4431^3 Q 'Xk^ioell , £har(e-S» Leo — < h8^ /oSop^cj.^ c » Lf A_BX* /6 6> ^ The Philosophy of Catholic Education by Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.CL, President of the University of Notre Dame §eu I I Three addresses delivered in the Catholic Hour, H sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men with the cooperation of the National Broadcasting Company and Its Associated Stations I. The Aim of Catholic Education II. The Method of Catholic Education III. The Support of Catholic Education g i National Council of Catholic Men Sponsor of the Catholic Hour 1314 Massachusetts Avenue Washington, D. C. Ii e I I E i mmm jOfc / VyKJ The Philosophy ol Catholic Education by Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame Three addresses delivered in the Catholic Hour, sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men with the cooperation of the National Broadcasting Company and its Associated Stations I. The Aim of Catholic Education II. The Method of Catholic Education III. The Support of Catholic Education National Council of Catholic Men Sponsor of the Catholic Hour 1314 Massachusetts Avenue Washington, D. C. Printed and distributed by Our Sunday Visitor Huntington, Indiana AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION These addresses were given over the “Catholic Hour”, on the first three Sundays of September, 1930. They are reproduced in this form in answer to a demand which cer- tain listeners were kind enough to make and the National Council of Catholic Men kind enough to supply. In view of their ambitious title, the disclaimer is in order that these addresses do not attempt to cover the sub- ject with anything approaching completeness. Nor do they aim at more than a popular presentation of those few as- pects of the subject whose treatment could be crowded into the speaking time allotted. If they should have the effect of directing readers and, it may be, re-readers, to some such monumental work as Cardinal Newman’s “Idea of a Univer- sity,” their publication, by that result alone, might be justi- fied. Mettled Imprimatur : * JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D. Bishop of Fort Wayne Feast of St. Michael Archangel. I DEDICATED TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN OUR LIFE, OUR SWEETNESS AND OUR HOPE THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 5 THE AIM OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION (Address delivered by Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C., in the Catholic Hour, September 7, 1930) Now that the summer months have drawn to a close and vacation thoughts are giving place to more serious considerations, our attention is directed to the reopening of the schools. Within a few days, some hundreds of thousands of school children and students of different ages will be resuming their studies in public schools and private schools and various seats of learning all over the United States. What lies back of this drive for education, why do they go to school? What is the purpose underlying all the expenditure of time, money, and energy? There is a very definite answer which the Cath- olic Church has to propose on all questions dealing with education. It will be the purpose of the present series of talks to discuss the general topic of “The Catholic Philosophy of Education,” under three divisions. First, “The Aim of Catholic Education”; second, “The Method of Catholic Education”; and, third, “The Support of Catholic Education.” At a time when the thoughts of all are directed of necessity to this all-important question of educa- tion, it seems highly opportune, both for the sake of those who accept the principles of Catholic edu- cation and those who are interested to know what those principles are, that the Catholic Radio Hour should devote three periods to the discussion of this vital topic. It will not be news to anyone that there is such a thing as Catholic Education. There is, in fact, a 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION whole system of Catholic Education, embracing all the various levels, as they are called, elementary grades, high school or academy, college and univer- sity. Usually, in connection with the universities, there are the special professional schools of law, dentistry, medicine, and business administration. All of these schools, from the grammar grades to the universities, are conducted in the main by Cath- olics, for Catholics, though there is no level at which non-Catholic students are not admitted, and, with the possible exception of the grammar school, no level of Catholic Education which does not for spe- cial purposes employ non-Catholic teachers. Never- theless, the fact remains as stated, that Catholic Education, as established and maintained, is a nec- essary outgrowth of principles accepted by mem- bers of the Catholic faith, and is directed by a phil- osophy of life that is Catholic too. In this first dis- course, I shall try to answer the question, why is there such a thing as Catholic Education: in other words, what is the philosophy back of Catholic Edu- cation, what are its principles and aims. To begin with, I might point out that Catholic Education is not so singular a phenomenon as might at first sight appear. Other organized religions bod- ies as well conduct their own schools. Thus, there are Lutheran parochial schools, Episcopalian high schools and academies, Baptist and Methodist col- leges and universities. There are educational units conducted by Jews especially for Jews. Indeed, at the beginning of our educational history in the United States, all our common schools were denom- inational, and our colleges were practically semin- aries for the training of candidates for the minis- try. In establishing their own schools for their own THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 7 children, the early Catholic colonials were but doing what the other religious bodies of the time did. There simply