Popular Education [pp. 228-235]

Popular Education.
dom of conscience, is not a right
granted by constitutions, but is the
result of the relation of man as a
free, moral agent to the Creator
who thought fit to make him the
master of his own destiny here and
hereafter. To coerce the conscience
of the child by an educational system, actively or passively, (for there
may be effective coercion by negative means,) is to violate the sacred
rights of the parent, vested in him
by the divine appointment. There
is not a religious man, following any
form of worship, professing to be a
Christian and an American, who can
seriously deny this proposition, or
who would accept any other in a
question involving his rights and
duties in regard to his own offspring. No such man, we are sure,
would tolerate any assumption of the
authority on the part of the state to
step between him and his child in
the matter of religious belief and
instruction. No other form of tyranny would arouse so quickly the
indignant resistance of an American
citizen and father; and every upright
man feels in his heart that what
would be so grievous to him should
not be imposed upon any other of his
fellow-citizens, directly or indirectly.
Actuated by such views in the
main, the state provides a system
of public schools from which, theoretically, (and it may be practically
in most cases,) all forms of doctrinal
religion are excluded, and education
is based upon a vague, undefined,
generalized moral teaching which
very many eminent men of different
religious denominations have pronounced to be "godless," because
the doctrines of Christ (the foundation of his moral law) are not taught
in such schools according to any interpretation whatever, for the plain
reason that it could not be done
without such manifest injustice and
wrong as we have already protested
against. To read the Bible, without
note or comment, to young children is,
in reality, to lead them to the fountain of living waters and forbid them
to drink; whereas, "to expound
the word" is, at once, to violate the
absolute neutrality which the state is
bound to maintain in the presence
of conflicting interpretations and dissenting consciences. Such is the
precise difficulty. Hence it is, that
the Catholic Church has set its face
against the peril with which such a
system of education threatens its
youth; and the Catholic pastors and
their flocks, though struggling with
poverty, and harassed by ten thousand pressing claims upon their cha
rity, have strained every nerve to establish parochial and other denominational schools where secular education could be imparted without sacrificing religious instruction.
There is no doubt but that there are
many strong and marked doctrinal
differences between the various Protestant denominations which have
led some of their most eminent men
to argue against the possibility of a
perfect or desirable system of public
schools upon the mixed or non-intervention basis. Nevertheless, it is
also true that in the fundamental
point, essentially characteristic of
Protestantism, and in which it especially differs from the Catholic
Church (private interpretation and
the rejection of tradition) all Protestant churches agree; and herein we
find the reason why they can conform to the necessities of such a
public-school system as we have described, with some degree of amalgamation; whereas their Catholic fellow-citizens cannot avail themselves of
the secular advantages of such schools
without a total sacrifice of religious
training. We are told by the Rev.
James Fraser, despatched on an offi
231