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T

By REV. FRANCIS O'NEILL, O. P.

II

HE leading educators of our public schools are members of the National Education Asso

ciation. This society has annual meetings called for the express purpose of furthering the cause of education by a courteous exchange of ideas.

This year the convention met at St. Paul and proved a most interesting one. A bold man from the Far West had the

courage to declare that the public schools of this generation have degenerated into "namby-pamby places to which we go because it is the custom, and some of us become good citizens in spite of them. Schools are all wrong because they give the credit to the captains of things, not to the stokers." The philippic was received with distinctive signs of approval a fact which seems to indicate that educational tactics are to change.

A long-suffering public will accept the proposal with Christian resignation. It was to be expected. The witches that ride their broomsticks in the footsteps of Horace Mann have been throwing into the pedagogical pot ingredients that were calculated to make trouble. The public school is suffering from an epidemic of ideas. The curriculum has been extended so much that no one but an intellectual Hamiltonian may hope to cover the ground. Ambitious students are apt to overload, especially since the rewards of examination are given to those who have the greatest cramming capacity. The results look well in yearly reports, yet it cannot be denied that a young colt is more carefully handled, for common-sense teaches his owner to make the first load one that will respond to the first spring into the collar.

To see the folly of these departmental courses that require a too extensive range, one need only observe the grown-up infant wonders that are now groping through life in the haze of memorized formulae, unable to do more than mumble the lessons of youthful precocity. The pride of the class has become a pensioner of the associated charities and a continual reminder of the dizzy altitudes of E plus.

The attempt to teach morality while studiously avoiding any mention of man's relations to his Creator has made the public school a saturnalia of undisciplined emotions. Kant's ethical catechism does not hint at the soul sanctions that curb the individual tendencies of youth. To make the separation between Creator and creature more complete, the text-books used in the public schools are carefully selected. Rival book companies are hotly contesting the field and the text-book Muse must furnish a new book as required. Hack-writers, not content with a book a year, are delving into the horse-hair trunks of their college days and extracting therefrom tons of miscellaneous essays, which are first parceled out to the magazines in job-lots and then put into permanent form to meet the exacting demands of a recently elected Board of Education.

Should it happen that the essays are devoid of sense, that they are hopelessly at war with one another, and especially if they couched in non-understandable language, the book company announces a new work entitled, "Studies in Psychology,' and turns the treasure over to the nearest text-book depository for distribution among the high schools of the State.

It would take a bold man to prophesy where the business of text-book writing is to end. We have long grown accustomed to the university ukase that no books may be used but those written by members of the faculty. The lesser schools have now taken up the "made at home" idea-it has become fashionable, and at the same time profitable, to teach only those facts that pay a royalty, sitting like another Atticus mindful of your own applause.

If these commercialized text-books were dealing more fairly with the history of the Church Catholics might be pardoned for wishing the output to increase year by year. The Church has suffered much in the past by the concerted action of evil men in poisoning. the sources of historical knowledge. These men were actuated by unworthy motives when they perverted the truths of history into broadsheets that vilified. the militant Church of Christ. They pictured her as a frightful monster, the implacable enemy of science, art and literature; her doctrines were false; her only aim to plunge the world into the darkness of superstition and erect upon the ruin of ransomed souls a despotism of hate.

No educated person believes those calumnies to-day. Honest non-Catholic historians bear testimony that the records tell a story of pure purposes, valiant struggles with the unruly passions of men, and a heaven-sent triumph over the forces that strove to enslave men, degrade women and paganize the world.

But while the students of our public schools do not study books professedly hostile to the Catholic Church, they are and have been for years studying books that are filled with the catch-phrases of the old Protestant bigotry. These may not be malicious, but they are there, and they poison the inquiring mind of the student.

There is no excuse for tolerating such manifest unfairness in books that are written for institutions supported by public moneys. Naturally, one deplores the oft-recurring "Dark Age" lectures of the denominational colleges. These have bred much mischief and are doubtless the parent of all the absurd antiCatholic sentiment that crops out from time to time through the mantle of Christian charity. But when snatches of these lectures find a place in the textbooks intended for use in the public schools, a live Catholic should do more than deplore.

Not a few make light of the matter. There are those who will deny that the American school system is tinged with Masonic misrepresentation. For such nothing but quotations from the text will suffice. It might reasonably be expected that text-books of English literature would be above repeating the wornout lies of the Reformation period. Yet, almost without exception, the histories of English literature are seemingly intent upon spreading falsehood. Reading them, the student is led to believe that everything good before the Reformation happened in spite of the Church, and that after the Reformation everything good must be attributed to the revolt of Luther. In other words, darkness and superstition held sway until they heard the hammer of a disobedient monk, and then they rushed off the scene to give place to the mild hand of "Bluff King Hal," returning for a brief spell during the reign of "Bloody Mary," that legitimate daughter of Arragon who tried to pluck from the heavens the resplendent sun of Free Thought.