were no public schools, as we have come to know them, supported by public taxation. In itself, therefore, there can be nothing un-Ameri- can in the private school as distinct from the public, whether it be elementary, intermediate, or colle- giate, or whether it be conducted by Catholics or by non-Catholics. Historically viewed, the private reli- gious school of today but perpetuates the earliest American tradition in education. To say that Catholics, in establishing schools for their children, were following the common cus- tom of the time, is not the same thing as saying they followed the custom because it was the custom. If there had been no such custom, or had there been a contrary one, it would have been incumbent upon Catholics to break with that precedent. As a matter of fact, in 1629, four years before any school of any kind had been founded in any of the original thir- teen colonies, there were many Catholic elementary schools operating in those portions of the present United States where the colonization was Spanish. The point is that Catholic Education is not an acci- dental thing, owing its origin to chance or custom ; it is intrinsic and fundamental in the system of Catholic thought. There is Catholic Education precisely because there is the Catholic Church. What Father George Johnson so well says of the college, applies to Cath- olic Education as a whole. “In the Catholic college,” he writes,* “religion is not a thing apart—an iso- *“Recent Developments in the Catholic College,” George Johnson, Association of American Colleges Bulletin, Vol. XVI, pp. 116-17. 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OP CATHOLIC EDUCATION lated branch of the curriculum—but is the very heart of the program and the spirit which illumines every other discipline. The aim of the Catholic col- lege is to produce that intelligence and character in the student which will enable him to lead his life in conformity with the principles taught and ex- emplified by Jesus Christ, as interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consequently, the fundamental aim of the Catholic college is the same as that of the Church.” The Catholic Church is both a body of doctrine and a way of life. It is a way of life because of its doctrinal content. Because of the truth which it offers for the mind’s acceptance, certain definite action is thereby imposed upon the will just as, for example, the political convictions which a citizen holds intellectually, determine the action he shall take as a citizen at the ballot-box and elsewhere. I shall hope to discuss this matter more fully in the second discourse of the present series. Now the Catholic Church is dedicated to the con- viction that in the Person, the life, and the teaching of Christ, there is the one and only possible perfect synthesis of truth, such truth as the mind of man may arrive at by the exercise of natural reason and by the light of supernatural faith. As the body must have food or it will perish, so the mind must be sus- tained : its food is knowledge, its very life is truth. “What is truth?” His pagan judge asked of Christ Himself, and there was then no answer. But a few hours earlier, at supper with His followers, Christ had said, “My word is truth.” And He had said to the multitude, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 9 Obviously, we are not speaking now of truth in the sense of scientific truth, of truth in its various divisions, truth departmentalized. We are speaking of elemental truth, of ultimate reality. What is man, where does he come from, what is to become of him finally? This is the truth upon which the universe hinges, these are the first and the last questions of life. Out of his own consciousness and his own power of thinking, man must ask these questions. And he must find an adequate answer, or his life is sterile, and fruitless. There is no adequate answer, the Catholic Church affirms, but in the re- ligion revealed, taught, and lived by that Man Who was Himself God, Christ Jesus Our Lord. The implications of this position are of course incalculably manifold. They reach backward and forward through all time; they touch every aspect of life. Does it matter what a man believes, we hear asked on all sides, in this day of alleged pragmatic sanctions. I answer, it is almost the only thing that does matter, unless essential lunacy is the very sub- stance of our intellectual process. That belief flows into action, directs and determines action, cannot be denied except by an act that abdicates reason, which is of infinitely more consequence than the mere denial of experience which the same act inci- dentally involves. Given a body of belief which is the ultimate truth respecting the all-important questions of life and touching every human relation, how can educa- tion, a process which Herbert Spencer defined, not with complete success, as “preparation for complete living”, how can education fail of being vitally af- fected by that system of belief and by the code of 10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION conduct which it imposes? Remember that, in the Catholic synthesis, the spiritual realities, God, the soul of man, and life everlasting, invisible though they be, are just as real as the solid earth and all those objects of which the senses can take note. Heaven and earth are then but joint realities, inter- related and interacting with a power and an import- ance comparable to nothing else within the reach of human thought. Who will not, then, recognize the difference between two such concepts as these : sup- pose life is a journey whose destination is power, wealth, pleasure, social prestige, service of one’s fellow-man, even ; and suppose life is a journey for which no one of these objects is a destination, or even a stopping place, but a journey that goes on to an ultimate goal that is really the end : life, a great sweeping river that finds at last the sea from which it rose, and rests only