President Seelye and Religious Education [pp. 829-832]

I 886.] PRESIDENT SEEL YE AND RELIGIOUS ED UCA TION. 831I
lic Church has sought to remedy this evil by the establishment
of schools, academies, and colleges under religious influence, and
with marvellous success; for in somne dioceses the schools are
almost as numerous as parish churches, and but a small percentage of Catholic children attend the public schools. In establishing these schools love of country as well as love of God has been
the inspiring motive. From these schools have gone forth those
whom the knowledge of God has made more dutiful and patriotic citizens. It might as well be supposed that this religious
education could make a man a less faithful husband, or a woman
a less devoted wife, or one a less honest tradesman or a more
wasteful servant, as to suppose that it could weaken love of
country. Religion imposes obedience to the state (except in
matters forbidden by the law of God) as a divine command.
Hence it is a great bulwark of the state. Since Catholics hold it
as certain that the happiness of men for this world, as well as
for eternity, depends upon their possessing religion, the church
provides religious schools for Catholic children, and can never be
turned aside from this policy any more than St. Peter could have
been hindered from preaching the Gospel.
When, therefore, President Seelye asks, "Shall we expect it
[religious schooling] from the church?" and answers, "But the
church is confessedly not doing this work," he cannot mean the
Catholic Church. The Catholic people are, as a matter of fact,
educating their children in religious schools. From kindergarten to university, by free schools and pay schools, colleges and
academies, they are educating their children in religious schools
to the very uttermost limit of their means, paying all the expenses
out of their private pockets, and doing the work well. If many
Catholic children are yet in schools in which President Seelye's
four Gospels and the study of the life of Christ are forbidden by
lawv, it is because we are poor, not because we are confessedly
not doing the work of religious education. We have now over
half a million of Catholic children in parochial schools, and as
sure as day follows night we shall yet have them all there, and
that at no distant time.
It is the Protestant churches who are confessedly at fault.
They took up with the godless plan from divers motives: some
(we affirm it because representative men among them have often
avowed it) because they hoped by that means to destroy the
Catholic faith in the children of the immigrants-and these were
the knowing ones; others because sectarian rancor prevented an
agreement among themselves as to the doctrine to be taught;