J^- .'f , ■ n ^ >: . THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES > .,/^J 1 ' s ' »■ 1 ». '/^ ' ■•rJSr - ■ mlr* '<'. ''■ I ■ v ,-■•'; -T^f. p m: h'-' f^.. tri ■& >'■• \,'j^ #■-■■■ ■ •.;JfV /S Ft- s V''; '■^/. ':: ■/ *>i'^;*''.-,':-^:" 'i, ■*'.> (^y) V 1 (M" ^ ^Ji^- THE RUIN OF EDUCATION IN IRELAND AND THE IRISH FANAR "The Catholic University College, Dublin, was handed over to the Jesuits in November, 1883. I am the Rector, and I have eight Jesuit colleagues." — Evidence of Rev. Dr. Delany, S.J., before the University Commission. " The Catholic Church has the right and the duty to kill heretics, because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be extirpated. Mere Excommunication is derided by heretics. If they are imprisoned or exiled they corrupt others. The only resource is to put them to death. Repentance cannot be allowed to save them, just as Repentance is not allowed to save civil criminals ; for the highest good of the Church is the Unity of Faith, and this cannot be preserved unless heretics are put to death — haec servari nequit nisi hereticus morti tradatur." — Contemporary Jesuit Doctrine, approved by the Theologians of the Society, and actually taught to-day by their leading Canonist, Rev. Dr. Mariamis de Luca, Professor of the Decretals in the Vatican University. "A war of this kind declared against heresy, in which not even repentance could save the victim from the stake, caused a deep dread of Roman fanaticism and Roman power, the eiTects of which have not entirely passed away to this hour." — On the Marian Heretic-Burnings, by Mr. Wilfrid Ward. B.A., Catholic Member of the University Commission, THE RUIN OF EDUCATION IN IRELAND AND THE IRISH FANAR BY F. HUGH O'DONNELL, M.A. THIRD EDITION LONDON DAVID NUTT, 57-59, LONG ACRE 1903 iobrarf CONTENTS vii Introduction: The Fanar in Turkey and in Ireland . Note on Introduction: Fanariote Clericalism in Turkey under Moslem Protection . . • , • • ^cxi PART I OUTLINES OF EVIDENCE Some Preliminary Remarks : Episcopal Censorship and versity Freedom. A Suggested Conciliation . Catholic Finance and CathoUc Education Spurious Character of Clerico-Educational Petitions Educational Obstacles to the Queen's Colleges . The Clerical Boycott of Lay Learning . Other Obstacles Education Depressed by Degraded Politics Casuistic NeutraUty and Jesuit Policy , The Legacy of Loyola , . • ■ A Baser Intolerance ..... Universal Ruin to Lay Learning , , The Accommodating Protestants . The Hunt for Fees and the Ruin of Scholars Uni- I 9 14 19 24 27 31 34 39 43 50 55 57 4 r^'yck^y y ^ VI CONTENTS The Despotism over the National Schoolmasters Catholic Students at Oxford and Cambridge Suggestions and Proposals .... Catholic Professors and Clerical Universities Resumption of Practical Suggestions A Technical School Postscript : the Boycott at Work General Conclusions ,,,,,,, 62 65 70 77 92 96 99 PART II NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS The Mysteries of Fanariote Finance in Ireland . • . Priests and Temporalities: a Special Danger , , The Trifold Functions of an Irish Catholic Bishop Some Deductions from the Avowed Ignorance of the Clergy How Denominational Education is not Religious Education The Result Fees Scandal not a Necessity of the Act . The Worthless Education in Conventual Female Schools Why no Catholic Bequests to a Catholic University . Lay Money and Ecclesiastical Art A Clerical Novelist on Queen's College, Galway . , A Lapsed Recreation of Jesuit Schools .... Jesuits of To-day De Hereticis Educandis et Comburendis The Priestly Boycott and the Irish Language . , 115 121 124 132 140 149 151 158 162 167 170 172 176 APPENDIX The Mind of the Jesuit Order To-day on the Killing of Heretics and the Liberty of Peoples , . , 1S6 INTRODUCTION In placing before the public the accompanying summary of my experiences of Irish education, in the form of an Outline of Evidence for the Univer- sity Commission, I may be accused of a certain precipitation. I am supported, however, by other pioneers of reform in Ireland in thinking that not a moment can be lost in making known, at least, a sketch of our position. We have recognised well- known influences at work before the University Com- mission. We have marked the familiar selection of evidence. All the pliant personages, with whom the Senate of the Royal University was stuffed, are answering to the roll call. A full exposition of the struggle in Ireland between an incompetent but overwhelming dictatorship, and the unorganised and intimidated aspirations of the educated Laity, would fill a large volume, and easily two ; nor need the revelations be wanting in piquancy any more than in importance. Truth can be livelier than fiction ; and the facts of what Irish culture has, and had, to suffer would rival the rollicking gaiety of farce, if anything less serious were in question and at stake than the highest intellectual interests of a gifted race viii INTRODUCTION and the common patriotism of three Christian de- nominations. It may be instructive to relate my personal ex- perience of the difficulty which may beset the tender of independent evidence before a University Com- mission, on which, outside of a number of non- Catholics of position or distinction, no place has been found for non-Clerical representatives. At the beginning of December I sent in my name to the Secretary, mentioning my position as a Master of Arts of the Queen's University, my experience as a Member of Parliament, and my desire to give evi- dence before the Commission should visit my old college at Galway. I received an acknowledgment from the Secretary, stating "that my wish to give evidence would be submitted to the Commission." The Sittings of the Commission continued down to Christmas, but 1 heard nothing more of my applica- tion. I waited for some six weeks, and then renewed my inquiry in the month of January. I received the same acknowledgment from the Secretary, stating " that my desire to give evidence would be laid before the Commission." Then it had not been sub- mitted yet to the Commission., though the sittings of the Commission in December lasted for a couple of weeks after the receipt of my first application. Who were drawing a ring-fence round the inquiry? Who were preventing the access of evidence of which they were not quite sure ? I wrote a third time to the Secretary, referring to my repeated applications, and pointing out that, il INTRODUCTION ix called in February or March, it would be incon- venient to me to attend. I added that I was per- sonally aware that a number of statements relating to the Queen's Colleges, which had been made to the Commission, were seriously erroneous. I re- ceived from the Secretary the assurance that the Commission would not sit during February or March. Up to the present day, more than four months since my offer of evidence, I have received no notifi- cation of any readiness to hear me. From discreet inquiries I have ascertained that it will not be well for Catholics, who repudiate the pretensions of the clerical monopolists, to give voice to their views on the ruin of education in Ireland, Fortunately, my position places me above this intimidation. The obscurantists can neither strip me of my clients nor my patients ; and there exists a public opinion more wide than the boycotting organs of the Clerical Press. The independent Members of the Com- mission will assuredly not be barred from any testi- mony upon the subject which long and intimate knowledge of the Irish Educational situation enables a Catholic layman to submit to their consideration. As a matter of practical politics, the financial demands of Irish University and Superior Education are a fundamental consideration. Whatever may be beyond them, they occupy the way. But the finance of Irish education is inseparable from the finance of Catholicism in Ireland ; and that has consisted down to the present hour in a dreary record, which is not even a record, of enormous sums contributed by a X INTRODUCTION laity, ignored for every purpose except money-giving, to a Clergy omnipotent, unaccountable, and uncon- trolled for every purpose of money-receiving and money-spending. How can any Legislature, Pro- testant or Catholic, contemplate a further grant of Public Funds in Trust to a dignified Hierarchy or Hierocracy, which, like that Holy Roman Emperor, supra grammaticam, stands, as it has stood for generations, above responsibility, above publicity, about keeping accounts, and, above all things, above rendering them ? The Catholic Laity of Ireland never know what becomes of their generous contributions to religion and education. Whether the matter in hand be ten pounds or ten thousand, inquiry is resented as some- thing very like sacrilege ; and yet inquiry is a right of the contributors, and explanation ought to be a duty of the Clergy. Why not account for a Trust Fund? Not to mention great Catholic countries, where lay Ministers of Worship strictly control the financial administration of ecclesiastical affairs, what is the case in such a distant corner of the British Empire as Calcutta? The ** Indo-European Correspondence" of the beginning of January contains the following announcement, which simply describes a most necessary and natural arrangement, but which would provoke semi-apoplectic emotions among the spi- ritual lords of Irish temporalities : " As we are going to press, the an7iual meeting of Catholic gentle- men is being held at the Cathedral House for the inspection of accounts of the Vestry Board, and for the selection of twelve gentle- INTRODUCTION xi men, from amongst whom two wardens for the Cathedral will be elected at a subsequent meeting. The names of the gentle- men selected will be published in our next issue. Meanwhile they will be put up at the doors of all churches and chapels." The Catholic laity of Ireland pay millions, and neither Vestry Boards of laymen, nor Diocesan Boards of laymen, nor National Congresses of lay- men, are allowed to ask what becomes of it all. The treasury of the Church in Ireland is guarded more jealously from lay investigation than it used to be from the irreverent and acquisitive soldiery of Munro and Cromwell. Protestant Parliaments, Irish and English, granted large endowments to Maynooth for the common education of laymen and clerics. The clerics took the Protestant benefaction to their own exclusive usage and consumption. A Protestant Parliament granted a lump sum of ^360,000 as Maynooth commutation money to the Irish Catholic Church thirty years ago. The Catholic Laity, as the Catholic Bishop of Limerick has testified, sub- scribed at least ;^ 2 50, 000 towards a Catholic University in the years after Cardinal Newman's rectorship at Dublin. The accumulated contributions of the Catholic Laity towards their Church amount in every decade to millions sterling. Yet the Rev. Dr. Delaney, S.J., the present successor of Newman, testified the other day, before the Irish University Commission, that sixteen years ago he had received " nothing but bare walls, without libraries, labora- tories, or lecture halls," from the Irish Episcopal xii INTRODUCTION Trustees of the ;^2 50,000 of that Catholic Uni- versity. If such a state of things does not appeal to the sense of equity of every lover of education and lover of right, then there is no hope for culture in Ireland, no hope for intellectual advance, no hope for financial regularity. Such a state of things could only exist under a Protestant Government, which prefers a political bargain with an electioneering episcopacy to the rights of a whole nationality. I do not think that there is anything quite like it in Europe outside of the States of the Sultan of Turkey, and that only before a couple of generations ago. The Turks having destroyed the administration, the nobility, and governing classes of the Christian Greeks, turned to the Greek Ecclesiastical Organisation as the medium of administration between the Moslem and the Nazarene. Thence arose the Fanar. The Greek Prelacy of the Fanar — the Maynooth of Turkey — ruled the Greek Laity for the greater peace and profit of the Commander of the Faithful. The rayah — the layman — was nothing, except a payment- making animal. The English Government have erected or employed a Fanar in Ireland. Progress has brought a measure of emancipation to the rayahs of the east. Will it reach at last the rayahs of the western isle ? However excellent the intentions of the Irish Fanar, its admimstration of the millions sterling of the Catholic laity must have been something de- plorable, indeed, to result in those " bare walls " INTRODUCTION xiii after generations of lavish contributions. It planted cathedrals in hamlets, and episcopal and parochial villas in rustic retreats. It gave "bare walls" to lay education It is quite clear that the Irish Catholic Bishops must condescend to the vulgar usage of rendering accounts before there can be any talk of public endowments of any education subject to their orthodox but misfinancial control. The clerical egotism which has betrayed, or the clerical improvi- dence which has ignored, all the highest interests of Irish lay culture, cannot be allowed to repeat for another hundred years the nation-killing irresponsi- bility of the whole of the nineteenth century. With regard to the alleged Denominationalism of Primary and Intermediate Education it exists in coin only. As regards any effective knowledge of Catholic doctrine and letters, the pupils of the Primary and Secondary Schools in Ireland, in spite of their clerical managers, in spite of their teachers belonging to all the Clerical Congregations, are simply left destitute of everything but the elementary notions of their religion. The Fanariote School System oj Ireland is little short of an organised hypocrisy, whose objects are fees, and whose methods are the extreme of religious superficiality. They are " Versorgungs- Anstalten," boarding- and lodging-houses for vast numbers of teachingf orders and clerical smatterers come from Maynooth. They give the minimum of Catholic education to the boys and girls committed by parental confidence to their clerical profession. xiv INTRODUCTION They sacrifice most considerations of the well-being of their pupils to a sordid hunt after the means of filling the coffers of the Congregations and the Diocesan dunce-masters. I should add that, while cordially accepting the programme of Mixed Education as practised at Oxford and Cambridge, and as practicable in Ireland, I believe it would be for the benefit not only of Catholics, but of students of truth outside the Catholic Church, for Ireland to possess a Lay Free University as Catholic as Louvain or Freiburg, or that University of Salzburg, which the Austrian Episcopate and some of the laity are now endeavour- ing to found on the basis of private endow- ment ; a Catholic University, however, subject to the Hierarchy in Faith and Morals alone. In any case it were idle to expect, if not injurious to obtain, from a non-Catholic Government that endowment of Catholic University Education, which no Catholic country consents to establish. No Catholic nation of the world, neither the most recent nor the most archaic, neither Belgium, nor Bavaria, nor Austria, has granted, nor will ever grant, the public subventions, which the curious confidence, or the curious inexperience, of the Irish Episcopate solicits from the Government of Great Britain. In Holland, in some respects resembling the Anglo- Irish situation, a Catholic minority, which is one of the most religious and most intelligent in the world, has not organised a separate University for Dutch Catholics, even at Catholic expense ; and most INTRODUCTION XV distinguished leaders of the party openly defend the advice of M. Van Savornin-Lohman, that Catholics should endeavour to make themselves and their Church favourably known to Protestant culture by endeavouring to obtain as many tutorships and professorships as possible in the National Universities. In Germany, the feeling of most distinguished and most learned Catholics is strong in the extreme against any withdrawal of professors or students from the Mixed Universities of the Fatherland ; and the utmost stress is laid upon the largest possible amount of Catholic participation in the joint educa- tion of the united empire. It is true that a certain body of reactionary opinion, supported as usual by the monopolist zeal of the Society of Jesus, aims at increased segregation of the Catholic Church from the tendencies of modern life ; and would apparently, as has been justly observed, have the entire Church turned into a sort of vast cloister, ** with very thick walls and with very narrow cells." Mr. A. J. Balfour, devout, distinguished, and dilettante, and raised by a relationship, not forgetful of its own, above the informing drudgeries of states- manship, has been making a sort of balloon voyage into a Catholic cloudland ; from which he has brought back a philosopher's contrivance, constructed, he believes, on convincing calculations, but in reality from a blurred vision of an episcopal Eden ; an Eden in which both the tree of knowledge and the tree of sustentation would be committed to the care of mitred archangels. The Irish Catholic Episco- b xvi INTRODUCTION pate, a more and more isolated representative in the Catholic world of ideals contemporary with the obscu- ration of letters, clings fondly to the ambition of some little Hildebrands, quaintly caricaturing the actual aim of their great prototype, and endeavours to impose the investiture of ring and crozier upon lay thought, lay learning, lay education. But the Middle Ages are dead and, to some extent it is to be hoped most judicially damned. A mediaeval bishop too often carried both sword and pastoral staff, and, as has been wittily remarked by a great Catholic scholar, not infrequently with the pastoral staff in the wrong hand. The revolt of the Reformation and the revolt of the Revolution, like the growing repugnance of our own day, have been largely the outcome of ecclesiastical anachronisms neglecting the spiritual by intermeddling in the temporal. A Catholic devoted to my Church, and an Irishman devoted to my nation, I have always held that bigotry and faction were the worst enemies of both. I rejoice at the prospect of a common education of common countrymen. It is false that Irish Protes- tants do not love their native land, or that they would fail to respect