when it is gathered back to the bosom of those multitudinous waters—who does not see, I ask, how profoundly one or the other of these two views must affect that training for life which education inescapably is? Who does not see the effect on knowledge itself, how an intellectual attitude, how a scale of values is imposed which is a direct consequence of the conviction that human destiny is a known, clear, definite issue, that we run, as St. Paul says (I Cor. xi, 26), “not at an un- certainty, that we fight, not as one beating the air,” but pressing on with the Apostle of the Gentiles, ready “to count all things to be but loss for the ex- cellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord.” (Phs. iii, 8.) In one word, education, in the Catholic system of thought, is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The Catholic, because he is a Catholic, lives in THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 11 two worlds; he lives in time, but he lives for eter- nity. He lives on earth, he makes use of material things, houses and lands, food and clothing, machin- ery and money, books and all the arts, but he does this only as one who is passing by these things and shall himself outlast them. All life has for him two dimensions, a double significance, the outward ap- pearance of things and their inner reality. The principal result, therefore, which education aims at is the intellectual power of appraisal and the moral power of selection, amid the chaos of ideas and the conflict of moral standards which life as it is actual- ly lived presents. As President Coolidge said, at the dedication of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library at the South Dakota State University (which is the State agricultural college) : “We come back to the query that is contained in the concentra- ted wisdom of the ages, ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ The dwelling place of the human soul is in the in- tellectual and moral world. It is into that realm that all true education should lead. I cannot conceive that the object of Abraham Lincoln was merely to instruct men how to raise more corn, to feed more hogs, to get more money, to buy more land, and so on in the expanding circle, but his main object must have been to raise better men. Unless our scholar- ship, however brilliant, is to be barren and sterile, leading toward pessimism, more emphasis must be given to the development of our moral power. Our colleges must teach not only science, but character. We must maintain a stronger, firmer grasp on the principle declared in the Psalms of David and re- echoed in the Proverbs of his son Solomon, that ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,' ” 12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION This principle, which was, no doubt, the inspir- ation of all our earliest American education, and even yet has not entirely disappeared from our na- tional concept of what befits the training of the young, it has been the Catholic privilege to maintain in its completeness and with unwavering consistency throughout the entire history of Catholic Education and on all its levels, from the grammar school to the university. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 13 THE METHOD OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION (Address delivered by Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C., in the Catholic Hour, September 14, 1930) It was our endeavor last week to show that the fundamental aim of Catholic Education is the same as that of the Church itself : a proper evaluation of knowledge and of all things else in relation to man’s immortal destiny, on the principle that the rightly instructed mind directs the will to right action. The true moves to the good. In our consideration today of the philosophy of Catholic Education, we shall try to see by what method this aim is pursued. The Catholic Religion, we have said, is a body of truth to believe and a way of life to follow. While it is true that Christ founded a Church and not a university, the Church which He founded is a teach- ing Church, for the schooling of the soul of man. He wrote no books, but the record of His life and the revelation which He gave has become the supreme book of the ages, the Holy Bible. Meantime, too, the mustard seed of His doctrine has become a tree whose branches overspread the earth. The knowl- edge of Him has become not only a science itself but also an active principle which has generated or developed cognate sciences,—philosophy in all its divisions, history, Biblical criticism, and liturgy — not to speak of its own special influence in archi- tecture, music, poetry, and the other arts. In a word, a whole civilization has sprung from Christ and from His Church. To ignore in any school cur- 14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION riculum the Christian contribution to knowledge is, from a merely intellectual point of view, to present an incomplete program of studies. Accordingly, in the very earliest stages of Cath- olic Education, express instruction in Christian Doc- trine is begun. Ordinarily the child will have learn- ed at home its prayers and been given some notion of the primary truths of religion, coupled with some moral training, principally along the lines of obedi- ence, truth-telling, and charity. In school, there will be textbooks in religion, graded, as are other studies, to meet the condition of the developing intelligence. I do not mean to suggest that at any stage in the study of religious truth the human mind can com- prehend its full import. Balfour, in his Foundations of Belief, says, memorably, that any system of reli- gion which should be small enough for our intel- lectual capacity could not be large enough for our spiritual needs. In these early studies, rather, it is a pedagogical problem to engage the interest and hold the attention of the young while an accommoda- tion is made that is largely a matter