j a_W>v^f I /'0)t>3ats' RICHARD CINDER WHAT ABOUT CATHOLIC SCHOOLS? by Richard Ginder WE CATHOLICS have a very efficientschool system all our own, presided over by a teaching force which begins with gentle little sisters in the first grade and ends with research specialists hiding be- hind double-barreled spectacles in uni- versity libraries. We hold that children do not learn enough in the common schools. They learn to read and write and figure, but their edu- cation stops there. They are never taught who made them and why. They never learn about Jesus and their soul. Non-Catholics may regard all these subjects as matters of opinion, patient of argument: but Catho- lics have always held their beliefs as matters of fact. So, rather than send our children to schools where the whole thing is ignored, we Catholics prefer to build and maintain our own schools, and train and support an independent body of teachers. It was not always that way with our public schools. Long ago, Americans as a group believed in God as the Creator of all things. Everyone agreed that we were not all flesh; that there was a higher something, the soul, created by God and destined to everlasting life. Books were written and studied, and classes were taught on that basis. You know the changes which have been brought about with the passing years. A great part of non-Catholic America has given up those beliefs, or holds them only in a loose way; especially, one might say, the intellectual leaders of the country, the writers of school-books and the teachers in normal schools; so that, strangely, to mention God’s name in a public class-room is to poke at a hornet’s nest and, worse than that, to commit a breach of good taste. God, if He is at all, is to be ignored. 4 At first Americans got plenty of religious instruction at home. It was still a Christian era. Convocations of every kind opened with a prayer and closed with a blessing. There was grace before and after meals. Even nations preserved at least a fiction of piety by beginning their legal instruments "In the name of God. Amen.” Religion, if it was debated, was still respected. Christian customs influenced the people. There was no love lost among Protestants themselves, much less between Protestant and Catholic, but all of them could agree on such funda- mentals as the malice of perjury and the evil of divorce. Enter Charles Darwin Evolution sidled in on the scene some- time after the year 1859. That was the year Charles Darvdn’s manuscript, The Origin of Species, was accepted by a London pub- lisher. Strange talk was heard. Children heard the matter disposed of at the dinner- table. It was vulgarized in the Sunday papers. The new science had exploded the Bible—a beautiful book with some basis in fact, they said, but mainly the folklore of a migrant race. All this began in the universities and colleges; then it trickled into the old-fash- ioned high-school course in natural phi- losophy; and finally it seeped into the home. Catholic churchmen watched these de- velopments with concern. The Church could control environment in Catholic homes, but not in public-schools; and her children were being taken from their good mothers and delivered into the hands of teachers who were afraid now to speak of God, and the soul, and heaven, and hell. They were with those teachers from nine in the morning until three or four in the afternoon so Aat home influences hardly had a chance in the matter of education. But religion is not a subject to be so easily ignored. It is too vast. It touches every phase of our lives. How can any sub- ject be taught without some reference to religion ? We do not know the whole truth about Columbus, for instance, if we do not know that he brought priests with him on 6 his second and third voyages to convert the Indians.—And how else was the Missis- sippi discovered, if not by a wandering priest in search of souls to baptize.^ We cannot know anything about art, if we do not know that a madonna represents the Mother of God, or that the medieval cathe- drals were built as palaces for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The Bishops* Decree . . . Examples are countless. But the bishops of the country saw these holes opening in the public educational system, and when they acted, they moved swiftly. In 1884 they decreed that "near each church, where it does not exist, a parochial school is to be erected within two years from the pro- mulgation of this Council, and is to be maintained in perpetuity, unless the bLshop, on account of grave difficulties, judge that a postponement be allowed.” It was a great and expensive problem, but it was a work to which priests and people gave themselves generously. They had convictions on the subject. And now, 7 wherever possible, the Catholic school stands within the shadow of the Church. We have 7,660 parish schools with a few more than 2,000,000 children in attend- ance; 1442 high schools registering 493,754 students; and we have 825 universities, colleges, and academies for Catholic boys and girls. It involves a staggering outlay in money and sacrifice. Our people are not wealthy as a rule, and one would judge it hard enough just to support a church and rectory; but here we have a school system in addition with no exemption of any sort from taxa- tion for the support of public Schools. In other words. Catholics are supporting two school systems. Priceless Truths Is it worth it?—Well, judge for your- self. In his first week at school, the Catho- lic child, hardly more than a baby, learns more than the solemn philosophers of our day have discovered in a lifetime of grop- ing. Our child learns who made him and why. He learns what he is, where he came 8 from, and where he is going. In other words, he learns the purpose of life. It is drilled into him. He hears it every day. It is the beginning and end of every study, the foundation of all his classes. God made the child for Himse/f. The fact breathes life into the dead bones of history; for history is more than a casual list of dates and a string of factual items—it is the story of God’s dealings with men and the progress of His Church in a stubborn world. Even geography shows how the mountains and rivers and lakes glorify God. The children in many places assist at Mass before school. They learn to begin and end their work with prayer. They are taught the beautiful routine of Catholic de- votion and they assume our ancient Catho- lic practices with easy grace. Holy water consecrates their entering and leaving the classroom. The crucifix catches and stops their wandering stare. They spend their class-days in the pres- ence of a religious, one whose garb be- speaks a life completely consecrated to 9 God, a constant and living model of self- sacrifice. How else could religion be taught.? Some places, too poor to have a school, or with congregations too scattered, try to get along by gathering the children together for an hour a week after the Sunday Mass or on some week-day. It is a makeshift and it gives religion not one-seventh the im- portance it should have. No Obedience Without God Children in Catholic