Catholics if only Catholics learned self-respect. A Catholic laity that is run in blinkers cannot demand admiration either for the drivers or, above all, for the driven. Can Irish Protestants expect that, in certain eventualities, there would be more regard towards Protestant conscience than towards Catholic dignity and independence ? I have yet to learn to despair of any section of my com- INTRODUCTION xvii patriots, though differing from me in their Christian denominations, when once they shall have no reason to apprehend their own extermination, when pupils of clerical academies shall have ceased to discourage industry lest it should facilitate the payment of debts, and when venerable archbishops shall have given over distributing benedictions and — an acuter symptom ! — cheques to the hideous brotherhood of the boycott. But a national education is the indispensable preparation and the only guarantee for a better future ; and there can be no national education without lay supremacy in lay learning, and with the spiritual office of the priest relieved from the mis- appropriation of secular finance and the misdirection of secular administration. Medisevalism is dead. All the king's horses and all the king's men can never set that up again. Even the Jesuits pay a certain tribute to the transience of their favourite institutions ; and you might search in vain in the Ratio Studiorum of their Stephen's Green estab- lishment for that refining and educating regulation of old Jesuit schools, by which their students were only to attend public executions, when the executed happened to be a poor soul condemned for heresy. Neque ad supplicia reorum eant nisi forte haereti- corum. Of course, the permission has become superfluous in the probable absence of the requisite bonfire, either in Stephen's Green or in College Green. Even the stoutest adherents of anachronism must admit the inevitable sometimes. As a great xviii INTRODUCTION and noble prelate of the Church of France, Mon- signor Mignot, Archbishop of AIbi, said the other day, before the CathoHc Institute of Toulouse : "The sun does not cease to illuminate, nor the earth to bear its fruits, because our simplicity no longer dreams of the signs of the firmament being fixed in a revolving vault of crystal above our heads. The epoch of scientific development has come. The crystal vault has disappeared. Our mentality to-day is as different from that of the Middle Ages as the heavens of Copernicus differ from the heavens of Ptolemy." The supremacy in Catholic University Education lent, or rather sold, to the Jesuits by the Irish Catholic Episcopate will oblige me to deal at some length with some aspects of the Jesuit system. The dis- solution of the Society of Jesus in the eighteenth century by Pope Clement XIV. was a disaster to Catholic education, to which their policy had made them almost indispensable throughout the world: and their disappearance necessarily exposed the vacuum which they had laboured to create. Soli- tudinem faciunt. The restoration of the Society by another Pope in the nineteenth century was again a disaster to Catholic education, which was commencing to do without them, and which might have learned to replace them ; but to which they were again to make themselves indispensable by the same policy of preparing the vacuum to follow their removal. Aut Nos aut Nihil, is the summary of their method ; and by a crowning misfortune to Catholicism there is no INTRODUCTION xix reason to doubt the entire good faith of their pro- gramme of calamity. When they have made lay learning an impossibility for Catholics, and when they have reduced every other clerical institution to a fief of their Supreme Directory, they congratulate themselves with affectionate devotion on the realisa- tion of the Will of their Founder, pretty much as the Gortchakoffs and Muraviefs congratulate them- selves on a realisation of the Will of Peter the Great. With regard to maladministration by the Bishops as with regard to the usurpation by the Jesuits, I disclaim most absolutely every desire to throw on ecclesiastical individuals the blame for dominant and inherited anachronisms. Many of the worst enemies of the progress and culture of the Catholic Laity are to be found precisely among the most zealous and unseeing members of the priesthood and the prelacy. Fortunate, indeed, would be the nation which was only injured by the ill-disposed. The deadliest blows to human advancement have been dealt too usually by the worst incompetence united with the best intentions. Nor in the deepest darkness of an obscurantist age has there been entirely absent a streak of light and a glimmering of what may yet become the dawn. Even in the present day also, especially among the younger clergy, there is a broadening sense of the urgency of reform and a deepening shame at the curse of unculture. But the traditions of generations are tough, and the forces of inertia may still be invincible. Left to themselves, XX INTRODUCTION assuredly, those jealous monopolies may continue to clutch at ascendency at whatever cost of national decay. Whence the remedy ? From within ? I speak as a Catholic, closely, minutely acquainted with many, many Catholic lands ; and I know that a Catholic nation, possessed of the power to promote its own interests and to avert its own ruin, would, even after dim gropings and partial failures, ultimately arrive at the inevitable conclusion. But Ireland has to deal with an Accommodating Protestantism, solicitous of ease, and insensible of responsibility. What may be the decision of our Padishahs ? Irish Catholic reformers can dispose neither of Kismet nor Backshish ; but this is certain, that if our Pre- ponderant Partners, more preponderant than partners, were really to design the annihilation of the Catholic laity, already in so fair a way of accomplisment, they need do nothing more than continue to uphold the Irish Fanar. F. Hugh O'Donnelu NOTE ON INTRODUCTION FANARIOTE CLERICALISM IN TURKEY UNDER MOSLEM PROTECTION It must, of course, be understood that the Irish Catholic Hierarchy recognise the Primacy of the Pope, say the Mass in Latin, and maintain the addition of the Filioque Clause. They are, accord- ingly, not to be confounded in these religious respects with the Greek Hierarchy at Constantinople. It may also be allowed that Messrs. Balfour and Wyndham are faded representatives of the Viziers of Islam, who for their own purposes, or the supposed interests of their masters, invested the Greek clerical authorities with that supremacy, temporal as well as spiritual, over the Greek lay people, which is sought to be recalled in the designation of Fanariote Ireland. The Fanar was the quarter of the Turkish capital sanctified by the dwelling-places of the hierocrats of those lay multitudes. In the remarkable work on " Turkey in Europe," by "Odysseus," published a couple of years ago by Mr. Edward Arnold, there are descriptions of the reign of the Fanariotes under the protection of the xxii INTRODUCTION Turks, which may afford instructive parallels to the relations between Maynooth and the Castle of Dublin. " Strange as it may seem, the immediate result of the Mussul- man domination was beneficial to the Church, in as far as her prosperity can be separated from that of the whole Christian population. . . . Mohammed was delighted to teach the Byzan- tine Church to regard him as her benefactor and protector. . . . As a Moslim he was ready to give much that his orthodox prede- cessors had kept for themselves. The Christian emperors had interfered in and controlled the course of ecclesiastical policy, A Mohammedan sovereign had no such ambitions. . . . He placed the whole Greek religion under the control of the Patriarch, who thus acquired an authority which he had never enjoyed in Christian times. . . . Islam has never clearly distinguished between the Church and the State, between religion and law, between temporalities and spiritualities. . . . The Patriarch was head not only of the Church but of the Greek tributary com- munity, the representative of the Greek nation, the recognised intermediary between them and the Ottoman Government, a chief empowered to settle all matters arising among Christians, pro- vided no Moslim was concerned. . . . The authority and juris- diction of the Patriarch was gradually extended. . . . He was allowed to levy tithes and dues from his flock. . . . The higher Clergy found themselves possessed of a power and influence which were new to them. . . . Subsequently the Fanariotes took a large share in the administration of the Ottoman empire as mid- dlemen, and their exactions and oppression became a byword. ... In the years which immediately followed the conquest, it was distinctly the Church which was favoured by the Turks as a matter of deliberate policy, and which prospered at the expense of the community. The Clergy in return did not hesitate to exhort the people to obedience, and tacitly acquiesced in the levy of tribute children required by the Ottoman Government for education as Janissaries of the Mohammedan State." If viceroys and secretaries in Dublin Castle were INTRODUCTION xxiif to be read for pashas of many tails, if for Islam we should substitute Official Protestantism, for the Greek Hierarchy revelling in absolute power over the Greek laity by favour of the aforesaid pashas, an Irish Hierarchy authorised to levy all moneys and to enact all ordinances without any account to lay Irishmen ; if, in fine, we should suspect the Dublin pashas, like the Constantinopolitan ones, of an expectation to make political profit out of their surrender of the lay community to the clerical domination ; who will say that historical parallels may not sometimes be instructive as well as entertaining ? History also tells us that neither the financial nor the political autocracy conceded to the Fanar on Bosphorus was of much permanent benefit to the relations between the Ottoman State and the Greek Nation. Neither has it permanently improved the reputation or popularity of that higher clergy and that protected patriarchate. PART I OUTLINE OF EVIDENCE "I have never uttered a word to indicate the opinion that no Catholic student could, under any circumstances, attend without sin the lectures to be given in the newly established Queen's Colleges." Most Rev, Dr. Murray, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. •' The Young Ireland Party, especially the Catholics Dillon and Gavan Duffy, strongly supported the Queen's Colleges BiU." Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, in " My Life." " I beheve thirteen of the Bishops were anxious to make use of the Queen's Colleges. ... I fail to see any sub- stantial reason for the condemnation of the Queen's Colleges by the Bishops." Evidence of Dr. Starkie, Catholic Commissioner of National Education, before the University Commission. " There is a Party in the Church which wants apparently to enclose and seclude Catholics apart from the world in a sort of convent with very thick walls and very narrow cells. . . . On the contrary. Catholics ought to attend the National Universities, and seek to gain respect for their rehgion from their Protestant comrades by success in science and letters." Very Rev. Dr. A. EJirhard, Catholic Professor of Church History in the University of Vienna. CAN WE REPAIR THE RUIN OF EDUCATION IN IRELAND? OUTLINE OF EVIDENCE BY F. HUGH O'DONNELL, M.A., FOR THE IRISH UNIVERSITY EDUCATION COMMISSION SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS: EPISCOPAL CENSORSHIP AND UNIVERSITY FREEDOM. A SUGGESTED CONCILIATION Speaking as a Catholic layman, and Oueens My position: • • • 1 • '^r r New pro- University graduate, my position is this : If, for posais of reasons which will be examined, we cannot get a worsen^the Catholic University, I prefer a modification, and de- EducaUon^ velopment, as originally contemplated, of the Queen's University system ; rather than a mongrel arrange- ment, irresponsible as to its control, superficial as to its religious instruction, and ostensibly mixed as to 'ts teaching and attendance. The new proposal of the Irish Catholic Bishops seems to me to be destructive of the higher Catholic learning, as well as deficient in straightforwardness and candour ; and to be calculated to repel alike the upright scholarship of every denomination. In my life I have studied the working of Irish educational systems, through personal experience, THE IRISH FANAR Denomina- in treatises on the matter, during political activity as not to mean a Member of Parliament between 1874 and 1885, and c erica . through careful observation of the Educational Question on the Continent ; which is full of sugges- tions for the advocate of Educational Reforms in Ireland. I am still in favour of denominational education ; by which I do not mean clerical monopoly, but, on the contrary, the highest and best education by Catholic laymen and for Catholic laymen, with the control of faith aizd morals alone secured to Ecclesiastical authority. Clerical education or the education of students by priests, with or without a view to educating them to be priests, may, of course, be denominational ; but reason and experience attest that such education must be inadequate to form an educated laity in Ireland as well as on the Continent. I may at once say that I have been simply appalled at the manner in which the authorities of the Church in Ireland, after half a century of denunciation of mixed education, have now practically abandoned the ideals of Dr. Newman. I repeat that I still hold, under the requisite conditions, the desirability and feasibility of an Irish University, Catholic and National, employing the highest lay talents, super- vised in faith and morals alone by Ecclesiastical authority, and supported either by State endowment, equally with non-Catholic institutions, or, far prefer- ably, by the contributions of the Irish Catholic community. If we must, however, return to Mixed Education, Glaring episcopal contradic- tions. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 3 which always had many special merits, then a cruel Cmei injue- injustice has been done to the Queen's Colleges and Queen's the Queen's University. These institutions, as I ^°^^^ses. am personally aware, might have been easily adapted, without any essential alterations of their character, to supply all, and more than all, the denominational safe- guards which are now declared, after fifty years of contradictory policy, to be quite sufficient protection for the Catholic conscience. I was for seven years a student of Queen's College, Galway. I followed the faculty of Arts to the M. A. degree. I finished the three years curriculum of law, though not proceeding to a law degree. I took senior scholarships in mental philosophy and political economy, modern languages and literature, and iurisprudence and law. I took a gold medal at the M.A. degree. I know the Queen's Colleges impartiality thoroughly. I never met from any professor any- coneges! ^ thing but the most exquisite regard for my religious convictions, and had the sympathy of noble-hearted men and Christian gentlemen in every part of my colleofiate career. I never knew of a Catholic student having his faith injured or weakened by coming in contact with a Protestant professor or a Protestant comrade. When religious subjects were touched in any part of the lectures, it was in a spirit of generous appreciation and unsectarian Christianity. I have often failed to find in pupils of clerical schools anything approaching to the solidity of religious convictions common amone:; the Oueen's colles'ians. THE IRISH FANAR Religious I would ask the Commissioners to remember that Clerical clcvical sckools ou the Continent have completely abroad?°" fdHed, throughout entire kingdoms, to keep Catholic populations fro7n becoming infidel. The French Revolution was the work, with hardly an exception, of pupils of the clerical schools, which previous to that catastrophe had monopolised the education of all classes of the French nation. Voltaire and Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and Robespierre, were the pupils of clerical schools, and mostly of Jesuit schools. On the other side, the whole body of these weak or worthless nobles, unesteemed in prosperity and fugitives in danger, who first com- promised, and then abandoned, Church and State — all these incapable classes of pretentiousness and ignorance were, without any exception whatsoever, the pupils and the product of the clerical schools. Throughout Spain and Italy, clerical education has been accompanied by disasters to religion as well as by the general inferiority in science and letters of the Catholic laity. Alleged case A Strategic but irrelevant attempt has been of Louvain i r i t • i quite irreie- made by some of the most learned oi the Irish Catholic prelates to attribute to the Catholic or Clerical University of Louvain the maintenance or establishment of a Catholic Government in Belgium. I admire most highly the many merits of the University of Louvain, notwithstanding the ex- clusion of lay control from its constitution. But there is, as a matter of fact, no connection between the influence of this Clerical University and the THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 5 existence of a Conservative Government in Belgium. NotLouvain The Catholics came to power in the Belgian legis- but Property lature only fifteen or sixteen years ago, in conse- tions'inB^ei- quence of the force of Liberalism having been divided §'"'"• by the rise of Socialism and the terrifying effects of the Socialist programme upon every class of holders of property. The Conservative Constitution now existing in Belgium does not depend in any way whatsoever upon the influence of clerical education upon the masses. It simply depends upon giving a double vote to the holder of property as against the single vote possessed by the workman. There were only one and a half million electors in Belgium at the last election. Two and a half million votes were given for the different political parties. The surplus of one million votes above the total number of electors simply represents the extra weight attached to possession of property. It has nothing to do with the system of teaching in the University of Louvain. Not clerical control of a University but the handicapping of Socialism by property qualifi- cations has produced the victory of conservatism and order. I make this early reference to the Louvain University, because the Irish Bishops have thought fit, I do not see why, to direct especial attention to it. As a matter of fact, it has no bearing on their demand, because it has no State endowment and hardly a legal status, being in point of law barely a tolerated institution. I know that many observers of Belgian affairs attribute a good deal of the acute THE IRISH FANAR Louvain hostility betwceii Clericals or Catholics, and norl- and Catholic Catholics or Liberals, in Belgium, to the intolerant iYrhy°^"" ^^^ mediaeval character of the clerical spirit which pervades Louvain. It is all very well for venerable ecclesiastics to come before the University Commis- sion with glowing accounts of the compatibility ol modern science and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas ; but the effect on Belgian non-Catholics is not pleasant when Aquinas, like the Jesuits, can be quoted as laying down the bloody law that " Heretics are to be exterminated." Heretici^ qui in suo errore obstinati permanent, non modo excomvmnicationis sente7itia separandi, sed etiam sectdari jtidicio exter- minandi tradendi sunt. If Catholic Education in Belgium, and in Rome, made it clearer that these awful principles belong to a dead and ended age of European history, the result for Catholic popularity would be more than can be achieved by a dozen universities controlled by a hundred bishops. I may mention also that the total of 1900 or 2000 students attending Louvain would convey a very exaggerated impression as to the share of Louvain in the higher culture of the country, if it was not added that not one-eighth of the 2000 attend the Faculty of Arts — 240 students out of a population of 7,000,000. I beg the Commissioners to bear these com- parisons in mind. They are intimately connected with what has vet to be stated. Very little Higher Education at Louvain. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 7 I repeat that I remain what I have always been, what is a an adherent of a Lay University for Catholics and universu°^?^ not a Clerical University for Laymen ; of a real Catholic University, in which faith and morals alone would be under the supreme supervision of the Episcopate ; but in which science and letters would be the intangible domain of the authorities of science and letters ; of senators and professors, that is to say, chosen for their University eminence alone. If clerics were to be senators or professors in such a University^ it must be because they were great scholars and not because they ivere great ecclesiastics. The Hierarchy, as hierarchy, has the indubitable right to the Censura Fidei ac Morzmi ; it has no right whatever to the patronage of a single pro- fessorship of secular learning. The patronage, perhaps even more than the monopoly, of professorial clerical positions by ecclesiastics, as ecclesiastics, is not JJi'"ous°to only onerous to the dependent professors in a degree Cathoi which not much else can parallel ; it is the certain ruin of efficiency and the certain ruin of education. It has been the ruin of Catholicism through vast regions of the civilised world, as I shall demon- strate. No man admires more highly than I do the merits of the clergy within the clerical sphere. Even after the experience of their contradictions in Mixed Education, it remains certain that their legitimate control of faith and morals is for Catholics the siite qud non of a University system. Thirty years ago I outlined a form of ecclesiastical censorship in ruinous to icism, 8 THE IRISH FANAR A suggested a University, which combined hierarcliical control of ep°scopai f^ith and morals with the indispensable freedom of fn F^ahh^and teaching from clerical monopoly or interference. In Morals only, ^m uncompleted book on the Queen's Colleges, published in 1870, I proposed that the vexed question of control should be simply settled in the following way: ' " No professor shall be appointed to office, no professor shall be maintained in office, in face of a una7iimous protest^ on the ground of faith or morals, by the united Catholic Bishops of Irelatidr In this way, all ecclesiastical interference with secular learning, as secular learning, would remain excluded ; while a most equitable guarantee would be provided, both against professorial unfitness and episcopal injustice, by securing the unanimous decision of the Episcopate. The professor who could not secure even one bishop must be indefen- sible indeed ; while the dogmatic certainty that no bishop can contravene the clear decision of the Ecclesia Docens, would be a perfect guarantee to the Catholic clergy and Catholic conscience. I had, in fact, based my recommendation on a declaration of the Irish Episcopate themselves. This is contained in the correspondence of the Most Revs. Doctors Leahy and Derry with Lord Mayo in 1868, a declaration which has been curiously forgotten by many writers on the Irish University question. The following are the words of Doctors Leahy and Derry : THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 9 " As faith and morals may be injuriously affected either by the United heterodox teaching of professors, lecturers, or other officers, or by P5.°!^^* ^^ ° ^ . . ' -^ Bishops to their bad moral example, or by the mtroduction of bad books on be neces- the University programme, the very lowest power that could be sary. claimed for the bishops on the Senate with a view to the counter- action of such evils, would be that of an absolute veto on such books, and the first nomination of professors, as well as on their continuing to hold their offices after being adjudged by the Bishops on the Senate, to have grievously offended against faith and morals." It will be observed that the power here claimed relates solely to matters intimately connected with morality and doctrine. I merely suggest, as a necessary amendment, that for " the Bishops on the Senate " we should read ** the Bishops united in National Council or Synod." Clerical Finance and Catholic Education Such are my ideas for a Catholic University in Irish apathy Ireland, supposing such a University to be now n°omTna^- desirable. I must admit, however, that I had been [n°educri profoundly discouraged by the apathy or hostility ^'°"- of the Irish Catholic body at large, and the clergy in particular, towards the realisation of the denomi- national University, long before I was simply astounded by the recent manifestations of episcopal preference, equally enthusiastic and unimpressive, for a spurious sort of mixed education in Ireland. Let me mention some indications of hostility or apathy on the part of the Irish Catholic body lo THE IRISH FANAR No account towards the Catholic University idea. It is true rendered of , , , r i i lay money, that I and, Hiost uniortunately, every one, must be impeded upon this point by the want of accurate statistics. // is tmfortunately the case in Ireland that the laity suffer from a complete want of any systetn of accounts by which they can learn, either the moneys which they have contributed for religious purposes, or the objects upon which their contributions, even whe7i they total to millions of pounds, have been expended or are going to be expended. This is one of the innumerable evils of a Catholic population under a Protestant Government, whose natural ignorance and historical prejudice with regard to Catholic affairs combine to treat the Catholic laity as a quantitd ndgligeable at the unlimited disposal of a Catholic hierocracy. Under an Irish Catholic Government the Budget of Worship and Education would rigidly establish the exact account of receipts and expenses as between ecclesiastical trustees and lay contributors. In Ireland as it is, which has no lay Catholic administration, the student of religious statistics and finance must still content himself with concurrent deductions from symptoms and indica- tions. Thus we have the most Rev. Dr. O'Dwyer, of Limerick, bearing his testimony that during the first years, which still felt the impulsion of Dr. New- man's ideals, the Irish lay Catholics raised no less than ;!^2 50,000 for a Catholic University. How was this money expended ? The present Rector of the Catholic University College confesses that he THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION ii received "nothing but bare walls," and dilapidated Laity dis- premises, when, by the permission of the chief of the by^disap? Jesuits, he took over the Catholic University Colleofe Pf^rance of , J & their contri- from the Bishops in 1883. Had the disappearance butions. of their money without audit or explanation any- thing to do with the altered attitude of the h'ish people ? At all events, henceforth the Irish laity gave money, and were asked for money, for every- thing except a Catholic University. Even the annual collection at the church doors for its support was suddenly and definitely interrupted all over Ireland. There were church door collections for political leaders ; there was a collection of ;!^4o,ooo for Mr. Parnell ; there were no collections for the denominational ideal. On the other hand, the Commission can justly admire the munificence with which the contributions of the laity have been obtained, even quite lately, for the construction of private mansions and villas for their beloved clergy. Since the passing of the Land Act in 1881, hundreds Hugeout- of thousands of pounds have been devoted to clerical ciid^ai residences. This may be a most gratifying feature c°"^f°'^'s- in itself, though curiously concurrent with the vanishing enthusiasm for adenominational University. In the days of University ideals Cardinal Cullen was ^ content to rent a plain house in Eccles Street ; to- day an archiepiscopal villa at Drumcondra has been erected for some ;^ 15,000 or ;^2o,ooo. Meantime those wretched edifices of a Catholic University College at St. Stephen's Green, without libraries, without laboratories, without lecture halls, continued 12 THE IRISH FANAR Huge out- lay on Re- ligious Architec- ture. No death- bed endow- ments for Catholic University Education. to mock with their bare walls the primary exigencies of culture. Over the whole island it is the same story. Costly and imposing churches have been bestowed by dozens upon hamlets and villages. In the little town of Letterkenny there has just been consecrated a superb structure, loaded with Munich and Carrara art, at the cost of ;^6o,ooo ; in the petty town of Armagh, containing five or six thousand Catholics, a vast cathedral, for ;^ 100,000, crowns the summit of the most conspicuous hill procurable ; and only last year a giant fancy fair, under the personal presidency of his Eminence Cardinal Logue, produced, for its further adornment with stained grlass windows and Carrara marbles, the net and enormous return of ;^30,ooo, not one penny of which was allowed to be diverted to the missing requisites of Catholic University education. Penury, misery, and dilapi- dation continued to be the lot of the wretched edifices which still house what we are told is the burning aspiration and the crying need of the Catholic intelli- gence of Ireland. If, similarly, the Commissioners will consult the department of Wills and Bequests, what will they find ? For a quarter of a century how many millions of pounds, or pence, have dying Catholics, inspired and stimulated by their deathbed guides and con- solers ; reminded, we may be sure, of their highest duties by the priestly voices which will be the last that they will ever hear upon earth ; how many pence, how many farthings, have all these thousands of THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 13 wealthy or comfortable Catholics in Ireland ever Laity most thought of bequeathing to the Catholic University ? fxcept"^ Let the Commissioners inquire. Yet the Irish are educl^fon. a generous race, quickly responsive to the generous suggestions of their revered pastors. The centenary history of Maynooth, due to the learned pen of the Most Rev. Dr. Healy, will equally attest the copious generosity of the Irish laity, but not for the support of a Catholic University. Taking recent years alone, tlie years during which the miserable edifice in St. Stephen's Green was going bare and nude and in- sufficient, we find that in 1890 there was a magnifi- cent collegiate chapel consecrated at Maynooth forthe use of ecclesiastical students, in an institution which was intended and founded, we know, for the educa- tion of Laity as well as Clergy, but from which the Clergy hastened to exclude the Laity. The beautiful chapel was completed and dedicated at the cost of ^50,000. The interior is most richly fitted with 450 choir stalls of finely carved oak, with mosaic pavements of various porphyries, and altars of Carrara marble, with richly-stained glass, equally expensive and tasteless, and a splendid organ. Does not this indicate that the Irish Catholic body, though it be taught to contribute generously to many things, has long ceased to show any generosity towards Catholic University Education. I need not add, as it is known to the Commissioners, that out of the bulk sum of nearly ^400,000 placed by the vote of Parliament to the disposal of the trustees of May- nooth after the Irish Church Act, not ;^ 10,000, not 14 THE IRISH FANAR Absence of Clerical Legacies to Catholic Education. ^looo have found their way towards the very scantiest University requirements of the laity in Ireland. Clergymen, too, have made their wills during this period, and have left sometimes enormous accumulations even in poor and distressed parishes. I remember a parish priest in Galway who left ;^3 5,000. I remember a parish priest in a terribly poor parish at Dungarvan who left ;!^i 0,000. A priest in Meath left ;^35,ooo. A parish priest died the other day in a distressed district of Donegal who left ;^35, 000. Will the Commissioners inquire if any of these opulent and clerical testators re- membered the " bare walls " of the Catholic University? Spurious Character of Clerico-Educational Petitions Lip service to educa- tion. Of course, there have been innumerable demon- strations and meetings of the oratorico-religious and oratorico-patriotic order. You can have them by dozens to-morrow, where gentlemen like Messrs. Dillon, Redmond, and O'Brien, and similar authorities on University culture, will expatiate, as they have expatiated, to congenial audiences on Ireland's in- extinguishable love of learning, and England's most abominable perversity. The love of learning may be inextinguishable, but it is curiously imperceptible. Following the venerable Episcopate in England and, I trust, in Ireland, I am prepared to welcome THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 15 a genuine alternative of Mixed Education ; and I Queen's can show that the failure of the Queens Colleges^ so notfaluor' far as they failed, was most certainly not due to the n^ec^ted^with' denominational causes habitually alleged, but to other denomina- -^ ■^ ' ^ tionalism. reasons which strike at the very root of all higher culture in the country ; reasons which, I can easily explain, would be terribly aggravated by the adoption of the newest suggestions of the Ecclesiastical authorities. But first I must entreat and urge the Commis- sioners to remember, with regard to the suggestions of the clerical authorities on the subject of lay Catholic education, that, admirable and venerable as these authorities may be, they have never consulted, and they do not seem to be disposed to consult, the lay culture of this country upon the requisite realisa- tion and embodiment of the Catholic educational Deceptive demand. I do not mean, and I do not mind, the tion of strings of vague or magniloquent resolutions and ^^ ^ ^°"^* petitions, drawn up by some persons in authority and their confidants, and sent on a tour round the dioceses, in order to be swollen and multipled on the snowball system by the docility and the signa- tures of county councillors, provincial attorneys, dispensary doctors, and rural justices of the peace. The Bishops and their representatives on the University Commission affect warm indignation at any suggestion that " Petitions in favour of a Catholic University," &:c., may not mean what they are said to mean. But there are an immense number of Catholics who do not mean by a Catholic i6 THE IRISH FANAR Clerical prevention of Catholic Congresses ^^l Ireland. University a clerical preserve managed by an inter- national religious Order. And, of course, there are an immense number who do not know what a University means, but sign as they are told, just as they vote in the way they are told.* Why do not the leaders of the Catholic community, lay as well as clerical, meet in the proper organisation and deliberation of Catholic Congresses upon this all important subject ? There are annual Catholic Congresses of Clergy and Laity in other countries, in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in Italy. Year after year, for days together, these religious parlia- ments of the Catholic nations, lay and clerical, discuss all the most important interests of the Catholic community and, in the first place, the interests of education. No decision is taken without the common deliberation of all. How many Irish Catholic Congresses have approved or discussed any of the proposed solutions of the education problem ? Has thereeverbeen an Irish Catholic Congress } Not a single one. Yet his Holiness Pope Leo XIII. has expressly recommended and repeatedly blessed the habitual usage of national Catholic Congresses throughout * A fact carefully concealed from the ignorant signatories of these Irish petitions, and usually unknown to their ignorant authors, is the refusal of all the self-governing nations of the Catholic world to endow or establish Clerical Universities. The refusal in Ireland is misrepresented as an incident of Protestant injustice, when, in reality, the whole world over, it is a necessary precaution of Catholic statesmanship for the promotion of learning and the prevention of intolerance. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 17 the countries of Catholic Christendom without ex- catholic ception. Why are they not held in Ireland ? They ignored, would be a guide of the highest significance to this Commission. I have myself repeatedly addressed most venerable prelates of the Irish Catholic Church — to their manifest displeasure, I must add — upon the urgent expediency of complying with the Papal recommendations, and consulting the Irish Catholic Laity by the appointed method of an Irish Catholic Congress. But no Congress of the sort has been held, and no Congress will be held ; be- cause the Bishops, inheriting and utilising the traditions of departed penal days which prevented such assemblages, still prefer to ignore the Laity and to prevent their co-operation and co-deliberation. Meantime we have no Catholic administration of Catholic affairs. We have nothing but a Protestant Government, which is utterly unacquainted, and apparently anxious to remain unacquainted, with those lay Catholic rights which every lay Catholic Government would enforce and maintain. As a Catholic layman, I protest against the common rights of the Catholic community, rights as sacred in Ireland as in Germany or in Belgium, being persistently monopolised or confiscated, either by the clergy alone, or by the laity alone. In Ireland it is the Irish laity which is left without a consultation or voice, or an authoritative deliber- ation upon the most vital points of its moral and intellectual interests. As an Irish University graduate, moreover, I am entitled to ask — when were i8 THE IRISH FANAR Absence of the thousands of Irish Catholic graduates even lay hostility i j r • • ^ to Queen's asked lor an opinion r Colleges. jf^ indeed, mixed education is to be the future of the Irish laity, then I protest against the monstrous injustice which has been done to the Queen's Colleges ; those impartial institutions of secular learning, where Catholics and Protestants abode as friends and brothers ; where the kindliest and most painstaking professors performed their trust with faith and affection ; and where it is abso- lutely certain that, with such easy developments or survivals of the collegiate constitution as Catholic visitors and deans of residence, together with a doubling of certain Chairs, there could have been the most complete satisfaction of the most recent requirements of their episcopal opponents. So far as the Queens Colleges failed, they failed from causes which have not been clearly stated, or which have been carefully concealed. They certainly did not fail through the religious hostility of the Irish population. I attended, as I have said, Queen's College, Galway, for seven years, and went through its courses both in Arts and Law. I took the M.A. decree. I met hundreds of fellow students duringr these seven years from all parts of Ireland. I have never met any man or boy who was censured by the Church for his coming to Queen's College. Relatives of bishops and relatives of priests enjoyed on the same benches as myself the twin blessings of Queen's College education and the undiminished affection of their clerical connections. Large THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 19 numbers of youths belonging to Galway families who An almost desired University education, whole families, I may L'nafhema. say, of the most pious and most orthodox character, crowded to our halls. The semi -excommunication as advertised, the dogmatic affectation of the Synod of Thurles, was mainly a product for political expor- tation and parliamentary traffic in the foreign parts of Westminster. If the real causes of failure, which I am now about to relate, had not operated most disastrously on all Irish education whatsoever, it is certain that an almost imaginary anathema would not have affected the fortunes of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's University. Educational Obstacles to the Queen's Colleges So far as Galway College failed, the real fact is The real that its failure was the result not of one, but of many °''5*^*^^^^' detrimental causes. There are, notably at least, nine or ten, even a few of which were sufficient to pro- duce disaster ; and which, operating all together, make the comparative success achieved a matter of real astonishment. I. Even before the secondary schools had been diverted from their proper functions of preparing for the higher culture, and had been bribed by the Inter- mediate Education and Royal University methods into mimicking University functions through a system of cram ; the condition of secondary education, or rather non-education, was already most pernicious to 20 THE IRISH FANAR The clerical Queen's College, Galway. The so-called secondary schools. schools of the country were, as they actually stood, simply incapable of preparing students for a University College. In the first place, most of them were very ignorant clerical schools, officered by young priests waiting for parochial work, or by priests who had no gift for priestly work but who possessed a certain smattering of classics and mathe- matics. They had no scholastic ambition, no skilled and intelligent control ; and they were restrained neither by educated public criticism nor the competition of efficient rivals. Indeed, public criticism of any clerical abuse is almost impossible in Ireland. Our professors had simply to teach the boys, who came to us from these schools, almost everything from the merest rudiments. That was a terrible drag upon Queen's College, Galway. All our staff, from President Berwick down, complained of this state of things before the Queen's Colleges Commission. '&' •'The fact is," said President Berwick, "that if we rejected candidates who were not sufficiently prepared to enter on our curriculum, we should reject eight out of ten." Professor Bensbach, our professor of Modern Languages, said : " I have to give elementary lectures in the French class and also in the German class. Very few of the students who come up ever saw a French word in their lives." With regard to classical knowledge, President Rerwick stated that the students came from the so- THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 21 called secondary schools with nothing that could be Absence oi called classical knowledge. educatkm. " Knowing nothing about classics in fact. The students have to begin with the rudiments, and the professors are compelled to be elementary teachers to the large majority of the students ; almost every professor is embarrassed with pupils of every degree of attainment." Professor Darcy Thompson, our professor of Greek, wrote a book in which he complained that expecting to be a professor when called to a Queen's University Chair, he found himself, in fact, nothing but a schoolmaster. " During the last three years," he said, '* I have had in the management of an Alpha Beta class one fourth part of my profes- sorial duties." In a word, the miserable secondary schools of the country forced us more and more into the position of a secondary school ourselves. It would have been better, far better, for our chances as a University institution if we had refused to do the work of elementary schoolmasters, but in that case we should have had hardly any students whatever. 2. In addition, the chance of improvement of the secondary schools of Ireland had been so injuriously affected by one specially aggravating misfortune, for which they were quite without responsibility, that it had become almost hopeless and desperate. This misfortune was the establishment of the National School system upon the lines which were adopted by the English Government without any regard to the promotion of secondary education. To quote a 22 THE IRISH FANAR National schools very in- jurious. very competent critic of those early days, Mr. George Whitley Abraham, in the Irish Quarterly Review . " There can be no doubt," he writes, " that when the National Schools first came to be established, there existed throughout Ireland a number of schools in which a kind of secondary educa- tion could be had at small expense. The Eton Latin grammar, Lord Chesterfield's Letters and Cicero's Offices, were learnt under the same ferula, and not always ill. The establishment of the National Schools caused the almost total disappearance of schools such as we have mentioned, and nothing was done or thought of to provide a substitute." The Queen's Colleges Commission also reported in favour of the much wider extension of the means of education " which, it*is almost universally stated, have been enormously diminished by the schools under the National Board." The Rev. Dr. Cooke, dean of residences of the Presbyterian Church, bears the same testimony. ** I beg leave to state," he deposed, " that we had considerable convenietice in obtaining classical instruction anterior to the estab- lishment of the National Boards and that ever since its being established, and its becoming the great educator of the country, classical schools have fallen away. The former classical schools were seldom purely classical schools, but classical, English, and mercantile schools, and they disappeared when the National Schools began to obtain a footing in the country. To this cause is to be mainly attributed the great falling away in the number of classical schools first, and then in the number of students who enter the Queen's Colleges, or any other college." Sir Robert Caine, the President of the Cork Queen's College, gave the same testimony. Our THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 23 own President, Mr. Berv/ick, had the same story to undermin- ^. ing classical tell '. education. " The progress of the National System of education," he said in reply to Sir T. N. Reddington, " has drawn away the pupils who formerly supported what were called classical schools." In fact, the sapient legislation of the British Government, ever solicitous for Ireland's progress, had sedulously created a sort of barren desert and then planted the Queen's Colleges in the midst of it. Though themselves incapable of producing scholars fit for college, the National Schools, supported by State endowments, could hinder private institutions from producing them. Having waited, it seems, until the existing secondary education of the country had been killed by the National School system, the British Government then founded the Queen's Colleges. Nothing could be more ingenious or more characteristic than the process by which the English Government sought to ensure the ruin of its own colleges. It was, in fact, as if it had been resolved to dry up the fountains and streams before building the aqueduct. 3. The same worthless secondary schools, taught by clerical smatterers, which lowered our junior courses, had the most disastrous effects also on our Engineering Faculty and on every effort to develop Technical Education. The young priests from Maynooth who taught in the diocesan institutions, and who had only a smattering of classics and mathematics, had no smattering whatever of any- thing else. As a necessary consequence, their 24 THE IRISH FANAR Clerical iinfortunate pupils could receive no instruction to technical whatever, even the most elementary, outside of the tmc Iduca- limited quasi-literary attainments of their incompetent tion. teachers ; and technical education and scientific education in Queen's College, Galway, as well as throughout the whole of Ireland, were practically paralysed by the predominance of these untaught, unteachable academies which continued to be the only contribution of the Episcopate to the national instruction. To reinforce the incompetent clerical staff by an importation of qualified laymen was, of course, impossible in face of the next evil with which I have to deal. The Clerical Boycott of Lay Learning A root 4- This other cause, in effect, a cause of the most difficult tremendous and sinister maleficence, a cause which tends to increase instead of diminishing, a cause which goes down to the very root of the difficulties oj lay learning in Ireland, was also operating with deadly effect against the Arts Faculty of Queen's College, Galway. I refer to the practical Boycott of the Lay Graduate, of the lay man of letters or science, which has been enforced by the Clerical Monopoly of the Teaching Profession, by the diocesan schools, and by the innummerable insti- tutions of the Teaching Congregations throughout Ireland. All that immense field of culture, all those livelihoods, which the schoolmasterships a7id professor- THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 25 ships of the nation afford to educated lay77ien in The Teach- France, and Germany, and Engla^rd, were, as they T^^oT still are, almost her^netically closed and barred against ^^2l\^^x la - the Catholic Laity of Ireland. The Catholic Schools '"^"• of Ireland are either those wretched diocesan abor- tions, worked by priests with a smattering of letters, or they are schools of teaching Congregations supplying their own teaching stafT, and, except in the rarest cases, boycotting the educated laity. The few places of temporary ushers or assistants which these institutions offer to lay graduates are most subordinate, poorly paid, and most precarious. All the higher places in these schools are the reserve and the privilege of the priestly teachers themselves. The remuneration of the lay assistant, especially if a Catholic, is wretched. It is not calculated to support even a celibate except in penury. There is no hope of a pension after the longest service. When a Jesuit Rector can boast that his eight teaching priests only cost him ;^5o a piece and a year, why pay ;^ 1 50 to a layman ? The schools of teaching Congre- gations, which have made almost a clean sweep of the lay prof essoriate and the higher lay learning through- out the Catholic nations of the Continent, form at least as impregnable a bar in Ireland against the foundation and development of a great class of scho- lastic laymen. The secondary schools in England afford employment to some eight thousand lay graduates, men and women, which is, of course, an immense stimulus to the pursuitof University learning by English laymen and laywomen, belongmg to the 26 THE IRISH FANAR Catholic classes who cannot afford to pursue the study of forbidden letters and science as a luxury of wealth or a refine- ■ ment of indolence. The Commissioners cannot look too closely into this serious cause of the destruction of the educated laity in Catholic countries. As I wrote recently in a series of articles in a Catholic paper on the expulsion of the French Congrega- tions : *' The French Catholic Laity have been deprived of the possi- bility of the higher learning by the unbroken monopoly of the teaching Congregations. Between the anti-Catholic school system on the one side and the system of the teaching Congregations on the other, the French layman who sought University distinction was between the upper and the nether millstone. Against the anti-Catholic enemy he might have succeeded, against the clerical friend he became simply extinct." The teaching Congregations, whose motto is cheapness, and not always goodness, who are pro- tected from free criticism and outspoken censure by their clerical character, and who naturally employ their own teaching staff, tend everywhere to annihilate the scholastic and professorial class in Catholic populations. The layman has hardly any chance of living by his brains in a Catholic land. The cheap clerical competition and the universal clerical boycott are starving out of existence, everywhere, all lay culture which has not a big balance at its bankers. How was a Queen's College Artsman to live in Ireland? There was no market whatever for his brains. The schools and colleges, which should be the natural resource of hundreds of gifted THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION ^ I men, were shut against him. It is not only very Depressing much the same state of affairs in Ireland to-day, clerical im- but it threatens to become worse, concurrently with frimlb?oad the expulsion and immigration of the teaching Congregations from the Catholic countries of the Continent. I understand that there are now hun- dreds of Jesuits, at least, in England alone. The conventual and monastic teachers are spreading more and more in Ireland, branching out more and more completely all over the country, living more and more on its intellectual resources, and everywhere exercising the most depressing influence upon the creation of a Catholic learned class. They are priests, but they do not perform priestly functions, except very partially. They prefer to flourish by doing the work of that learned laity, which is so indispensable to Ireland, and out of which they simply crush every possibility of existence. By this grave state of affairs the Faculty of Arts of Queen's College, Galway, had and has to suffer ; the gravest possible state of affairs, indeed, the growing obstacle to a livelihood for the learned layman. Other Obstacles 5. As if these causes of disaster were insufficient the governmental administration of the Queen's College took care to provide additional discourage- ment. Our Catholic graduates had, of course, little chance of masterships and professorships in Protes- 28 THE IRISH FANAR Want of tant schools and colleges. Trinity College, Dublin, held the field. But that was not enough. The British Government took good care not to appoint us to our own professorships. It was alleged that we had not training enough. No fellowships had, in fact, been attached to our University, in which we could study and mature for the chance of a professorship. Boycotted as laymen by the clerical college, boycotted as Catholics by the Protestant college, ignored or boycotted by the Government which dominated our own University, almost every avenue of distinction was closed against us. And yet the Irish Catholic Bishops keep saying that it was nothing but the conscientious objections of the nation to Mixed Education which was opposing our success ! We were certainly in a very pretty mess all round, but the conscientiotts objection to Mixed Education had little to say to it. That conscientious objection only existed for episcopal proclamations and parliamentary consumption. Decay of 6. It is not to be forgotten, also, that the local popu a 1 . j.gj,j.yj(-jj^g capacity for the attendance on our classes and the entrance to our matriculation necessarily fell off as Galway, and the population of Galway district, fell off. There are hardly more than half the people in and around Galway now who were there when Queen's College, Galway, opened its doors. 