of short words for long. One fact of tremendous importance is plain, however: baptized children have a spiritual capacity, an aptitude far in advance of their natural capacity, for receiving supernatural truth. This is, of course, the supernatural virtue of faith that guides the will while the dawning intelligence more slowly grows up to take over the work, still guided and always to be guided by the light of faith. “Who seizes the child, seizes the future,” writes Francis Thompson in his Life of St. John Baptist de la Salle, and this early formal, constant instruction in the truths of the Catholic faith is destined to lay the foundations ot a lifelong belief. THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 15 But formal 'instruction is not all. Notice that religion in this system is not an isolated study. It comes into every day’s programme of classes. Sun- day-school is different. Religion isolated from the child’s daily school life must reach his mind, not to speak of his moral nature, with a quite different impact. Children really live in school if the school is at all what it should be. Even at home they are “school-children”, they have their “home-work” to do : their whole young life takes its orientation from the school. By no stretch of imagination can they be said to have a Sunday-school life. Judge of the consequence then, solely from an intellectual point of view, of admitting religion—the knowledge or science of God and man’s relations with Him—to a fraternity with all other knowledge. It is only in this way that the sovereignty of religion, with full claims to intellectual allegiance, can ever be es- tablished. Moreover, there is the reality of atmosphere. The religious school is usually built in the neighbor- hood of the church, most commonly alongside the church. The pastor of the parish or some delegated assistant pastor directly supervises the school, hav- ing personal care of all its interests. Generally the teachers are members of religious orders, that is to say, mature women consecrated by vows to teach- ing, not as an experimental occupation or a stop-gap assignment on the way to some career, but as a life- work. The crucifix in the schoolroom, the pictures and statues of the saints, the prayers said in com- mon, even the special religious holidays, all this goes into the making of that intangible thing called atmosphere than which there is probably no influ- ence more potent in shaping the destiny of the 16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION young. In sheer effect it amounts to this, as far as these early years are concerned : religion is woven into the warp and woof of the child’s intellectual and moral life. Often, the grammar grades of the parochial school are alone sufficient to establish practical Catholicity for life in those pupils who for one reason or another are not able to pursue their education farther. I have dwelt thus at some length on the presen- tation of religion in the earliest stages of Catholic Education because in essence the method does not change as the process of education advances. The formal study of Christian Doctrine and its applica- tion, the location of the school, the character of the teachers and all that goes to make up the atmosphere of which we have spoken, are continued on substan- tially through high school or academic studies into college and university work. Naturally on these higher levels the study of philosophy is undertaken. Scholastic Philosophy is the accepted system, al- though attention is allotted to later systems in the measure in which they seem to deserve attention. It is on the college level that the best opportun- ity is afforded for the complete coordination and correlation of religion as a science with the other branches of knowledge, and here, too, the happiest results are achieved in carrying this knowledge into practice. In the college, religion becomes in a cer- tain very true sense an experimental science. Col- lege life itself is its laboratory. To know and to do, as a man knows and does, deliberately to employ reason and faith to resultant ends of virtue—that is the religious programme as it works itself out in college. Obviously, not all the results of this pro- cess can be brought into tabulation. Nevertheless a THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 17 very successful attempt has been made to tabulate some of these results by means of religious surveys that have been conducted here and there in Catholic colleges. In the main the showing is that religion is personally apprehended, that the individual soul has taken hold upon. Christ. This is particularly true where the frequent and even daily reception of Holy Communion has been promoted according to the mind of the Church as set forth in the epoch-making Encyclical of Pius X, “Pascendi Gregis”. But this in itself is of slight consequence compared with the after-results that are quite beyond the range of record or control. It is indeed a venture of faith wherein once again the words of Christ must be verified and vindicated—that a man shall sow where he does not reap and reap where he has not sowed. Sufficient for the Catholic educator that here and now he has done all that in him lay to employ the means that should produce the results sought. Throughout this discussion it has been assumed, because it is the fact, that in all which relates to secular knowledge, Catholic Education is not behind- hand with the secular schools. The difference lies in its approach and its attitude to all such science. “The just man liveth by faith,” and that, I take it, since it is the principle must become the method of Catholic Education, so that it may put its students, more especially those on the college level, in pos- session of such knowledge and may give them such training of character as will enable them to compete with all for a necessary footing on the earth, at the same time that it teaches them the vanity of all earthly things