Protestant school

“ If some are Catholics, and will not attend the Protestant schools, perhaps it would be as possible to have a special and separate school for the Irish as for the Africans. It was recently proposed in a Protestant assembly to found Sunday Schools, with Catholic teachers for Catholic children. The plan is large and noble, and indicates a liberality which astonishes one even here, where some men are ceasing to be sectarian and becoming human. Much may be done to bring many of the children to our Sunday and week-day schools, as they now are, and so brands be snatched from the burning. ”

“ The members of the Critical School are connected with the Protestant Church, yet they claim to teach whatever views they may see proper to entertain. They profess deep attachment to the Church, and in their journals advise every one to unite himself with the fold of Christ. ”

“ But in the meantime the private schools where both secular and religious training are given to children, including the Catholic parochial schools, must continue to be erected, equipped and supported wholly by the members of the various denominations. There are now numerous Protestant private schools where the Protestant faith is being taught; and what is true of the Catholic parochial schools is also true of the Protestant schools. ”

“ The former he must himself undertake in order to be able to live at all; the latter the Church undertook to supply to those who followed her teachings.
THE RISE OF THE VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL. For the first time in history, if we except the schools of the early Christian period, the Protestant Revolts created a demand for some form of an elementary religious school for all. The Protestant theory as to personal versus collective salvation involved as a consequence the idea of the education of all in the essentials of the Christian faith and doctrine. ”

“ Gradually Falling into Our Hands.—There is not a diocese in the Union which has not profited by sheriff's sales of Protestant educational property. The great seminary at Troy was once a Methodist college. Last month Archbishop Ryan bought out a Protestant college building and gave it over to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. For thirty-five years it had been the Alma Mater of a local Protestant body. The Baptist College at Chicago will soon have a cross upon it. So the story goes—Protestantism receding and the Church making progress on every side. Next? Many of the school houses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It follows, in practice, that bare walls are kept bare, though not clean; and let it be remembered that Catholicism, if left to itself, in education always trusts greatly to the appeal to the eye. [Pg 74] In every Catholic school uncontrolled by the State the emblems of religion are everywhere present. National schools under State control, even in places where there is not a Protestant child within twenty miles, are rigorously forbidden the use of any such embellishment. ”

“ The claims of the radical school for the success of their methods are much more sweeping than the admissions allow. But taking the extent to which the destructive criticism obtains, even at the estimate of those who are opposed to it, and who for that reason reduce its triumphs to a minimum, yet it must be admitted that it has succeeded in making very marked progress. It permeates all Protestant Christian countries; and all Protestant Christian sects. It is more in evidence in the churches than in the schools ”

“ The old schools which were not destroyed were transformed into Protestant schools, the grammar schools to train scholars and leaders, and the parish schools into Protestant elementary schools to teach reading and the Catechism, but the number of the latter, in all Protestant lands, was very far short of the number needed to carry out the Protestant religious theory. This, as we have seen, proposed to extend the elements of an education to large and entirely new classes of people who never before in the history of the world had had such advantages. ”

“ April 19th.—Attended the annual meeting of the "Société pour l'encouragement et l'instruction primairie le protestants de France." The Protestants are not satisfied with the system of mixed schools; they wish to have exclusively Protestant schools. The report was full, explicit, and decided. Several speeches from the principal Protestant ministers, dwelling upon religious instruction in primary schools. Attended the morning conference; nothing new in the proceedings; but there was a marriage; but neither groomsmen nor bridesmaids. Address of the pastor. ”

“ Wherever the churches are prepared to utilize the time in giving adequate instruction in religion, the curriculum of the public school should be modified to meet this need. Competent authorities see no objection to this, and there is a very large movement which seeks to further this idea.* *At the meeting of the Inter-Church Conference In Carnegie Hall, New York, in November, 1905, at which twentynine Protestant Churches of America were represented the author presented a paper on Week-day Religious Instruction. ”

“ I love more and more the freedom and fraternity I find, and I believe in the church, which makes so much of schools, and has educated so many of my people.”
Said another: “The church must go with the school, because education alone only sharpens the mind for greater mischief. In the very nature of things, every school teacher ought to be a true Christian, to exert a Christ-like influence in the school, to encourage pupils to attend church and Sunday-school. The teacher’s power is greater over scholars here than in the North.” ”

“ But we, we Catholics, who cannot, as Protestants do, console ourselves with the reflection that the atmosphere of the state-schools, if secular, will be tempered by that of our own beliefs—we will not fail and disappear! We are the poorest of all religious bodies in England; but I will venture to say, that not a single case can be found of a catholic school which has surrendered itself up, as these others did, into the hands of the Secularists. ”

“ But, while the influence of the church has been constantly diminishing, many of the board members are ministers or priests and the inspectors come mostly from the clergy. Moreover, religious instruction forms part of the course in every school, although it is given at such an hour that any pupil may withdraw if the teaching is contrary to the faith in which he has been reared. The secondary schools are largely interdenominational, but in elementary education there are separate schools 377 for Catholics and Protestants, alike supported by the state. ”