7. The transformation of the conditions of suc- cessful examination for the Indian Civil Sei^uice has also come to deepest otir disaster. Down to twenty THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 29 years ago the Indian Civil Service exarninations Loss of were the grand stand-by of our Faculty of Arts ; s"rilce!^' and numbers of the most distinguished men in the Indian administration — the Wests, the O'Kinnealys the MacDonnells, the Macaulays, &c. — came from Queen's College, Galway. But twenty years ago the Government, alarmed at the invasion of the Celtic fringe, undertook to improve the Examining Board of the Indian Civil Service on the lines of the English Universities. English professors were appointed to examine their own pupils in their own subjects ; and both Irish and Scotch competition vanished as by black magic. It was a change which has its enthusiastic admirers among many persons of high reputation and attainments, but it was a change that dealt Queen's College, Galway, a crushing and deadly blow. 8. Galway College might have been the centre of Priests kiii a great, erudite, and flourishing school for the study ijJIgJand of the Celtic languasfes. We migrht have had a ^"^j'. o <=> o studies. great Irish class. We had a College Professor of Celtic, a very able man, whom I knew, Professor O'Beirne Crowe. But the priests had become too genteel to tolerate the Irish language, which Maynooth had never loved to teach. The Irish-speaking fathers and mothers round Galway were following the fashion by marking on a tally-stick every time their children spoke an Irish word, and whipped them for it. The patriotic clergy illustrated the nationalism of self-government agitations by doing their best to kill the Irish language. Often and often have I 30 THE IRISH FANAR Deplorable effects on Irish- speaking population. See Notes pages 176 to 186. been at Mass in the West of Ireland, and have seen the Irish-speaking congregation, while the priest was teaching them religion and morality in the unknown English of Maynooth, marking every time he lifted his voice, with Irishexclamationsof assent or prayer, just to show with Irish politeness that they were following him exactly. The Mass was Latin, and the sermon was English, and the congregation only understood Irish. That was a mixed education with a vengeance they were getting, but less com- mendable, I think, than in the Queen's College, Galway. At any rate, the priests killed our College Professorship of the Irish language. It was too vulgar for Maynooth. That unholy action of the Irish Catholic Clergy in withdrawing, since genera- tions back, all moral and religious instruction from their Irish-speaking flocks, except in an unknown medium, has had terrible effects, not only in Ireland but in all the lands of Irish exile. With Irish taken from us; with the India Civil Service taken from us ; with the clerical monopoly boycotting lay graduates and preventing the founda- tion or growth of lay Catholic schools ; with the Government boycotting us from our own professor- ships ; with technical education killed throughout the country by the clerical monopolists and smatterers ; with the local as well as the general population declining ; where on earth was Galway to get a flourishing Faculty of Arts ? And in recent times our ancient benefactor and sapient legislator, the British Government, has THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 31 continued to keep knocking us down — with its Abolition Intermediate Bribery System, that bribed the unive"shy secondary schools of Ireland to be a dishonest "n"u"rious!'^ competing industry for the cramming of Strasbourg geese; and with its Royal I\ on- University for the culmination of cram and for the sectarianising of competition. The despotic abolition of the Queen's University was flagrant injustice to Mixed Educa- tion, was flagrant dishonesty to thousands of graduates who had obtained the Queen's University degree. The establishment of the Royal Univer- sity, crowning the chaos and cupidity of the Intermediate Education Act, does not belong to the history of education but to the history of clerico- political intrigue. Education Depressed by Degraded Politics It would be a serious error not to add as a late Education and growing cause of University failure in Galway, by^p^oiltfct as well as throughout Ireland, the deepening declension and fall of political qualifications in Ireland. Never high, they have become non- existent. The Hoix.e Rule of Isaac Butt, which sought to combine all classes of the nation. Trinity dons and broad-acred landlords, has sunk to an agrarian conspiracy of Jacobins ; who, from bishops to bandsmen, care not a dump for the culture of a candidate, parliamentary, provincial, or municipal. So long as you promise to dis-rent 32 THE IRISH FANAR Mr. John all the cstatcs in the barony so much the better MUiennium. for your popularity, if you are only that engaging child of nature — an able-bodied turf-cutter. So long as you point to the coming day, like Mr, Dillon,* when every lord of three acres and a cow will have his pig on one side of him and his professor on the other, what further proof do you need that you have solved the popular problem of Irish Education ? What patriotic attorney, or electioneering Galen of a dispensary, dreams of taking an Arts degree ? Has not the Most Rev. Dr. O'Dwyer declared that a searching examination * An amusing illustration of the University ideals popular on electioneering platforms in Ireland is afforded by an extract from a speech by Mr. John Dillon, M.P., one of the most characteristic students of Catholic University College as well as a leader of the United Irish League, which is quoted by Dr. Starkie, one of the University Commissioners, in his examination of the Catholic Bishop of Limerick. " Dr. Starkie. — I have a passage from a speech Mr. John Dillon delivered a couple of years ago in Parliament. He gives his own ideas of a University system, and I shall be glad to know whether your lordship agrees with it or not. He says, ' We want a system like that of Germany, Scotland, and Wales ' — I find that those who know very little about University questions always speak about Germany — * a system ivhich will bring home University education and training to the door of the poorest labourer in Ireland, a University in which the children of the artisans and labourers of Ireland will sit side by side with the sons of the most wealthy, without any distinction, save that which God made when he created one with more brains than another.' That is not very like a Scotch University, is it ? " "The Bishop of Limerick.— Islo; that is rhetoric" THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 33 in the alphabet might gravel the worshipful fathers ignorance of the city of Limerick? The Local Government and elected, elections in county and town exhibit, with nauseous monotony, one wide welter of ignorance and faction hardly relieved by sordid jobbery and sordid nepotism If the venerable Bishops will only obtain from the United Irish League, rather than from the British Parliament, the enforcement of a modest University qualification for all public professions, functions, and situations, there might well be a remarkable augmentation in the University attend- ance throughout Ireland. So long as the highest education and the ripest culture are of less importance in every office in the gift of the people than the patronage of a faction or the favour of a clergyman so long will the love of learning remain a rhetorical commonplace. For my own part, I confess that, during thirty years of close observation of my countrymen, I have clearly recognised the steady and perpetual decline in the popularity of learning, from a point which was never high to a point which may now be reasonably sought in temperatures below zero. Ireland may have been the Insula Doctorum ; but that was in times before the Danes. Penny Dread- fuls and the Leaguer's Journal indicate the present averao-e of popular enlightenment and popular aspiradons. The episcopal outcry against Mixed Education, by which for a time I. too, was mystified, has been simply the most deplorable of mystifications. To raise and restore the level of 34 THE IRISH FANAR United University life, to heal the wounds of sectarian necessLy poHtics and political sectarianism, to teach Irishmen concord°"^^ to be United and by brotherhood to be strong ; even to approach, distantly to approach, those ideals, we must return to Mixed Education, and amend it, and complete it. It is characteristic of the disloyalty with which the education question is sometimes discussed in Ireland, that the great and generous advances of Trinity College, Dublin, have been kept from the judgment of the majority of Irish Catholics. The disposition of the Fellows to accept the principle of special provision for Catholic instruction is quite unknown to most Irishmen. For my own part, I should be sorry to weaken the Protestant denominationalism of Trinity College ; but, now that every University in England admits Catholics, there is a noble field for unsectarian patriotism betore the University of Dublin. Casuistic Neutrality and Jesuit Policy If now we examine in detail the new propositions of the Episcopal Bench, it is only too easy to demonstrate that these new propositions, whether grafted on the Non-University which exists, or concentrated in a Catholic University which is to be more clerical than Catholic, would equally destroy the hope of lay Catholic learning, would perpetuate and aggravate the clerical boycott of the THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 35 lay professoriate, would divide unhappy Ireland still Proposed more disastrously into sectarian camps, and would handedu-" most seriously compromise the good repute of Irish ^^^^°"- Catholicism itself by an expedient in educational sleight-of-hand, certain to fail both as sleight-of-hand and as education. Let me say at once that I cannot admire the sort of shady casuistry which can recommend a type of University college, purporting to be mixed, while practically denominational ; or pretending to Catholics to be really denominational, while Protestants are assured that it is scrupulously neutral in a clerical atmosphere. I avow that I do not comprehend this finesse, and still less can I respect it. Neither can I recognise the slightest excuse for it in the actual constitution of Trinity College, Dublin. That institution is a historical development, which may not correspond with my ideal, but which is perfectly logical and perfectly fair. It may become non- sectarian as to its composition, but it is historically Protestant. It has grown or descended to its present condition. Its endowments are as much its private property as. any other grant of Catholic lands to Protestant undertakers centuries old. So long as Trinity College satisfies its Protestant clients, it must be intangible. Except by their free consent tt must be as intangible as the estate of the Duke of Aberco7^n or the estate of the Duke of Devonshire. But to compass a State Endowment of Denomi- nationalism by legislative enactment in the present day, on the ostentatious pretext of neutrality while 36 THE IRISH FANAR Deception or really maintaining the design of a Clerical Academy, tiSng.^or would be almost equally unflattering to the intelli- ^°^^' gence of England and to the honesty of Ireland. Of that there could not be room even for a philosophic doubt. It would damn the Catholic name, and not prevent the Protestant appreciation. It is evident that it has never been the suggestion of laymen accustomed to think with courage and to act with freedom. It is simply impossible, and there must be an end of it. From the point of view of Catholics alone, it is to be observed that the supreme justification of a Catholic University is ^0 make and to keep Catholic whatever student may enter it. The Catholic University, whose Catholicism would be so uncoloured as to be imperceptible to Protestants, would be a fraud upon the Catholic world. If its professions of neu- trality were meant to entrap unwary Protestants, it would be both a deceptive and a proselytising institution. This sort of hybrid education, which seems to aim at almost anything but what it ought to desire, is only too widely practised already, and with too detrimental results, throughout the Catholic world. The Jesuit Academies have been notojrious vehicles of this injurious ambiguity. In order to assemble large numbers of students under the same clerical discipline, all sorts of compromises have been permitted upon almost every point except the supremacy of the directing fathers. So long as the Jesuit was the father director of the pupil, it seemed Notorious ambiguity of Jesuit education. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 37 to be of less consequence what was taught in the super-^ ^^^ class. In an atmosphere of pious practices and direction, perpetual supervision it was believed that more solid foundations of religious conviction might safely be dispensed with. Students were brought up devoutly, as it was called ; but had learned to know little more of the moral, intellectual, and literary civilisation of the Christian Church than if they had never left the rural manors of the nobles of Versailles or Vienna. The great thing was that they should learn never to dispense with the Jesuit director. In order to secure a similar control by clerical rulers, the designers of a Catholic University College in Dublin are now quite ready to sacrifice distinctively Catholic education. They will welcome Protestants, they will welcome Dissenters of all kinds. They only reserve to themselves the composition of the •'atmosphere" which Protestant, and Dissenter, and Catholic are to inhale. They are prepared to accept fees from the very poles of conviction. This hermaphrodite strategy is not confined to Ireland or to Europe. I remember that the Most Rev. Archbishop Goethals, of Calcutta, a man of rare Not faith ability and zeal, universally esteemed by Protestants and Catholics in India, found it necessary to inflict most severe censure upon a religious teaching congregation at Darjiling, which prided itself upon the dexterity with which it filled its class-rooms with paying pupils from Catholic and Protestant families alike. Their education, they represented in an alluring prospectus, was totally devoid of matter of 38 THE IRISH FANAR A protest offence to any denomination. "You must under- Archbishop. Stand," Said the Most Rev. Dr. Goethals to the superiors of the community, " that the object of your Order is to educate CathoHc children according to the principles of the Catholic Church, and not to fill your purse by attracting Protestants on the principles of no Church at all." Similar reproofs have been issued, and might be multipHed ten-fold, with refer- ence to all kinds of teaching Congregations on the Contintnt, who by the combined attractions of cheapness and unsectarianism seek to entice Protes- tant boys and girls to nominally Catholic institu- tions, with the result that both Catholic and Protes- tant pupils are largely brought up without any well-grounded convictions whatever. The Bat ^ From all I can learn of its operations, as it actually Green. exists, the administration of that establishment of quasi Mixed Education, which is called the Catholic University College, appears to be matter of legitimate speculation. Is it a good college for Catholics and a bad one for Protestants ? Is it bad for Catholics, but suited for Protestants ? Is it impartially injurious to both ? We seem to enter upon distinctions upon distinctions, which might add new laurels to the Doctor Subtilis. Is it honestly a college for Mixed Education ? Then what has become of all those Maynooth Resolutions ? Does the Catholic Uni- versity College desire to emulate the persuasive ambiguity celebrated in fable : " Look at my wings, I am Protestant ; look at my robe and my means of mastication, I am Jesuit." But is this bat-like THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 39 combination a real recommendation to national confidence ? The Legacy of Loyola If we pass from such super-etherealised adroitness Despotic to the vulgar ground of sordid but indispensable ^hronism finance, we arrive at a state of affairs almost more extraordinary than even the disquisition, when is Mixed Education not Mixed Education ? We find that this establishment of lay Catholic education, once endowed by the Irish Laity with at least ^250,000, has been handed over by the Bishops, without any consultation of the Laity, to the absolute and unlimited dictatorship of the General of the Jesuits. I may mention parenthetically that I admire the Jesuits in almost every capacity except as school- masters, as casuists, as autocrats, and as politicians. They produced great scholars, great missionaries, very often great saints, and almost always great gentlemen. Unfortunately for three centuries of Catholicism, they are the very incarnation of the suppression of Individualism in an age when Faith must be individual in order that Adhesion may be general. Eminent though the virtues and talents of Jesuits, that only deepens the significance of the fact that the fundamental Constitution of the Order is an anachronism, and an injurious anachronism. The 40 THE IRISH FANAR The drill- elder monasticisms of the Church are Christian General. RepubHcs, govemcd by election, ruled by chiefs soon to be succeeded by other chiefs. The Jesuit Society is an absolute autocracy. Its General is absolute monarch for life. The obedience of his subjects is limited by no episcopal jurisdiction, by no patriotic ties, by no distance, and by no difficulty. Its saintly Founder was a Spanish hidalgo, who modelled his spiritual kingdom on the exact model of the absolutism of his native land under a Ferdinand or a Philip. Saving evident sin alone, there are no bounds to the obedience of the Jesuit Father. He glories in his sacred serfdom. His trained and disciplined devotion, the simultaneous co-operation of comrades as devoted and as obedient as he, make him a force which has often overpowered the less mechanical organisation of the other Congregations of the Church. He is deeply pious. He is magnificently zealous. But a captain of Ferdinand of Aragon, or a courtier of Philip the Second, could as easily comprehend a free constitution as the immutable followers of the holy hidalgo of Loyola can adapt their absolutist system to the upbringing of generations of self-governing men. They won by discipline, or they carried by assault, the supreme monopoly of education in every Catholic country ; and in every Catholic country the reaction from that devout drill-yard marshalled against the Church one half of the scholars of the Jesuits, while the archaic exercises of the other half lacked the inspiration and the initiative to defend it. Individual Jesuits may adorn any University ; but a THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 41 Catholic University committed to the autocracy of Fatal to . . • . . liberty. that survival of Old Castille is a Catholic University devoid of modern significance. The Jesuit Constitu- tion cannot contain the New Liberty. The old bottles cannot hold the new wine. The personal merits of the Jesuit Fathers cannot compensate the incivism of their organisation. Why should Christi- anity, that enters into the hearts of nations, require a corps of pious pretorians, more than cosmopolitan in their detachment from love of country, more than Caesarian in their prostration before their mysterious autocrat ? The General of the Jesuits is, indeed, the faithful subject of the Roman Pontiff, and owes to him, and to him alone, account and obedience for every member of the Jesuit Order. But the life of a Pope is singularly busy, and the detailed examina- tion of the actions of 20,000 Jesuits might require a special Providence exceeding Infallibility. Jesuitism is an autocracy, and an international autocracy, which readily accounts for its universal failure to conciliate the affection and confidence of patriots and peoples. A National University must quickly cease to be national in such hands. The Jesuit has chosen to be the Wandering Jew of Catholicism. He has the liberty of transit, and sometimes of sojourn ; but disdaining the limitations of citizenship, he cannot possess the sentiments or the rights of a citizen. He has so far separated religion from humanity, that humanity has often, and may often, run the risk of being separated from reliorion. 