Secular school

“ The advocate of Secular education may be, and generally is, also an advocate of religion; but he would teach religion at another time and treat it as a distinct subject, too sacred for coercive admixture into the hard and vexatious routine of a school. He would confine the inculcation of religion to fitting seasons and chosen instruments. He holds also that one subject at a time is mental economy in learning. Secular education is the policy of a school—Secularism is the policy of life to those who do not accept Theology. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is the great disadvantage of a secular system in our State Schools, very slightly modified by occasional opportunities of giving religious instruction after school hours in school-houses. Church schools cannot be maintained except in large centres. ”

“ We hold that a definite system of religious teaching, according to which the religious studies of the school and the secular are co-ordinate and equally regarded, and the religious atmosphere which such consideration implies, are of the very essence of a rightly ordered school; the ideal may be reached in a Voluntary School, it is impossible that it should be reached in a Board School; nevertheless, there may be Board schools and Board Schools; in some there may be simple secularism, and in others there may be a good religious spirit and fair religious teaching ”

“ Unless smaller cities and rural communities use the school building at times that do not interfere with recitations, they may be compelled to give up religious education. I understand that pupils not taking religious education usually are given other work of a secular nature within the schools. ”

“ It is precisely these purely secular schools, in which all education is divorced from religion—from the faith, precepts, services, and discipline of the church, as well as education combined with a false religion—that we oppose. Nor will this solution satisfy the more respectable Protestant denominations, as is evident from the tenacity with which they insist on reading the Bible in the schools. They do not believe any more than we do in the utility, or even practicability, of divorcing what is called secular learning from religion. ”

“ Quality teaching in secular subjects is an integral part of this religious enterprise. "Good secular teaching is as essential to the religious mission of the parochial schools as a roof for the school or desks for the classrooms." ”

“ When the education system was established it was decided that the secular principle was the complement of the compulsory one, for, as children of all sects and of no sect are compelled to attend school, it was thought that they should not be forced to receive religious instruction which would be repugnant to the beliefs of their parents. ”

“ It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably acts. ”

“ Against this background of judgment and experience, unchallenged in the meager record before us in this case, we cannot agree with appellants either that all teaching in a sectarian school is religious or that the processes of secular and religious training are so intertwined that secular textbooks furnished to students by the public are in fact instrumental in the teaching of religion. ”

“ Let it say, then, what amount of secular education it wants for all the children of the land, and is willing to pay for, and, so far as Catholics are concerned, it can have it, and of as good quality, to say the least, as it can get in purely secular schools, and along with it the religious education, the most essential to it as well as to the souls of all. ”

“ I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out of school hours. ”

“ Exclude your Protestant Bible and all direct and indirect religious instruction from your public schools, and you would not render them a whit less objectionable to us than they are now, for we object not less to purely secular schools than we do to sectarian schools. We hold that children should be trained up in the way they should go, so that when old they will not depart from it ”

“ Both the United States and the States urge that, if parents choose to have their children receive instruction in the required secular subjects in a school where religion is also taught and a religious atmosphere may prevail, part or all of the cost of such secular instruction may be paid for by governmental grants to the religious institution conducting the school and seeking the grant. ”

“ The fact is, that while a large number of people agree that purely secular education is to be deplored, no feasible scheme can be propounded for introducing religious instruction into the State schools which will satisfy the demands of the Catholics. ”

“ With the exception of those schools established by Christian societies, or endowed by religious sects, all educational institutions, especially those established by the state authorities, are secular. ”

“ Whilst our religious educational institutions where unsectarian instruction in the Bible is fundamental, have been producing good results of the highest order, those educational institutions where only secular instruction is given, have been contributing a very small proportion of the world's consecrated moral leaders. Of 1,600 home missionaries, 1,503 received their training in Christian educational institutions. Of 600 foreign missionaries, 551 received their training in Christian educational institutions.
It is not correct to say that one standard of education is as good as another. ”

“ These controls are not lessened by the fact that most of the lay teachers are of the Catholic faith. Inevitably, some of a teacher's responsibilities hover on the border between secular and religious orientation. ”

“ Secular education had been introduced into primary schools, and in some places—as, for instance, Lombardy, in 1820—the government demanded a certain amount of secular knowledge from the candidates for rabbinical positions. ”