schools learn rever- ence for superiors. We teach our children that, when the parent speaks, it is not just Mother or Father; it is God, speaking through human lips. Few Catholic mothers know the anguish, thank God, of having children who are not only disobedient, but disrespectful as well. It is the non- Catholic parent who realizes when God has been taken from his side how his own authority disappears. It is a discovery al- ways made too late, unfortunately, for by the time children are old enough to have minds of their own, they are too old to be 10 disciplined and certainly too old to be taught the Fourth Commandment. This is not intended to belittle the public schools. What they teach, they teach well. They have high standards and a teaching body of integrity. Our protest is that they do not teach enough. Our Catholic schools are catching up with the rising age of compulsory educa- tion. About half of our children are now in Catholic high schools. That is a good figure when we consider how only the more densely settled areas can people and sup- port a high school! One need hardly develop the importance of a religious atmosphere during this phase of a boy’s and girl’s life. They enter high school children, and graduate adults. Ado- lescence overtakes them. They must adapt themselves reasonably to the privileges of young manhood and womanhood. These are the years when boys and girls need sympathetic and inspired guidance. There are an endless number of delicate ad- justments to be made. Emotional values are changing and the youngster is at a dis- 11 ' advantage if he finds himself during these crucial years in the hands of advisers out of sympathy with the religious motives of his childhood. Catholic Colleges and Universities Our higher education — colleges and universities — is an institution almost as old as the Qiurch. The Church always acknowledged preaching and teaching as her mission. From the first she taught and defended truth, religious truth, to be sure, but she had a great curiosity concerning all truth. Paris, Oxford, Salerno, Bologna, great universities, all of them, depended on the Holy Father for their franchise. They were organized by Catholics, priests and laymen, and they all recognized theology as the queen of the sciences, with philosophy as her handmaid. Catholicism’s systematic theology was hammered out in the lecture halls of these liniversities by men like SS. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Albert, and Duns Scotus. These schools were the husky offspring 12 of monastic scholarship. Think of Alcuin, and St. Bede, and the little school which flourished in Charlemagne’s palace! The monks were busy in their scriptoria, copying off the literary and historical monu- ments for posterity, teaching the neighbor- hood children to read and write and con- duct themselves with the modesty and politeness of Christian gentlemen. It was all democratic. The monasteries, themselves supported by charity, dispensed charity lavishly. The monks had a keen eye for talent and they never let a bright child escape without an education. On the other hand, tliey never committed our fre- quent blunder of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Education of Poor Students Medieval universities exercised their charity through loans. By statute, no stu- dent was to be kept out for lack of funds. A poor boy could beg (not dishonorable in those times), or find a job or, if worst came to worst, he could be admitted on a 13 pauper’s oath and his promise to pay back later. When these ancient universities were stolen from the church, theology was de- throned and banished and there was no longer any authority to keep the professors from teaching error. Which they did. So Catholics stopped sending tlieir boys and girls. Instead they organized new colleges and universities, to be supervised by men who really loved the students and who felt themselves responsible for what diey learned while under their charge. In this country, we have the Catholic University in Washington, the center of our educational activity, and a recognized seat of higher learning. Like the univer- sities of old, it has its power to confer de- grees from the Holy Father — degrees which are recognized by the state and by all her sister universities here and abroad and which are honored by every reputable accrediting organization in the world. Fanning out from that and depending on it for leadership are the multiplicity of col- leges, academies and other universities; 14 Notre Dame, for instance, Georgetown, and Duquesne; Holy Cross, Fordham, the several Loyolas, Marquette; Trinity Col- lege, Seton Hill, and the College of St. Therese at Winona. Why Not Your Children Too? A Catholic parent can send his child to school from first grade all tlie way up to his last year of medical or law school, and be confident that not once will the lad hear a word spoken against Christianity or the Christian ethic. Virtue will be made as easy as possible for the boy. (Sometimes, you know, it is painted as an unattainable ideal, which makes it a practical and moral im- possibility.) He will be given clear prin- ciples. The ethic behind them will be ex- panded from year to year as his under- standing developes. Sin will be described sincerely as the greatest unimaginable mis- fortune. And all the time the lad’s life will be under the scrutiny of shrewd advisers, accustomed to appraising character and anxious to help die boy with all their powers. Finally he will graduate, well trained and well disciplined, possessed of all he needs for the happy life. Why not put your children in a Catholic school } The president of George Washington Univer- sity, writing in the Chicago Examiner, August 15, 1909, said: “Whatever may be said of the schools of this country, none have won a higher plane than those conducted by the various religious organi- zations, and none have created a higher record than those conducted by the Catholic Church. This holds good from the parochial school to the Catholic Col- leges and Catholic Universities, whether conducted by those self-abnegating women of the various sister- hoods or the various branches of brotherhoods which are so prominent in the Catholic Church’s activities. The Catholic system of schools has been a great factor in the development and advancement of the Nation.” Woodrow Wilson, while President of Prince- ton, said: “We all know that the children of the last two decades in our schools have not been educated. With all our training, we have trained nobody. With all of our instructing, we have instructed nobody.” The late President Harper, of Chicago Univer- sity, one time said: “It is difficult to foretell the outcome of another fifty years of our educational system, which trains the mind only, but for the most part leaves the moral side untouched. The Roman Catholics meet this difficulty, while our Protestant churches utterly ignore it.” PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC INFORMATION SOCIETY 214 WEST 318T ST., NEW YORK 1. N.Y. (OPPOSITE PENN TERMINAL) 16 NEVER DESTROY GOOD PRINT. Pass It from Person to Person. Thanks!