42 THE IRISH FANAR Public funds and Jesuit autocracy. Bul to return to the condition of this University College under the autocracy of the General of the Jesuits. It is the Rule of the Jesuit Order, more infrangible than the Laws of the Medes and Persians, that in a Jesuit establishment, once authorised by Episcopal authority, there can be no interference with the administration of the Jesuits. This is assuredly a regulation passing strange, to say no more for the moment, for an institution supported by public money. We know enough already to know that this public money includes fifteen Fellow- ships, totalling to the amount of ;!^6ooo a year ; and these ^6000 a year are at the absolute disposal of the General of the Jesuits through his local repre- sentative ; without any Irish laymen, of course, even the most Catholic, being permitted the very slightest and smallest opportunity of investigation. A certain number of these Fellowships go directly to some learned Jesuits who, most compassionately and obediently, abandon them to the administration of the Colleofe. Does Catholic Ireland care so little for the Catholic University as to be driven to this alms-taking from a few poor priests ? The remainder goes to various non- Jesuit employees of the Jesuits, styled Professors, during the absolute good pleasure, controlled by nothing but the iron law of his Order, of the learned and reverend representative of the General of the Jesuits. By an extraordinary con- nection between this remarkable College and the Royal University, "the Fellowship must cease whenever the Fellow's professorship in a recognised THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 43 College ceases " ; and the Jesuit Autocrat can by his is it worthy own authority dismiss every one of the professors of Republic of this " recognised College," without Board of Visitors ^"^''^^ or Court of Appeal ! The professorship ceasing, the Fellowship is forfeited and falls to the next appoint- ment of the same Monastic Dictator. It is really not necessary to impugn in any way the personal discretion of the respected Rector of this strange College, but is this arrangement worthy of the Republic of Letters? Is it tolerable to any self-respecting scholastic community ? Your £6000 a year of public funds, together with the result of any subscriptions obtainable from a laity, welcome to give but forbidden to inquire, remain at the absolute and uncontrolled disposal of a single reverend functionary, who can render no account to anybody but the head of his own Conventual Order ! And you have fifteen University Fellows, created under a public Act of Parliament, who have no more right of tenure in those public endowments than any domestic hired by the month ! Surely this ought to be incredible. A Baser Intolerance The Bishops tell us that they were forced to make this astonishing bargain with the Jesuit Order, " because there was nothing but bare walls at the Catholic University College " when the Jesuits con- sented to undertake its direction. At that very 44 THE IRISH FANAR Clerical moment the Bishops were building those additional University and palatial edifices at Maynooth, in which the Laity s arva ion. gj^Qjjj^^ have had as much right as the Clergy. They were adding a huge quadrangle of residences to the existing accommodation at Maynooth. They were building innumerable other magnificent edifices even in country villages. Where had sped the ;^2 50,000 which had been subscribed by the Laity, especially for the Catholic University? "Nothing was stand- ing but bare walls." This destitution had continued how long ? And the Bishops tell us that their hearts were just bleeding for the wants of lay Catholic education all the time I See Notes, Did the Bishops ever call a National Catholic pages 115 to,^ ., i/^ii-- •-vT-^'i 121. Congress to consider the Catholic situation r Did thev ever call a Conoress of the educated Catholic Laity and graduates to constitute a Senate and Governing Body of the University ? They pre- ferred to hand over, without consultation or authority, at least ;^6ooo a year of Public Fellowships to the autocracy of an estimable clergyman, who has no accounts to render to anybody except to the con- ventual monarch of his Religious Order. Will the Bishops for ever treat the confidence of the Irish Laity as a mere blank cheque, to be filled in, at clerical discretion, without authority or consultation, for any purpose and to any extent whatsoever ? What is this but the clerical dictation and the lay servility, even in matters of administration and finance, even in non-dogmatic affairs and concerns, which are made a reproach against us bynon-Catholic, THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 45 and a good deal of Catholic, opinion throughout the irresponsi- world? How can any Parliament, Catholic or extrava- Protestant, endow the education under an Episcopate ^^^^^' which keeps no accounts or renders none ; which multiplies mansions for the Clergy and keeps bare walls for lay education ; which leaves every labora- tory and library and prerequisite of instruction un- provided or in ruin, even while squandering: hun- See Notes, *■ . pages 162 to dreds of thousands of pounds for stained glass, and 167. mosaic pavements, and Carrara statuary; which even engages and dismisses the learned professors and fellows of a great public trust, with somewhat less dignity than the menial servants of a private proprietor ? I observe that the Bishops are now demanding a special weight and consideration on the governing board of the State establishment for which they are agitating on this ground, a ground which shows amazing self-possession at least, " that they were the Founders of the Catholic University." If it was permissible to describe them as the Founderers, the unfaithful claim would be appropriate, if something less than ^*^^^'^'^^' cogent. They were the Trustees. It was the Irish nation who, gathered round the great name of Newman, founded the Catholic University, who contributed money towards it by hundreds of thousands of pounds, and who saw Newman driven back to England, and all their generous donations ending in the "bare walls," that were alienated to an International Religious Order by stewards who never gave an account of their stewardship. Add 46 THE IRISH FANAR Waste and selfishness. New scheme : clerical rule and clerical en- dowment. the foundering of the CathoHc University to the exdusion of the laity from the Maynooth Endow- ments, and a picture of waste and selfishness is pretty well complete. Of course, too, in the rest of the composition of the governing board according to the Episcopal Ideal, there are further measures for perfecting the clerical annexation of the expected endowment. Thus, there are also to be representatives of the •' Constituent Colleges." That means Maynooth, Clongowes.and Co. Thus, too, in superaddition, there are to be representatives of " Secondary Preparatory Schools." That means the whole of the smaller fry of the Diocesan and Conventual Academies, which complete the ousting and eviction of lay learning from the Public Instruction of the country. But in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird ; and even another avalanche of spontaneous petitions, headed by the well-known figures of the tame lay- men, and filled by the cultured cohorts of the United Irish League, will fail to secure for Ireland that peculiar institution, a Clerical University, which no Catholic Empire or Kingdom will ever again consent to establish and endow. If the Commissioners will look into it, they will see that this Scheme of Educational Mixture is, certainly above all things, to be an additional endoivment of the generous Clergy who monopolised for a century the common endowments of Maynooth; and who, even in sight of the extremest penury of lay Catholic instruction, grudged the price of a carved oak choir THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 47 stall towards the most indispensable furniture of that Ousting the Catholic University, for which the Laity subscribed ^^*'^' at least ^250,000, and regarding which the treasurers never deigned to account for a single penny. Yes, the New Scheme promises that "clerical students in hundreds " are to come to the classes and endow- ments of the future University, while the same Clergy jealously guard for themselves the moneyed monopoly of Maynooth. The severe verdict of history can^iot fail to condemn the entire policy of the Irish Catholic Bishops towards the crying wants of the Irish Catholic Laity for more than a hundred years. Talk of Protestant intolerance ! Here is a baser sort of intolerance. A couple of millions of pounds sterling have been received during the century by the Irish Bishops from the coffer^s of the State alone for the establishment and main- tenance of that Maynooth institution, to which, under the generous gift of the Protestant Parlia- ment of Ireland, access should have been as open to the lay student as to the clerical. There is no reason in nature or grace why Catholic professors of philosophy, and classics, and mathematics, and languages, and literatures might not, and should not, address themselves in common to lay and to clerical students. In that Catholic University of Laval, in Canada, the whole institution grew up around an original seminary for clerical students alone, which the true Catholicity of the Canadian Bishops opened freely to lay pupils as well ; and, in consequence, the subsequent recognition by the 48 THE IRISH FANAR Ousting the State could benefit alike students from the Laity and students from the Clergy. There could even have been, from the pecuniary standpoint, an immense economy from the maintenance of such a Catholic college in Ireland. All those common subjects which should enter equally into lay and clerical education, had in any case to be provided in order to supply the requirements of clerical instruction. It only remained to found and support the Chairs specially demanded by lay and secular learning. In the Clerico-Catholic University of Louvain, out of 1900 students, 200 are clerical students preparing to be priests ; and although the whole University is under the direction of the Belgian Episcopate, and although, unlike Maynooth, de- void of State endowment, these most reverend prelates of the Belgian Church have never dreamed of excluding, as their Irish colleagues have excluded, the lay youth of the nation from the common benefits of Catholic learning. The Protestant Parliament of Ireland granted the endowment of Maynooth to layman and to clergyman alike ; but the Irish Bishops mercilessly shut out the Irish Laity, while expending so copiously for a century those versatile lamentations over the unheeded sorrows of lay education. Maynooth is a lovely spot, well adapted for University studies, enjoying rural scenery and rural air, while within easy reach of the metropolis of the country. Endowed by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland, and by the Protestant Parliament of THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 49 England, it was the Irish Catholic Bishops alone p-^-^-^, who relentlessly excluded the Irish Catholic Laity Cathoiu: from ail those advantages, and from all those rights, which were intended by the Protestant donors for the common benefit of the entire community of the Catholics of Ireland. In a series of articles, entitled " Dear Old May- nooth," contributed by a priestly writer to that Catholic periodical. The Irish Monthly for 1891, there is a frank avowal of the deliberate exclusion of the Irish laity from the common benefits of the Maynooth Endowment, which is at least more open and less laboured than the explanations tendered to the Irish University Commission. "At the com- mencement the number of students was small ; in the first year it did not pass seventy. After a time it rose to two hundred. Then a portion of the College was allotted to lay students ; but in the year 1 81 7 this was discontinued. The young lay gentle- men were not considered of advantage to the clerical studentsr When the Irish Catholic Hierarchy cast the young laymen, like pariahs out of doors, they knew that there was no other establishment of endowed education for Catholics in the country. This was their way of illustrating the pastoral affec- co-educa- ■',,,. D r <- tion outside tion which they annually advertise to 1 arliament of Ireland. from time immemorial. The Irish Catholic Hier- archy would not tolerate the co-education of the Catholic laity, though that co-education is the rule in a score of great seats of Continental learning, from Louvain to Vienna, and from Bonn and 50 THE IRISH FANAR Who were Strasburg to Munich, Wurtzburg, and Breslau. The Irish Catholic Hierarchy thrust the CathoHc lay students out of doors, and then appealed to High Heaven and the Freeman s Journal against the selfish and barbarous intolerance of Protestant Enorland. It should not be overlooked that, little later than 1817, the " Catholic Rint " and the " Repeal Rint," raised by O'Connell, with the enthusiastic benedic- tions of priests and prelates, annually oscillated between ^25,000 and ^50,000, mostly expended in reckless waste and sordid jobbery, so open was the heart of the hierarchy to every extremity, except the extremity of Irish Lay Education. Universal Ruin to Lay Learning I would also point out to the Commissioners that in the New Scheme of the Bishops, there seems still to be no intention whatever to create or adapt colleges and schools of secondary education with lay professors and schoolmasters, instead of those diocesan and other establishments, which continue to exclude, with few exceptions, the Catholic graduates from the teaching profession. On the contrary, it seems to me to be openly avowed that besides Maynooth, the expected opening of a State Endowed College at Stephen's Green will be specially utilised by the Bishops to give a better Arts education to priestly teachers in the provincial THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 51 and diocesan colleges and schools, thus enabling This kiii» them to dispense more completely than ever with * **' any sort of lay assistance, however cheaply re- munerated, and however menially domesticated. Now it is no use beating about the bush. No more in Ireland, than in France or Italy, can lay Catholic learning survive the persistent maintenance of the clerical monopoly. The monastic teachers simply annihilate the lay Catholic professoriate ; and, at the same time, they wither at the source all the learned and literary classes that take their origin and draw their primary nutriment in the culture which accompanies a lay professoriate. This kills that in Ireland as well as throughout the Continent of Europe. Already many authoritative voices in the most Catholic countries of the Continent have been raised, especially among the more enlightened Clergy, to protest against the shortsightedness of this exclusion of the Laity. The masterly work on "Catholicism in the Twentieth Century," which has recently been published by the 1> arned prelate and scholar, Dr. Ehrhard, Catholic professor of history in the University of Vienna, is full of warnings upon the necessity of abandoning the policy of suppressing the laity. That policy of suppression in many countries has killed altogether the goose that laid the golden eggs. It has very badly scotched it in Ireland. All Continental experience indicates, and the deplorable history of French Catholicism proves to demonstration, that the development of Catholic 52 THE IRISH FANAR Clerical University life, of lay Catholic literature and learning, des"r°oy°s^ can ncver be anything but a dwarfed and stunted learnSgand vegctation beneath the encroaching branches and literature, jj^g chilly shade of clericalised monopolies of instruc- tion which are often more clerical than Catholic ; nor can I draw any distinction of importance, whether it be the monopoly of Maynooth Bishops or Jesuit Generals. Professional pursuits may continue to exist ; the Brod-Studien must continue to exist ; the dispensary doctor and the rural attorney, innocent of letters, must always seek the training for their necessary livelihoods ; but lay learning and culture, excluded from the Teaching Chair, can never rise above a miserable mediocrity, for the simple reason that learning and culture are