and the absolute necessity of secur- ing a foothold in heaven ; to teach them good citizen- ship in the Republic and to prepare them for eternal 18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION citizenship in the Kingdom of God ; to teach them law and medicine and commerce, and to prepare them for a real and a long eternal life, where there is neither human law nor medicine nor commerce; to teach them the fine arts and music and poetry, and at the same time make them hungry for that only true Beauty which is everlasting ; to teach them to love their home, the fireside from which they come, the fireside to which they go, and yet to teach them all the time to be homesick for Heaven, their Father’s house, their eternal home. There is no contradiction in this educational program. It is based on the principle embodied in Christ’s command, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice and all these things shall be added unto you.” The working value and the prac- tical success of this principle have been demonstra- ted in every age of the Church’s history, from the time when the first monks fled the world yet drained the swamps of Europe on their way to Heaven, and either invented or conserved whatever was good in a civilization wrecked by men who had no interest beyond and above this world, down to our own day when some of the names that have become a very part of terminology of physical science, notably in electricity, are found originally cn the baptismal records of village churches in France and Italy. There is no contradiction in expecting men to be good lawyers, and all the better lawyers, because the case they are working on all the time is the brief of their own life, which they are to present at the bar of God’s judgment; in expecting men to be good engineers, though the highway they think about most is the road to Heaven; in expecting them to be capable architects, while constantly remember- THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 19 ing the many mansions in their Father’s house; in expecting them to be good bankers, while primarily concerned with laying up for themselves treasures in Heaven; in expecting them to be good business men, while making friends of the mammon of ini- quity, that when they fail they may be received into everlasting dwellings ; in expecting them to be good doctors, while all the time their most important concern will be the health and well-being of their own soul. And there is no contradiction, finally, in expecting them, though they be a failure at every- thing to which they may put their hand in this world, not to fail 'in the one thing which alone mat- ters in the life of man, the saving of his soul. It is the particular glory of the Catholic college, and our peculiar contribution to the educational life of our time, that in our colleges we have been able to effect a synthesis of religion and life, to coordinate not only college studies and college sports and, to some extent, music and the drama, with that religious faith which after all is our only reason for existence as a school. Religion is a practical force on the col- lege campus in the Catholic school and enters into every aspect of college life. In conclusion, it may be said that the ideal is not perfectly realized. The important point remains, however, that there is an ideal towards which Cath- olic educators are constantly, confidently and hum- bly working. The measure of their success cannot in the nature of things be completely known this side of Paradise. 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION THE SUPPORT OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION (Address delivered; by Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C., in the Catholic Hour, September 21, 1930) It has been brought out in these addresses that Catholic Education, while it keeps its eyes steadily trained on life as it is and', men as they are, never loses sight of more important facts still, namely that other world and that after-life of which the Catholic Faith makes us sure. With no thought of imposing this system upon others—since Catholi- city itself has utterly no value unless it is freely accepted upon reasoned conviction enlightened by grace from above; with no thought of criticizing others by the standards that fix our own accounta- c\ bility, and with no feeling that we are on the defen- sive in a country where not merely religious tolera- tion but religious freedom is a constitutional right and where the first American schools were all re- ligious schools,—we Catholics, confident of the soundness of our educational philosophy and the security of the American government itself, have given such proof of these convictions as all men can understand : we have invested money in our system of education to the amount of literally in- calculable millions of dollars. Some idea of the magnitude of this investment can be gained from the careful and conservative estimate made four years ago which shows that the total annual cost of Catholic Education in the ele- mentary grades and high schools alone is nearly 45 million dollars. This represents a saving to the THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 21 various states, not merely of 45 million dollars, but of 160 million dollars, based on the pro rata cost of education in the public schools. Notice, this is the cost of maintaining the system ; it does not in- clude valuations of property and equipment to the amount of 617 million dollars, nor does it include the very considerable investment value of the lives of men and women contributed freely to the cause. It might be well to state now, for the benefit of those not familiar with financial estimates nation- wide in scope, that they must expect to be stag- gered by the figures on the cost of education. For example, in 1928, the public elementary schools cost the various states in teachers’ salaries alone, $1,162,606,770. In considering the support of