not exclude Catholics, thus imposing upon them an indirect obligation to use a school which they do not recognize. “The system of public schools in the United States,” says a Catholic author, “in its present form excludes religion from the school; or if it admits any, its influence in any case is hostile to Catholic faith. In consequence of this, Catholics must, with great sacrifices, build and maintain their own schools. But they are also compelled to support public schools. They are placed between two evils: 1) if they send their children to public schools, it means exposing their faith to danger; that the atmosphere of the public school paralyzes a Catholic child’s love for the religion of his fathers, this has never been refuted; 2) if they build their own Catholic schools, it means subjecting themselves to a double tax. In this respect the Catholic element suffers a crying injustice. It bears the tax for the support of institutions whose use conscience forbids.”[9]

It is understandable that Catholics seek a way out of this difficult situation, and their prolonged agitation against the existing system is an expression of these efforts. The aim of their agitation is to achieve such a state of affairs in which it would be possible for them to use the public school without violation of the requirements of their conscience. They strive for the “public school fund to be distributed between Catholics and Protestants on such a fair basis that each religious organization could have its own school and conduct religious instruction according to its own method.”[10] “Set aside,” says a Catholic newspaper, “for the support of Catholic schools a portion of the public money proportional to the number of children taught in them, and leave the selection of teachers, instruction, discipline, all internal management to Catholic educational authorities, and then you may, in all other respects, in all reasonable matters, leave them as they are, under public control and management, under the oversight of public committees, regents, trustees, if you wish.”[11]

However persistent were such demands, however much the Catholic press agitated for them, not missing a single opportunity that could be used as a pretext for agitation, the Catholics have not achieved their aim even to the present day and, as fifty years ago, it remains for them a pious wish. All their attempts to achieve their goal on legal ground have invariably failed. Their cries about the restriction of Catholic conscience were in vain, their bitter reproaches against the free state which, contrary to the Constitution, supports one denomination—Protestant—and oppresses another—Catholic, were all in vain. The state was either deaf to all demands of the Catholics or directly refused to satisfy them. Then the Catholics began to seek another way out of the difficulty. Despairing of achieving their goal by legal means, at least in the near future, they found roundabout paths to the same goal, and these proved more accessible to them. The history of these roundabout attempts presents already another side of the policy of Roman Catholicism, its offensive movement against Protestantism and the Protestant state.