practically inseparable from a great and honoured professoriate. Look at the culture of Germany, and look at the professoriate of Germany. Why are learning and literature so preponderatingly non-Catholic and anti-Catholic even, or precisely, in most Catholic communities } In Protestant countries they are Protestant; but Protestantism does not ban the layman, even while encouraging the preacher and the theologian. In Catholic countries, in Catholic Ireland, clerical monopoly of the lay scholar's most appropriate work starves the scholar, and, through the scholar, starves the journalist, the author, and the cultured leader of society ; who might be, if they were allowed to be born, the makers of the nation's history and the glories of the nation's literature. You will never have a learned laity in Ireland till lay scholarship is THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 53 permitted to occupy the establishments of Secondary and University instruction. You will never have a learned laity in Ireland until the clergy return to their proper domain of religion and morals, and prepare themselves, by scrupulous abstention from non-religious electioneering broils and political intrigues, for a worthier deliverance of the Gospel messao^e. In France, the Teaching: Cong^regations led by the J^^ lesson 000 y from h ranee. Jesuits were everywhere. What was the result ? The laity, prevented by the clerical monopoly from being learned as well as Catholic, have been driven into learning without Catholicity. Gladly utilising the occasion, recent French Governments have hastened to establish a whole system of teaching posts, from the University down to the village school, for more than 100,000 laymen and 50,000 laywomen. Personally I condemn, in the strongest way the anti-Catholic spirit of French legislation ; but if scores of thousands of lay teachers have been put in the place of scores of thousands of priests and nuns, it simply means that, even if the Catholic laity wanted, as they had a right to want, to become professors and schoolmasters, their place was preoccupied and their livelihood prevented by a vast host of clerics, who thrust them out, and shut them out, from the scholastic profession quite as pitilessly, though Catholic, as if they had been anti- Catholic. The clerical monopolists, led by the Jesuits, having made war upon the learned Catholic laity, having almost annihilated the learned Catholic laity, 54 THE IRISH FANAR the consequence, the long expected consequence, is, that the laity, which has, almost naturally, become anti-clerical, has simply driven the priestly and monastic monopolists out of the domain of the national instruction altogether. There is precisely the same priestly and monastic monopoly in Ireland, only with still lower claims to culture and scholar- ship. Instead of performing clerical functions, instead of preaching against vices and crimes, drunkenness, and dissension, and dishonesty, scores of thousands of French priests and monks, usually quite uncon- scious of the harm they were doing, preferred to take the bread out of the mouths of scores of thousands of laymen by pocketing all the fees for teaching nri-vtr.g grammar, and mathematics, and ancient and modern 'olthi^^^^ literature. For pupils and fees the clerical monopo- lists of France went on destroying the livelihood of the learned Catholic laity ; and to-day the French learned laity is discovered to be anti-Catholic ! Let the Commissioners inquire the number of clerical teachers who monopolise the posts of Catholic educa- tion in Dublin alone ; and let them estimate what that means towards the discouragement of University learning arnong the Catholic classes who might otherwise live by their brains and their University degrees. I say that it would be difficult to take too pessimist a view of the depression and ruin of the intellectual qualities of the nation produced by this sort of obscurantist monopoly in Ireland. Ohurch. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 55 The Accommodating Protestants I was for many years a Member of Parlia- ment, during which time I gave much time and attention to pubHc education both in England and Ireland. When the Royal University charter was imposed upon this country, the representatives of Ireland had little to say in the matter. We all knew that it had been lobbied and backstaired through Dublin Castle, and that our opinions, so far as we had any, were of little consequence. Mr. Parnell, with whom I had been very intimate — we had been almost inseparable in the so-called obstruction period since 1876 — came to me one day and said : " Look here, O'Donnell, the Bishops Mr. Pameii have asked me to take up their Irish University Bishop^, question. Why on earth ? I really know nothing about it." " Perhaps that is just why," I replied ; " they are satisfied to know that you are an accom- modating Protestant." I would point out most earnestly to the Commissioners, with reierence to the well advertised readiness of the Bishops to have Protestants on their expected University as plausible guarantees against clericalism, that the very firmest supporter of clerical autocracy in Ireland, and just the most dangerous enemy of lay Catholic rights, is what I call the accommodating Protestant. I was put early in my political career on the track of this obliging person by no less competent an authority 56 THE IRISH FANAR Much more satisfactory to the Bishop. Crypto- manage- ment. than a Catholic Bishop still living. Talking about candidatures, his lordship suddenly remarked : " You must know, Mr. O'Donnell, that we Bishops have often very much better reason to be pleased with the Protestant candi- date than with the Cathohc one. The Catholic Member of Parliament, because he is a Catholic, will often insist upon views and opinions that are very unsatisfactory to us Bishops, and will give a lot of trouble, pretending to know as much as ourselves. Now the Protestant member is none of that kind ; he comes to us, and he says : ' My Lord Bishop, I know nothing about Catholic questions, and I regard your lordship as the guardian of your flock and the proper authority on those matters ; whatever your lordship decides I shall always consider to be the Catholic view.' Now, Mr. O'Donnell," summed up the Most Rev. Prelate, " that is much more satisfactory to us Bishops." That is the sort of Protestant who is being perpetually slipped into Education Boards and such places by the perpetual backstairing that goes on between the Irish Episcopal Bench and the English Government ; and the presence of even a dozen of these useful creatures on the Senate of the Jesuit General's University would be a poor guarantee, indeed, for the rights of a lay Catholic professor. It was gentlemen of this easy disposition who arranged that flagrant act of dishonesty towards 4000 graduates, the abolition of the Queen's Univer- sity. No consultation of the educated laymen, Catholic or Protestant, validated that proceeding. It was stage-managed and arranged in some private nook of Dublin Castle, between some crypto- plenipotentiaries of the Episcopate without warrant from the laity, and some crypto-plenipotentiaries THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 57 of the Government without warrant from the nation. The Hunt for Fees and the Ruin of Scholars I have in my notes to speak of the worthlessness a caiious , . -^ . . speculation. as regards education, and the callous injury as regards the future of the victims, involved in the Fees Hunt in the Intermediate Schools, especially taken in connection with the superadded mischiefs of a Cramming University. I would be allowed to quote from the most independent of Irish popular journals, the Leader of Dublin, upon the practically universal feeling among lovers of education in Ireland with regard to the ruinous effects of the School Fees System in destroying all true education in the country. " No one will deny," says the Leader, " that Irish schools have been greatly hampered by the difficulties of that Intermediate System, which has such deplorable results upon the education of the country. We know how whole-heartedly our schools entered in the mischievous competition which has developed the keenest commercial rivalry between them. The outcome is a hideous uniformity, which is destructive of all originality in teacher or pupil, and of everything that deserves the name of intellectual development. Our schools have been co-operating in, and con- niving at, these deplorable results for the last twenty years, for the wretched bribe of the Result Fees. So enormous is the per- centage of failures, that the education dispensed to them, and the ideals held up to our youth, and the atmosphere breathed by them in our colleges, must have something intrinsically pernicious about it." 58 THE IRISH FANAR •AnEmi- In another leading article of the 24th of August ^ration , , . Agency." last, the Same paper writes : " We do not know of any Catholic College in Ireland that trains a student for a productive career. The Colleges are killing the goose ; they are an emigration agency, factories for turning out incompetents, as far as many vital ends are concerned; and it is no wonder that the country is going down hill." For the moment I will deal with an illustration of the manner in which the financial side of the education question is treated in these intermediate schools. I refer, in particular, to the fact that some ;^50,ooo a year obtained by these institutions, both Clerico-Catholic and Protestant, as Result Fees, are handed over to them by the public trustees of the educational purse without any question or guarantee whatever as to whether these ^50,000 shall be annually devoted to educational purposes, or to any other objects which the irresponsible managers of these schools may prefer to subsidise. For the last six years I have gone through Ireland west, east, and north ; questioning political and personal friends, in Dublin and elsewhere ; listening to all sorts of opinions from all sides upon this subject ; and I have found a practically unanimous opinion, that both the method of earning and the method of distribution of the Result Fees constitute a disgrace and a danger to the educational interests of the country. You will never have Intermediate Educa- tion or University Education in Ireland until that abuse of Result Fees is reformed from the very foundation. Tempted by the enormous bait of THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 59 thousands a year and no questions asked, the Pupils as Intermediate Schools are simply turning their un- machines, happy pupils mto fee-earning machines for irrespon- sible and unsupervised communities which neither publish any accounts nor are asked for any. In almost all cases on the Catholic side, it is Clerical Brotherhoods and Companies who conduct this disastrous market of young lives ; and tens of thousands of living testimonies, testimonies of wrecked and useless existences, prove that, during: ^^^ Notes, ' r ' S3 pages 140 to the twenty years already gone through, the welfare i-iq- of the pupils is constantly subordinated to the temptation of cramming them in the most effectual way to fill the coffers of the Teaching Order. Even the schools of the Christian Brothers, always popular in Ireland, have shown a marked declension from their old usages in consequence of the pecuniary temptations of a deplorable system. The Christian Brothers alone are estimated to make from ^10,000 to ;!^ 1 5,000 a year out of their pupils. I have the highest respect for many sides of the action of this Community ; but the least that can be said is this, that no body of public servants should be exposed without any kind of public supervision or control to the temptation of regarding education as, in the first place, a Hunt for Fees, fees to be obtained without inquiry and to be spent without inquiry also. All over Ireland, when the average boy or girl in the Intermediate Schools has become a sort of sucked orange, after his or her pecuniary value has been extracted to the last squeeze by the 6o THE IRISH FANAR Teaching Congregation, all study is regarded as over and at an end ; the pupil goes with a tip- crammed memory and untrained mind, a perfectly useless fruit sec into the world ; and another supply of utilisable children, predestined victims of the system, takes the place of those who have been used up. In the case of a Clerical Intermediate School in a country like Ireland, which has no Catholic Religious Government, it is simply impossible to apply not hoods above merely control, but even rational criticism, to any criticism. proceedings of a Religious Brotherhood. No news- paper would print the criticism at the risk of being denounced as semi-impious. The individual critic would find himself shut out from public life and professional success. The Protestant Government would, of course, take the clerical side ; for, knowing little of Catholic interests and caring less, its policy of peace without honour refuses to the Catholic Laity every portion of that protection which in Bavaria, in Austria, or in Hungary, is the right and the duty of Catholic Ministers of the Education Department. Only a few weeks ago there was a great Congress of the Hungarian Catholics held at Budapest for the purpose of considering various suggestions as to the Self Government of the Catholic Community, which were submitted to it by the Hungarian Bishops and by the Hungarian Government. It is only in Ireland that the ipse dixit of a clerical authority, even on such ordinary affairs of the laity as the administration of their charities or the THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 6i administration of their education, is accepted by the State as endowed with practical infallibility. I have already said that, when the Royal university University was established, a large portion of the as^o°d Age^ Fellowship Foundations, which ought to have been ^^"^1°"^. applied in procuring an efficient teaching staff for Catholic University students, was, on the contrary, diverted to the supply of ivhat ivere merely old age pensions to a number of worn-out professors of the College in Stephens Green. I submit that that was not an honest proceeding. Those worn-out pro- fessors undoubtedly deserved their old age pen- sions, but if Cardinal Logue and the Catholic Hierarchy had devoted the ^^30,000 of net profits of a fancy fair to this object, instead of to stained glass daubs from Munich and inartistic statuary from Carrara, I should have been the first to say that it was only the discharge of an evident duty. But to divert thousands a year of public money from the public purpose of an efficient professoriate to the pension fund of decayed and deserving teachers is, I can only say, another illustration of the hopeless character of clerical administration of public money in Ireland. As preachers of the Gospel and the Commandments, all those reverend gentlemen might deserve admiration and esteem ; but evidently they do not possess the souls of Chartered Accountants. depend ence. 62 THE IRISH FANAR The Despotism over the National Schoolmasters Before coming to the special suggestions which I have to make as regards the future of my own College at Galway, I wish to deal with the present Menial plight of the National Schoolmasters of Ireland in immediate connection with the extension of the recruiting ground of education in this country. I have to say this about the National Schoolmasters, that if they were properly encouraged, if they were not depressed and discouraged by an abominable condition of menial dependence that kills all higher aspirations, I am convinced that they would supply admirable material for a large dissemination of higher education, not only among their pupils but among themselves. Out of the 5000 or 6000 National School teachers in Ireland, a very large percentage, to say the least, could be helped by private study and University Extension lectures to a far higher standard of education among their entire body, both to their own vast advantage and to the vast advantage of the popular masses with whom they live and mix. But energy, emulation, the desire to improve, even the expectation and stimulus of promotion, are simply crushed and destroyed by the offensive and needless dependence and precariousness of their position. It is quite right that they, like all teachers of the young in a Catholic country, should answer in Faith and THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 63 Morals to the supervision of the Church. But far Absolute more than this, and far worse than this, is the iron dictatorship which is imposed upon the National Schoolmaster. He is the absolute serf of the school manager, and the school manager is the Parish Priest, no matter how ill acquainted the parish priest may be with educational problems, no matter how much the parish priest may have for- gotten of the smatterinof of secular scholarship which ^^^ Notes, o o ^ ^ r pages 132 to he may have brought with him from Maynooth or mo. elsewhere, twenty or thirty years before. The schoolmasterships of the National Schools are simply in the absolute gift of the local Clergy ; and the patronage or the relationship of a parish priest is worth infinitely more to the isolated and dependent teacher than almost any degree of intelligence and education. He can be dismissed without any practical appeal to any public authority ; he can be promoted or broken for no reason known to any educational judges ; he is the absolute creature of the caprice of the village clergyman, who may be as incompetent to measure the possibilities of good education as he may be excellent and well mean- ing in his village pulpit. These 5000 or 6000 National School teachers must be secured in their position during good behaviour ; must have pro- motion as the reward of merit and not of favour; and must, outside the domain of faith and morals, be subject to no authority but a public department, which is really a public department, to its regula- tions and its tribunals. 