Will it not be interesting to fairminded men to read just how the public school text-books treat these subjects? The high school students get from them their first impressions of world events.

Is it not important that the future citizens of our country should be rightly informed?

The following extracts are taken from text-books in use in the public schools. There is not a reputable scholar who will not brand the entire assortment as unfair :

Mendicant friars at that time swarmed all over England, who by the sale of relics and pardons "all hot from Rome," fleeced the poor country folk of their hard-earned groats. Such a one was the Pardoner of the "Canterbury Tales," who sold clouts and pigs' bones as holy relics, for money, wool, cheese and wheat, swindling even the poorest widow out of her mite.*

These were Tyndale's Testaments, ferreted out by the emissaries of the Cardinal, who had swept every cranny in search of the hated thing. None there fresh from the printer's hand * * * all well-thumbed volumes scored with many a loving mark and parted from with many bitter tears. Outside the gate before the great cross there burned a fire hungering and leaping for its prey like a red wild beast. On that day no blood slaked its ceaseless thirst, no crackling flesh fed its ravenous maw * * * this was to be a prelude to the grand performance of later days. Bibles only were to burn, not Bible readers.t

After the accession of James, when Popery became the chief qualification for Court favor, Dryden renounced Protestantism and turned Papist. He gained but little by it though he wrote in defense of the Romish faith in "The Hind and Panther."‡

Mightier than all these forces in outward show and strong in its slow and silent working on the hearts of the nation was the influence exerted by the Reformation, which, now completed, had moulded the polity of the English Church into the form it was destined to retain. More gentle than the gales that blew from the new-found islands of the ocean, was the spirit which pure religion breathed, or should have breathed, over the face of society; and tenfold more welcome was, or should have been, the voice that announced freedom of spiritual thought,

* Collier, W. F., Eng. Literature, London, 1890, p. 47.

Ibid pp. 135-6.

Cleveland, Chas. D., English Literature, 'Phila., 1849, p. 346.

than the loudest blast with which a herald's trumpet ever ushered in a proclamation of civil liberty. It cannot be doubted that the ecclesiastical revolution which was so peacefully effected by Elizabeth, was felt, by the nation at large, like the removal of an oppressive weight. But we must not allow ourselves to imagine either that perfect religious freedom was now gained; or that the old faith vanished from the land as a snow-wreath melts before the warmth of spring; or that the purification of doctrine and discipline transformed the hearts and minds of a whole people with the suddenness of a sorcerer's charm. In the deliverance cut of the ancient prison-house, the captives carried with them some of the ancient fetters.*

Begging friars of the different orders did more to disgrace the calling of the clergy than did the high and wanton living of the monks and abbots. This friar lived at a time when many of his class had very much degenerated. As was quite common then, he acted not only as a begging priest, but also as a peddler, selling knives, pens, and other notions, to the good housewives upon whom he called. He was gay and festive; a great talker, and took delight in performing the marriage ceremony for young people without charging them anything for it. Being a licentiate, he no doubt occasioned much mischief through his power of confession. As he was an unqualified hypocrite, his penance was always light when sure of a good meal, and he taught that he could do all the praying and weeping necessary, if well paid. He was a boon companion for any one at the tavern, as he knew all the coarse popular songs of the day. Although a professional beggar, the cause he represented enabled him to hold himself above a common beggar. No man was so virtuous as he, Chaucer says satirically, because he was the best beggar of his order. To be this, he had to be perfectly unscrupulous. Although licentious and uneducated, he had sufficient common sense to settle many a difficulty among his patrons.t

We are given an interesting picture of a Pardoner pretending that pigs' bones are the bones of saints.

*Spaulding, Wm., History of Eng. Lit., New York, 1866, pp. 200-1.

+ Smith, M. W., Teacher of English Literature in Hughes High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati, 1882, pp. 78-9.

Halleck, R. P., American Book Co., 1900, p. 79.