Catholic Educa- tion, three striking facts need to be isolated for immediate attention. The first of these is that Catholic Education saves the various States not merely what it costs us to maintain our schools, but what it would cost the States to maintain them, a much larger sum of money. In the second place, by maintaining our own schools we lower the cost of education to the public at large. That is to say, if the States bought over our elementary schools and high schools—not to consider colleges and uni- versities—and paid our teaching staffs according to the salary scale prevailing in the public schools, the single educational tax levied to meet this condition would be enormously increased. The point is that, financially, our schools are a benefaction to the State and to the general public, as well as a benefit to ourselves. The third and most significant fact of all is that the cost of Catholic Education is met, not as so many of our non-Catholic friends suppose, 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION out of some vast general fund gathered from Cath- olic sources for this purpose, but by the individual unit of education, whether elementary school, high school, college, or university, from whatever sources of support it can itself legitimately draw upon. When it comes to financial support, there is no institution in the world so lonely as a Catholic school. Without fixed general resources commensurate with the needs of an undertaking operating on so vast a scale, how then does Catholic Education exist? The answer is one which proves, almost to the point of mathematical demonstration, the main assumption, as it might be called, of Catholic Edu- cation. In reality it is no assumption at all, but a conviction of certainty, namely, that there is a spe- cial Providence watching over Catholic Education. If Catholic Education, financially considered, is not in some sense a standing miracle, then there is no meaning in the words of Christ, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice and all these things shall be added unto you.” Catholic Educa- tion practices what it preaches. It gives to its own adherents and to the whole world a sublime ex- ample of practical faith in the principles for which it stands. It is a monument to the reality of Divine Providence. Its support comes from two sources which might be termed poverty and wealth, not, however, as if these two things were opposed in the particu- lar instance. In both cases the spring from which they flow is faith. The parents of children attend- ing the parochial school or high school pay a tui- tion, which is generally only a nominal sum, or the THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 23 parish as a whole is taxed for the support of the school, in which case it is known as a “free” school. In reality, of course, there are no free schools: there are simply different methods of securing revenue for their support. But this is only a detail, though not without its importance. The Catholic body as a whole has not been rich in the goods of this world, and the average Catholic has been able to meet the cost of educat- ing his children only through sacrifice—sacrifice cheerfully made. Even from this point of view, it remains true that our schools are supported by “poverty,” by the pennies of the poor. But when we say that poverty in any literal sense has been one of their main supports, we mean rather an institutional fact—we are thinking of that great body of men and women who for the most part do the teaching in our Catholic grammar schools, high schools, colleges and universities, the religious orders, as they are called, men and women who freely bind themselves by vow to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and who labor without salary or any thought of personal remuneration. In every country of the world, Catholic Education rests on the sure foundation of that other great Catholic institution, the religious life. Thus, in the United States alone there are 117 religious com- munities of women teachers with a total member- ship of more than 75,000. Religious communities of men engaged in teaching include six congrega- tions of brothers and eight or ten order or congre- gations of priests. The number of teachers thus supplied is far from sufficient to meet the needs of Catholic Education. Employment of lay teachers runs from eight percent of the total staff in the 24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION grammar schools to an average of fifty-one percent of the faculties in our colleges and universities. The services of religious teachers vowed to per- sonal poverty is, as has been indicated, the prin- cipal endowment which Catholic Education pos- sesses. Besides reducing the cost of education to its patrons, this system has enabled religious to acquire collective resources. These resources are usually in the form of land and buildings. Where they are revenue-producing, that is due chiefly to what are called the “hotel-facilities” offered by boarding-schools, academies and colleges. This is an altogether accidental source of income and one that is on a very precarious basis. It brings into high relief the very marked differentiation that exists between Catholic schools and all others in this matter of financial support, especially in the department of higher education. I have indicated that the chief sources of our support are poverty and wealth, that literally as well as figuratively our poverty has been our wealth. It remains to tell what our actual wealth is as men rate wealth. The total combined endow- ment of the fifty Catholic colleges and universities reporting any endowment at all, is less than twenty-two million dollars. The largest endow- ment of any one of these is less than three million dollars. Only six of them have as much as one mil- lion dollars of endowment. If our grand total of endowment were distributed through the hundred and twenty-four Catholic colleges and