“ We cannot, however, refuse here to recognize that teachers have a substantially different ideological character from books. In terms of potential for involving some aspect of faith or morals in secular subjects, a textbook's content is ascertainable, but a teacher's handling of a subject is not. We cannot ignore the danger that a teacher under religious control and discipline poses to the separation of the religious from the purely secular aspects of pre-college education. ”

“ There are, for instance, some, as yet happily few in number, who, in the maze of confusion and Babel-like discussions of sectarians and false teachers turn their faces away in hopeless, helpless uncertainty, and suggest that religion of every name and kind must be excluded and the Deity himself ignored in our public schools, so that public education shall be secular ”

“ But probably the most common pursuit of religious bodies in our day is teaching. Hundreds of thousands of religious men and women, in all lands whence they are not banished, spend their lives in the class-room. And the reason for this preference is the extraordinary demand for schools in every direction. The young must be taught, and Holy Mother Church knows only too well that religious training must be woven into the fibre of secular learning if we would not have a conscienceless and irreligious generation. ”

“ The education in their religion is very good, very thorough, not only in precept, but in practice; for in the monastery you must live a holy life, as the monks live, even if you are but a schoolboy.
But the secular education is limited. It is up to the standard of education amongst the people at large, but that is saying little. ”

“ What, then, can be the grievance of the clergy—Roman Catholic or Protestant? Frankly, it is, so far as they do oppose the Education Act, that the teachers are forbidden to give any religious—which under the circumstances must be sectarian—teaching in school hours. [5] Can it be otherwise in a mixed community where all religions are tolerated and none are favoured? ”

“ The Catholic clergy proving a hindrance to the government in the application of its new catechism, the law on secular instruction was passed to force them out of the schools: the state, henceforth sole master, can form at the will of Cæsar, not Christians, but soldiers or slaves, which are more in accordance with its taste—all that is taught being made to converge to the one end of blind and absolute submission to secular power. ”

“ The efficiency of the Catholic schools and colleges has long been demonstrated by examinations and practical results, and it is at last generally conceded. The Catholic schools teach everything that is taught in the public schools and, in addition, they teach religion and religious morality. The standards of education in all secular branches are equal and in many instances superior to those of the neighborhood public or private schools. In other words, Catholic children are as well educated in the Catholic schools as in the public schools ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational system, which provides separate schools for each section of professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good one for Catholic interests. ”

“ That their church is profoundly solicitous for the secular education of her people is too manifest for dispute, since she has, by the instrumentality of her various religious orders, established universities, colleges, academies, and innumerable preparatory schools in every great city, and throughout the rural districts of the country, wherever it was possible to do so. ”

“ The secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might profess. ”

“ Save for that short period, alike in England and on the continent general education and public schools were the exclusive duty and privilege of the secular clergy from the days of Augustine to the days of Laud. The monks from first to last were never public schoolmasters or educators, they never acted as teachers, and the monasteries never kept schools, except for their own novices, and they never, except incidentally as lords of manors or trustees, or transferees of the spiritual rights of secular colleges, even controlled schools. ”

“ When the Secondary Schools are absorbed into the national system, and orders are issued to us from the Education Department, shall we be told that we also are to give only secular instruction, and forbidden to give definite teaching regarding the creeds and ritual which express the truths by which we live;—shall we be forbidden to ask any questions about the fitness of the teachers whom we wish to appoint? ”

“ Although strongly in favour of religious education, he thought that the university would provide secular education for sons of dissenters and others, while their religious wants could be otherwise supplied. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are intensified by the divided opinion of the church universal, of which the Catholic and Greek sections hold that education must be religious and under the care ofPage 9 the Church; while the State-Church Protestant section holds that it may be religious under certain conditions, and the extreme secularistic protestant wing holds that it cannot be religious because conducted by the State, and a rather diminishing protestant section in free-church nations holds that the higher education should be Christian, while the secondary and primary may safely be left to the secular State. ”

“ Secular education, when properly applied, should not be undervalued, inasmuch as we have duties in this life to be performed, to ourselves, our country, and our fellow-man; but it should be tempered and permeated, so to speak, with religious instruction, so that the learner, as his mental faculties expand with his years, may be gradually but constantly led to the knowledge of those divine truths which the church teaches her children, and his character thus be insensibly formed on a true Christian basis. ”