We can see him looking with twinkling eyes at the miller "tolling thrice," at the Pardoner, showing a piece of the sail from St. Peter's ship, or the pigs' bones in place of those of a saint. *** Sometimes

Chaucer's humor is so delicate as to be lost on those who are not quick-witted. Lowell instances the case of the Friar, who, "before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat," and adds what is true only of those who have acute understanding: "We know, without need of more words, that he has chosen the snuggest corner.' ""*

The studies of the schoolmen had helped to undermine literature and make it repellent. "Schoolmen" is merely a term for those who pursued the studies of the schools or universities. Many of these studies finally became little more than juggling with words or forming smoke-wreaths of abstractions. The scholars took nothing for their subject and talked about it at great length. Some of these subjects were: whether all children in a state of innocence are masculine; whether God ever knows more things than He is aware of; whether one angel can occupy at the same time precisely the same space as another angel; whether God can make a yardstick without two ends. Science brings new facts into being, but these wordy gymnastics accomplished nothing. Taine says: "Three centuries of labor at the bottom of this black moat added not one idea to the human mind."†

Add to these text-book gems the comments of teachers who have been educated in denominational colleges and it will not be hard to understand why the Catholic Church is misunderstood.

There are many Catholic parents who persist in sending their sons and daughters to the public schools. Saluting false witnesses as enlightened oracles, they deliberately cooperate in insulting the Bride of Christ-and all because they hope for social recognition and business opportunity.

Instances are known of men who are prominent in financial, political and even religious circles, yet so devoid of spiritual courage that they deprive their sons of a Catholic education because

*Halleck, p. 81. Halleck, p. 90.

their free-thinking friends might call them narrow-minded. Such men may advocate Catholic principles on the lecture platform but they deny them in practice, and since they are so widely known the scandal they give is almost beyond calculation.

Does it not seem strange that Catholic students can sit quietly inactive in the public school class-room while torrents of abuse are being poured over the mediaeval Church. Do they recall the solemn promise that the gates of hell should never prevail? Why this indifference? indifference? One of two things must be true. Either the Catholics attending the public schools are cowardly, or they are so stupid they do not know when they are maligned.

No one can believe the latter, and so the conviction forces itself upon us that there is something in the atmosphere of the public school that weakens faith. There is an insidious appeal in the broad-minded, liberal, emancipated spirit of the age. The student finds it hard to endure the bodily discipline that well-regulated schools enforce. It is not surprising, then, that he welcomes the unfenced fields of modern religious license. When the Catholic meets schoolmates who are the willing disciples of Rousseau, either he must change or leave the school. It is the experience of all that the Catholic faith is endangered by associating the young with others who have false principles of religion. The effects are so lasting that it becomes a conscientious duty to attend only those schools sanctioned by the Church.

These schools and colleges are scattered at goodly intervals throughout the world. They are equipped with all things needed for the proper development of Catholic young people physically, mentally and morally. They should receive the unqualified support

of Catholics. There is, and always must be, a vast difference between those educated according to the mind of the Church and those educated according to the mind of the world. The first are

trained for eternity, the latter for the

trickeries of time.

At this time, when the Voice of God is unheard, and society is plunged into unspeakable excesses, the one permanent and unflinching safeguard of youth

is the Catholic school system. In it are found the forces that will bring a complete development to mind and heart. School life will then be a preparation for the intelligent, cooperative activity of Catholic citizenship which is destined steadily but surely to make. manifest to the world the claims of the Church upon the souls of men and her constant solicitude, through the centuries, for the honor and glory of her Divine Founder.

E

THE SCRUPLE

By HORACE FOSTER

VERY spot of sunlight that sifted through the new leaves on the trees and flecked the polished floor was an invitation to the wonderful out-of-doors. Every breath of early summer that swayed the curtains of the living-room whispered the beauties of a perfect Sunday.

That those invitations were not unheeded was evident from a picnic basket on the table. Crisp lettuce peeked from fresh-made sandwiches. A bottle of olives poked its head out of the basket of abundance.

Ben Mitchell saw these preparations when he walked into the room. Fouryear-old Ruth saw them and clapped her hands. Tommy, three years older and altogether too much of a man to show emotion, looked cn with eyes that fairly snapped in anticipation.

Beside her husband walked Edna Mitchell. The sunlight that spread through the room when she opened the door had no reflection in her face. She dropped into a chair.

"Ben, I can't go to-day." "No?" His tone showed disappointment but no surprise.

"I was distracted at Mass again. The least I can do is to deny myself this outing for a penance."

"But, Ruth, you didn't mean to be distracted."

"Maybe not, I don't know." Her expression was listless. "I intended to be so devout to-day, to make up for other Sundays. Every tree and flower on the way spoke of the love of God, and yet from the moment our pew door shut until we left the church I was distracted. 1 could not follow even the Gospel, and when the bell rang my mind was miles away. It would not come back. I wanted to get up and run away-run away from the House of God."

"I know, dear. Don't tell me any

more."

It was the same story, only growing in intensity, that he had heard since his prospering business enabled them to move out of the apartment and into one of the prettiest suburbs of the big city.

"And I thought we would be so happy here," she she said plaintively. "What have I done that God should have forgotten me?"

Ben knew that a scruple was not to be laughed away. He knew, too, that she had told Father King about it. So

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