universities of the United States, the individual share would be around $175,000.00. Exclusive of state-supported schools, there are in the United States 100 non-Catholic colleges with THE PHILOSOPHY OE CATHOLIC EDUCATION 25 a minimum endowment of two million dollars each. Most of these run far in excess of the minimum. Thus, Harvard has an endowment of ninety mil- lions, Columbia seventy-three millions, Yale sixty- nine millions, the University of Chicago fifty mil- lions. Yale University has reported in one year alone gifts amounting to twenty-three million dol- lars, or two million dollars more than the total combined endowment of all Catholic colleges and universities in the United States acquired over a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years. Meager as our endowment is, it has not all come from Catholic sources. The General Education Board and the Carnegie Corporation have made substantial grants to some of our colleges and uni- versities. A few reflections on this situation are in order. Our schools are founded on sacrifice made in the spirit of faith, and they will be maintained in the same way. A system of education teaching as a first principle the nothingness of transitory things cannot pin its hope of success to mere money. Viewing the history of religion, no religious com- munity can safely make a drive for material sup- port unless at the same time it makes a drive for poverty, that is to say, unless it seeks to keep clear its vision and deepen its faith and strengthen its purpose in the light of its necessary commitment to spiritual and supernatural standards. None the less, when all has been said that needs to be said on this score, the failure of Catholic Education to draw from Catholics of means voluntary and gen- erous support for a work so intimately bound up with the cause of religion itself, is, if not a scandal and a stone of stumbling, at least an insoluble 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OP CATHOLIC EDUCATION enigma to the non-Catholic public of America. From motives of patriotism and from motives of altruism, or merely by reason of some vague gen- eral notion that education is a good thing to pro- mote, men with little or no faith in the hereafter have poured billions of dollars into the treasuries of the very colleges and universities with which Catholic colleges and universities must compete in attracting Catholic students, without any thought of attracting others, and in seeking to advance by experiment and research, as universities should do, the frontiers of human knowledge. We must face the facts. Catholic higher educa- tion, economically considered, is fighting for its life. No individual engaged in the work and no collec- tion of such individuals need feel that the brunt of the offensive is definitely localized. No one pos- sessed of the facts can think that the struggle is nearing an end. It is only beginning. In spite of ultimate assurance, there are anxious days ahead. The most formidable, because they are the most insidious, attacks on revealed religion are always intellectual. The moral attack itself is often re- ducible to some initial false principle of philosophy. On the whole, however, the attack on Christian morals is met effectively by the broad general soundness of Catholic life. But let a generation or two of our Catholic students, men and women, be subjected to the constant, sometimes masked, not always specious, intellectual attacks on revealed religion in certain well-known liberal colleges and universities, and the result will be one which no one who believes in the Divine mission of the Church can contemplate with equanimity. Yet this purely defensive and even prophylactic view of the THE PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 27 force of Catholic Education is far from doing jus- tice to the cause. There is the great, positive, joy- ous, energizing power of the Faith to be established in the minds and hearts of these young men and women of today in whose keeping the future Cath- olic life of America is so soon to be placed. And so this series of talks on the Philosophy of Catholic Education, discussing in this final talk the very practical question of the support of Catholic Education, ends as it began with a reaffirmation of that first principle which gives the very reason of our being, namely, that Catholic Education exists because the Catholic Church exists. Its direct pre- occupation is knowledge, the whole field of knowl- edge, not exclusive of that highest of of all truth, the knowledge of God and man’s relation to Him. It teaches men to live in time, shirking no human duty, slighting no civil and no social obligation, while it teaches men to live for eternity. From the lowest levels to the highest it effects a synthesis, which is both intellectual and moral, of religion and life. It will have to the end its own definitions of prosperity and progress, its own standards of suc- cess. It will serve mightily the highest and finest ideals of government in the republic, as it has served those ideals in the past. In principle, and on the basis of performance it has the right to ex- pect the support which it needs to achieve its destiny. CARDINAL HAYES STATES AIMS OF THE CATHOLIC RADIO HOUR (Extract from his address at the inaugural program in the Studio of the National Broadcasting Company, New York City, March 2, 1930). Our congratulations and our gratitude are extended to the National Council of Catholic Men and its officials, and to all who, by their financial support, have made it possible to use this offer of the National Broadcasting Company. The heavy expense of managing and financing a weekly program, its musical numbers, its speakers, the subsequent answering of inquiries, must be met. That responsibility rests upon the National Council of Catholic Men .... This radio hour is for all the people of the United States. To our fellow-citizens, in this word of dedication, we wish to express