“ But what is even more surprising than all this is, that some of our Catholic clergy, and among them some even of those who should be first and foremost in fighting for sound religious principles, and seeing that our youth are carefully brought up in them, are too much inclined to yield to the godless spirit of the age—to the so-called liberal views on Catholic education, which have been clearly and solemnly condemned by the Holy See. ”

“ In the public schools, which are supported by the State, religious instruction is on principle omitted. The Lutheran and Catholic churches have therefore founded parochial schools; the other denominations seek to supply the want by Sunday schools. The candidates for the ministry are trained in colleges and in numerous theological seminaries.
§ 208.1. English Protestant Denominations.―The numerous Protestant denominations belong to two great groups, English and German. ”

“ CATHOLICISM AND THE SCHOOLS Just what is the attitude of the Catholic Church to the American public schools? This is an important question, because there are fourteen million Catholics in our country, and they control the education, not merely of two million children in their own schools, but of other millions in public schools where the Catholic vote has elected Catholic officials and school board members, and obtained the appointment of Catholic superintendents and teachers. ”

“ The Public School system is the offspring of Protestantism. The human mind, when liberated by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, aspires after education, as the eagle soars into the upper air when set free from its cage. Freedom in Christ Jesus awakens consciousness of rights, powers, privileges, obligations, and the immeasurable boundaries of mind and spirit. With such breathings and aspirations these Presbyterian fathers planted free schools over their country and set the example for the world. The General Assembly authorized a school for every "parish", and made attendance imperative. ”

“ The great popularity and success of the college have undoubtedly been due to its non-sectarian policy, and while the Christian religion is the corner stone of its foundation and attendance at chapel exercises and Protestant worship is required of Jews, Greeks, and Mahommedans, as well as Christian students, every tendency to proselyting is avoided. ”

“ These schools are however not all perfect, since they do not provide for moral and religious training, the great underlying principles of reverence and righteousness, that must enter into every life in order to fit it for the performance of Christian and patriotic duty.
The Presbyterian church takes a patriotic interest in our whole public school system, and believes that all the children should be trained in those that are under public direction, so that all the children and youth of the nation shall be a united, intelligent and patriotic body, fitted for good citizenship. ”

“ It is most cheerfully admitted that the Catholics have always been in favor of education—that is to say, of education enough to make a Catholic out of a heathen. It is also admitted that Protestants have always been in favor of enough education to make a Protestant out of a Catholic. Many schools and many colleges have been established for the spread of what is called the Gospel and for the education of the clergy. Presbyterians have founded schools for the benefit of their creed. ”

“ True, there are Protestants who complain of the Roman Catholic opposition to “mixed education”—a palpably unfair complaint, whose underlying motive is a sectarian hope to weaken the hold of religion on the people. There has been nothing like unanimity among the Protestant Churches on the same subject. Each of them has tried its best to secure in the educational sphere its own denominational interests. ”

“ Now what I have said of certain colleges applies also, unhappily, to many of our female academies; they are by no means what they should be, according to the spirit of the Church; they conform too much to the spirit of the world; they have too many human considerations; they make too many allowances for Protestant pupils, at the expense of the Catholic spirit and training of our young Catholic women; they yield too much to the spirit of the age; in a word, they attend more to the intellectual than to the spiritual culture of their pupils. ”

“ In regretting the exclusion of religious instruction from the common-school system, the difficulties which beset the subject must not be forgotten, the multiplicity of the sects, and the very large number of Roman Catholics. In schools supported by a rate levied indiscriminately on all, to form a course of instruction which could bear the name of a religious one, and yet meet the views of all, and clash with the consciences and prejudices of none, was manifestly impossible. ”

“ The Church condemns all non- Catholic schools, whether they be heretical and schismatical or secularist, and she declares that as a general rule no Catholic parent can send his young children to such schools for educational purposes without exposing their faith and morals to serious risk, and therefore committing a grave sin. A Catholic child, if educated away from home, should be placed in a Catholic school, under Catholic masters or mistresses. ”

“ The moral and spiritual growth of the child ought normally to keep pace with his mental growth and the Church is convinced that taking human nature as it is, the result cannot be obtained effectively without including a judicious mixture of religious training with the daily routine of the school."
In fact a neutral school is an impossibility. We will simply ask our readers a few questions and rely on their fairmindedness to formulate the answers. Can the teaching of history be neutral? The Catholic Church and the Reformation are historical facts: how are they to be judged? ”

“ In most civilized countries, and especially in Germany, the instruction of youth in upper and lower grades is still largely bound in fetters which the scholastic tradition of the Middle Ages has retained to the present day. Only the complete separation of Church and school can loose these fetters. The prevailing confessional or dogmatic religious instruction is to be replaced by comparative religious history and monistic ethics. The influence of the clergy of any confession is to be removed from the school. ”

“ And after all, the principal object for getting up Catholic schools is not to show off their superiority to, or their equality with, infidel schools—this is not even a secondary end—we want Catholic schools to preserve our Catholic religion, our Catholic traditions, our Catholic spirit and morals; [Pg 361] we want them to raise in them children for heaven, not for hell; children for God, not for the devil; children for a happy eternity, not for everlasting damnation. ”