a cordial greeting and, indeed, congratulations. For this radio hour is one of service to America, which certainly will listen in interestedly, and even sympathetically, I am sure, to the voice of the ancient Church with its historic background of all the centuries of the Christian era, and with its own notable contribution to the discovery, explora- tion, foundation and growth of our glorious country. . . . Thus to voice before a vast public the Catholic Church is no light task. Our prayers will be with those who have that task in hand. We feel certain that it will have both the good will and the good wishes of the great majority of our country-men. Surely, there is no true lover of our Country who does not eagerly hope for a less worldly, a less material, and a more spiritual standard among our people. With good will, with kindness and with Christ-like sympa- thy for all, this work is inaugurated. So may it continue. So may it be fulfilled. This work of dedication voices, there- fore, the hope that this radio hour may serve to make known, to explain with the charity of Christ, our faith, which we love even as we love Christ Himself. May it serve to make better understood that faith as it really is—a light revealing the pathway to heaven: a strength, and a power divine through Christ: pardoning our sins, elevating, consecrating pur common every-day duties and joys, bringing not only justice but gladness and peace to our searching and ques- tioning hearts. - .'I y Hear and Help the Catholic Hour Sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men, Washington, D. C. Your Contribution to the Continuance of These Weekly Broadcasts of Catholic Truth is Needed and Solicited The following fifty-five Stations in the System of the National Broadcasting Company present the Catholic Hour Every Sunday: Asheville, N. C. WWNC Atlanta, Ga. WSB Baltimore, Md. WFBR Billings, Mont. KGHL Birmingham, Ala. WAPI Bismarck, N. D. KFYR Boston, Mass. WEEI Buffalo, N. Y. WBEN Butte, Mont. KGIR Cincinnati, Ohio WSAI Chicago, 111. WENR Cleveland, Ohio WTAM Davenport, Iowa* WOC Des Moines, Iowa* WHO Denver, Colo. KOA Detroit, Mich. WWJ Duluth-Superior WEBC Fargo, N. D. WDAY Fort Worth, Tex. WBAP Hartford, Conn. WTIC Houston, Tex. KPRC Jackson, Miss. WJDX Jacksonville, Fla. WJAX Kansas City, Mo. WDAF Louisville, Ky. WHAS Madison, Wis. WIBA Memphis, Tenn. WMC Miami, Fla. WIOD Nashville, Tenn. WSM New Orleans, La. WSMB New York, N. Y. WEAF Oakland, Calif. KGO Oklahoma City, Okla. WKY Omaha, Neb. WOW Philadelphia, Pa.* WFI Philadelphia, Pa.* WLIT Phoenix, Ariz. WTAR Pittsburgh, Pa. WCAE Portland, Me. WCSH Portla«»i, Ore. KEX Providence, R. I. WJAR Richmond, Va. WRVA St. Louis, Mo. KSD St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minn. KSTP St. Petersburg, Fla.* WSUN Clearwater, Fla.* WFLA San Antonio, Tex. WOAI San Francisco, Cal. KPO Schenectady, N. Y. WGY Seattle, Wash. KJR Shreveport, La. KTBS Spokane, Wash. KGA Tulsa, Okla. KVOO Washington, D. C. WRC Worcester, Mass. WTAG *These stations broadcast the Catholic Hour alternate weeks. < , / 1 \ V ' : - ' RADIO ADDRESSES PUBLISHED _ OUR SUNDAY VISITOR is the authorized publisher of all Catholic Hour Radio addresses in pamphlet form. The following is a list of these pamphlets published up to date: “The Divine Romance/' the seven lectures delivered by the Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D., an 80-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 20c postpaid. In quantities, $9.00 per 100. "The Moral Order” and "Mary, the Mother of Jesus,” the six addresses by the Rev. George Johnson, Ph.D., a 64-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 15c postpaid. In quantities, $6.00 per 100. "A Triology on Prayer,” the three addresses by the Rev. Thomas F. Burke, C.S.P., a 32-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 10c postpaid. In quantities, $5.00 per 100. "The Story of the Bible,” the five addresses by the Rev. Dr. Francis L. Keenan, a 64-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 15c postpaid. In quantities, $6.00 per 100. "Four Religious Founders,” a collection of the five addresses by the Rev. Dr. Francis J. Connell, C. SS., R., the Rev. Benedict Bradley, O. S. B., the Rev. Thomas M. Schwertner, O. P., the Rev. Sigmund Cratz, O. M. Cap., and the Rev. M. J. Ahern, S. J., a 56-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 15c postpaid. In quanti- ties, $6.00 per 100. "The Philosophy of Catholic Education,” the three addresses by the Rev. Dr. Charles L. O’Donnell, C. S. C., a 32-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 10c postpaid. In quantities, $5.00 per 100. "Christianity and the Modern Mind,” the six addresses by the Rev. John A. McClorey, S. J., a 64-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 15c postpaid. In quantities, $6.00 per 100. "The Moral Law,” the eight addresses by the Rev. James M. Gillis, C. S. P., editor of the Catholic World, an 88-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 25c postpaid. In quantities, $9.50 per 100. "Christ and His Church,” the eight addresses by the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph M. Corrigan, D. D., LL. 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In quantities $12.00 per 100. "Christianity's Contribution to Civilization,” nine addresses by the Rev. James M. Gillis, C. S. P., editor of the Catholic World, an 86-page pamphlet. Single copy, 25c postpaid. In quantities, 510.00 per 100. "Manifestations of Christ,” thirteen addresses delivered by the Rev. Dr. Fulton J. Sheen; an 128-page pamphlet. Single copy, price 35c postpaid. In quantities, $12.00 per 100. "The Way of the Cross,” a single address, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Fulton J. Sheen; a 32-page booklet, obtainable from the National Council of Catholic Men, 1314 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W., Washington, D. C. Price 5c each, singly or in quantities. Address: OUR SUNDAY VISITOR, Huntingdon, Indiana /