64 THE IRISH FANAR Another For generations, I may almost say for centuries, fromFrance. the insHtuteur in France was the mere menial of the local clergyman, and nothing was more unfor- tunate both for education and for religion, The acute reaction from the perpetual worrying and dominating, which were the daily fate of the despised teacher, has had the worst effects in more than one Catholic country. To elevate the position of the institutetir, and to free him from the clerical yoke, is becoming the foremost plank in the platform of anti- Catholic parties. One hundred thousand instituteurs have been recently placed in France in the positions of communal teachers formerly occupied by the despised menials of whom I have spoken ; and, not quite unnaturally, they have become the bitterest opponents of the religious system which had become synonymous with their oppression. In Ireland, I am convinced that the Irish National School teachers could supply large numbers of excellent students for a really National University. The Catholic Bishops themselves declare that they deplore the miserable results of National School education, as it is. Coupled with the worthless Intermediate non-Education, it is the most deadly of expatriating agencies, for the smattering pro- letariate it trains are quite unable to make a living. Nepotism If the efficiency of the teacher is to be raised, you must raise his status. Efficient teachership and higher culture must be made of more importance than being a school manager's poor cousin, or marrying the school manager's poor relation. We not Merit. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 65 need not expect to get from the National School- masters for our Irish Universities the thousands of graduates to be found among English, French, and German schoolmasters; but if we had even 1000 graduates and half-graduates, they would light a torch of intellect in many hundreds of Irish parishes. Catholic Students at Oxford and Cambridge Let me say a word upon the attendance of is Ireland ^ , ,. , . Y- 1 1 1 TT • • less Catholic Catholic students in England at the U mversity than Eng- courses at Oxford and Cambridge. I have followed with care for many years the development of the Oxford and Cambridge question among Catholics in England, and I confess that I have been more than astonished at hearing Irish Bishops express their alarm at the alleged gravity of the moral and religious dangers, which are said to surround at- tendance on Mixed Education in an Irish Catholic city as compared with the harmlessness of English University associations. I am quite satisfied, in- deed, that, given reasonable and easy precautions, young Catholics, who may be Irish or English, run no religious dangers at Oxford or Cambridge. I say Irish as well as English, because the Irish Bishops seem to be unaware that an increasing proportion of so-called English Catholics are Irish, and nothing but Irish ; but this apart for the moment. It is simply undeniable that the influence and prestige of Protestantism are enormously greater 66 THE IRISH FANAR in Oxford and Cambridge than in Galway, Cork, or Dublin ; and the noise that has been made against the peculiar dangers of Mixed Education in Ireland has been either pure ignorance or a fine piece of mystification of the most deplorable description. An Oxford Let me read some passages from the private letter of a distinguished Oxford man, a Protestant friend of Catholic education, upon the actual position of Catholic students at Oxford. It is plain to under- stand that not only can every precaution, which has been taken at Oxford for the protection of young Catholic consciences, be taken in Cork and Galway, but that University life in Cork and Galway can be made far more intimately Catholic under a true system of Mixed Education than perhaps anywhere in England. " I think that the broad facts as to the education of Catholics at Oxford are these. They are freely admitted to all Colleges, and I have known several at my own College, Merton. They follow the ordinary University course, and I do not think that this raises any difficulty, even in the subjects of History and Philo- sophy. In matters of College discipline, they are on precisely the same footing as other undergraduates. Attendance on Chapel is not now compulsory on any undergraduate ; but so far as it is voluntary, and accepted in lieu of attendance at roll call, I believe attendance at a Catholic place of worship is accepted as an equivalent for attendance at the College Chapel. Outside the College there is a strong Catholic organisation for the supervision of undergraduates. The head of this is Canon Kennard, in whose house, opposite Christchurch, there is a private chapel, where there is special service for Catholic undergraduates on Sunday mornings. Sir David Hunter Blair has recently obtained a licence for a private hall, members of which are exclusively Catholic. There is THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 67 also a branch of the Jesuits at Oxford, which devotes special ^^^^^^^^ attention to the University. I had a walk a short time ago with i^in 'Sn'''" an old friend of mine and contemporary at Oxford, who has been M^^^d^.^^ for many years one of the Pope's Chamberlains. We talked on this subject, and he said that the Pope had withdrawn his objections to Catholic students going to Oxford and Cambridge, on being satisfied that sufficient provision was made by voluntary agency for their supervision ; and that since then the practice of sending them had been encouraged by the English Catholic Bishops, and was increasing. There are now sixty Catholic undergraduates, and I believe that leading Catholic schools, like Edgbaston, prepare their highest forms for Oxford, just as other English public schools do." The Commissioners can see that everything that has been done at Oxford for Catholics can be done in an Irish Collegiate town. I believe that many Catholic schools in Ireland also prepare for the English Universities, while affecting to abhor Mixed Education in Ireland. I have been so fortunate as to find in a recent number of an English Catholic school magazine, The Beaumont Review, the following explicit con- firmation of the suitability of Mixed Education at Oxford, from the pen of the Jesuit Father O' Fallon Pope. Catholics at Oxford. The clerical element is still large. Living has been made cheaper when desired. More men read for honours. Eye- glasses have become far more common, whether the short-sighted- ness has resulted from defective light, excessive studiousness, or heredity. But one great change, most interesting to Catholics, has come over the University. In 1870 there were about six or seven 68 THE IRISH FANAR A Jesuit's praise of Mixed Education. Catholic undergraduates. This term there are about fifty-three not including Benedictines and Jesuits. Formerly some Colleges would not admit them. Now they are kindly and considerately treated almost everywhere. This change will eventually influence the entire Catholic body throughout England. Our Catholic young men felt at one time that they lived a life apart. They were deprived of many of the intellectual and social advantages enjoyed by others. The same positions, the same advancement, the same emoluments were not for them. How utterly different all this is now! Not only are they able to share in all that the University can offer, but I believe that the young Catholics who go through a University career become more enlightened and are more strengthened in the faith. Men may grow indifferent any- where, may lose their faith anywhere ; but to imagine that the dangers are proportionately greater here displays an imperfect knowledge of Oxford and of undergraduate life. There is a time in a youth's career when good and evil seem to stand out more boldly and in greater relief. He is called upon to choose, for he has come to a parting of the ways. I cannot think that the temptations alluring him to evil are more numerous or stronger here than elsewhere. Indeed, in some respects I doubt if they are so numerous or so strong. Circumstances here appear to me to develop the Catholic young man in his Catholicism. Also he has Mass which he can hear daily, conferences which it is his duty to attend each Sunday. Every facility of going to Confes- sion and Holy Communion is given him. Catholics are respected, and, whatever may be the cause, whether it be through indiffer- ence or partiality or sheer politeness, he will rarely, if ever, hear his religion directly attacked. It is simply absurd to suppose that Catholics can mix with Protestants at Oxford and Cambridge with such high advantage, and the mixing of fellow countrymen at Cork or Galway should be a pestilen- tial calamity. In this connection I have to repeat, with illustrations, what I said before about so-called THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 69 English Catholics being very largely Irish. Thus, Irish 1 . c • CL ^ 1 Students in among the recent winners ot certihcates at the England. University Examinations, I find the following ultra- Irish names : Stonyhurst College : Gavan Duffy, Kane, Finnegan, O'Hea, Ryan; at Manresa College : Gallagher, McMullin ; at Ushaw College : Meagher, Morrissey, Tuohey ; at Old Hall : Foley, Healy, Hogan, Reardon, &c. &c. Perhaps to crown the absurdity of the pretended excommunication which dooms the Catholic student at Galway, the Tablet^ of November 9, 1901, announces under its scholastic intelligence from Stonyhurst College, that " Cuthbert Montagu, of Stonyhurst College, has won an entrance scholarship at Queen's College, Galway!" The Tablet is the property of Cardinal Vaughan, and Stonyhurst is the great English College of the Jesuits. So the Commissioners will have no difficulty in placing themselves on the higrhest ofround of Catholic Orthodoxy and proclaiming the excellence of Mixed Education, even when aggravated by winning a scholarship. Now that the Mixed Education bogey has been End of laid for ever, and that we can all laugh good-naturedly at the white sheet and the pumpkin — in Galway, as elsewhere — we can work openly upon an educational principle admissible by all parties. The whole of the educational funds and equipments, now frittered away in subsidies and subterfuges of spurious or inefficient denominationalism, can henceforth be applied openly to the national benefit alone. As a 70 THE IRISH FANAR No public funds for boycotters of lay teachers. first step, we must have the impartial Registration and Classification, both as regards quality and scope, of all schools without exception, under public authorities or inspectors, among whom the educated Laity must be fully represented ; and I have no hesitation in proposing that no school should, after a certain date at any rate, receive any contribution from the public finds i7i which a large and increasing- proportion of teaching and professorial places are not reserved to qualified laymen. All the observations regarding male schools apply with greater urgency, if possible, to the institutions employed for the education of girls in Ireland. The office of the clergy is to preach the Gospel ; lay learning is absolutely indispensable to national progress. SUGGESTIONS AND PROPOSALS No Dublin monopoly. I come now to my suggestions with regard to my own College. I warmly protest against any proposal to put out an eye of learning in the West. I am as strongly opposed as it is possible to be to a centralised University at Dublin, which would mean the extinction or weakening of the provincial centres of culture. I say that Galway could be made a centre of culture, specially adapted to the wants and the future of Connaught ; and that is a kind of local patriotism which cannot be too urgently encouraged in face of the many centripetal tendencies THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 71 which are at work in Ireland, causing the neglect and abandonment of the native county for a metro- politan proletariate of letters or industry. The rhetorical atmosphere of Dublin might be excep- tionally injurious to provincial abilities. In Galwav College, as in all colleges in Ireland, Queen's ■r^ , r A . 1 r 1 1 • 1 College the Faculty of Arts is the tundamental necessity and Fellowships the main difficulty. Unless careers are opened to fessoi ships lay learning, lay students will be hurried prematurely coii^gfans? into professional studies. There should be real Fellowships, to act as nurseries to young professors and not as old age pensions to worn-out ones. The Professorships themselves should be reserved, in the first place, to students of the Queen's College who are deserving of the appointment. The junior classes of the Faculty should, in a greatly enhanced degree, be made more open to the public by additional bursaries to encourage the poor students of a poor province. The additional funds required might be supplied by better administration of exist- ing educational resources ; but, in any case, I do not think we need fear any public stinginess in the support of a system of education to be equally open to all denominations. / should provide Double Chairs, or perhaps more accicrately speaking, three additional Chairs, namely : History of Civilisation, History of Philosophy, and History and Exposition of Social and Economic Science, which should be held by Catholic professors for the special benefit of Catholic students, with entire freedom upon all points of secular learning, and with authority to the united 72 THE IRISH FANAR Irish Episcopate to intervene in questions of faith and morality alone. Unanimity J gay agfain that nothing: less than the unanimous of Episcopal . , . ^. protest in- intervention of the Irish Bishops should be required, dispensable. i • i i i and that nothing less than such a unanimous mani- festation against a teacher should be allowed to affect the course of instruction in the College. Given the unity in faith and morals in the Catholic Church, it is perfectly certain that any real breach of either would secure unanimous condemnation by the thirty Irish Bishops, or the three hundred, if there were so many. On the other hand, any alleged breach of ethics or dogma, which a Bishop would refuse to condemn, could not legitimately be regarded as an offence to the con- science of Catholic students. Why I altogether reject the proposed censorship by a Judges ? couple of Episcopal visitors, even when re-inforced by a couple of judicial functionaries. Whyjudges?* Why not gas inspectors ? The judge may be a very great lawyer and a very poor man of letters or science. His recent biographer describes that eminent lawyer. Lord Russell of Killowen, as almost illiterate outside of his law books. Similarly, a mere couple of bishops might easily entertain views or prejudices of the very strongest kind, which would very imper- fectly represent the oecumenical dogma of the Catholic Church. The late Cardinal Cullen had views on * The touching confidence of the bishops in judges, who are almost all educated in Trinity College, is another of those in- teresting contradictions which so often illuminate with a flash of unconscious humour the solemn comedy of untenable claims. thp: ruin of irish education 73 the relations of Geology and Genesis, which are certainly not universal among Catholic prelates. The notion of an Episcopo-Judicial Board ol Visitors is a wild anachronism in the present circum- . stances of Irish Education. Its realisation would be intolerable. Scientific lawyers can be as hostile to Lawyers common sense as professional theologians. It is fjj'gians.^"' curious that so often there comes a moment in the old age of a judge when he turns ultra-clerical. Some explain the phenomenon as a belated effort of conscience to compensate the early choice of a profession. Certainly the concurrence of the legist and the divine can be quite wonderful. The Rhada- manthus becomes as meek in the sacristy as he was formidable on the judgment seat; and an archbishop, attentive to precedence, will desert a Chief Baron for nothing under a Duke. We totally decline such an arbitrament for our University affairs. Let Coke stay upon Lyttleton. We do not want him on Parnassus, nor on " die reine Vernunft." The parallel proposal of an exclusive Visitorship, perhaps enhanced by a Chancellorship, vested by the grace of God in the Catholic See of Dublin, belongs to the regions behind Alice's Looking Glass. The Archbishop of Dublin has pastoral cares in his maladministered and drunken city quite extensive enough to monopolise his attention. If he will look after our souls, our brains will look after them- selves. At the rate of intermeddling which is now rampant in episcopal quarters, posterity will come to think that there may have been something after all 74 THE IRISH FANAR Bishop and bishop. Jesuits dis- trusted by Cardinals Wiseman and Man- ning. in the Geraldine's excuse for burning the cathedral of Cashel. Even in dealing with Mixed Education there has often been the greatest difference between the action of bishop and bishop. One bishop might send his brother to a Queen's College, or, at least, might see him in attendance without an expression of uneasiness. Another bishop might make such attendance a matter of excommunication within his diocese. These are matters which the best of Catholics have occasionally to note with surprise, and without pleasure. I read in the Nineteenth Century the other day an article by the Editor of the Tablet, in which it was stated that, "to the day of his death, Cardinal Manning refused to allow Benedictines to establish themselves in the diocese of West- minster ; and Cardinal Vaughan, when Bishop of Salford, refused to let the Jesuits open a school at Manchester." Cardinal Manning equally prevented the Jesuits from opening educational establishments within his archdiocese. Like his famous predecessor. Cardinal Wiseman, he feared and disliked the peculiar institu- tions of Ignatian ambition. Cardinal Wiseman condemned their grasping ostentation, "attracting and absorbing the wealth of parishes, but contributing nothing to the education of the poor at their very door." The Jesuits prefer to educate the rich and to dominate Catholic society. In the words of Monsignor Talbot, one of the foremost of English Catholic prelates, '■''All the chief Catholic laymen, bound hand and foot ^ have fallen into their hands. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 75 They a^^e exercising in London a most pernicious jesuitised infiuence." To cap the climax of Episcopal contradic- ^™^"' tions, Cardinal Vaughan, the successor of Cardinal Manning, has since authorised Jesuit education in London ! The all-important offices of Deans of Residence to the young Catholic laity at Oxford and Cambrido-e are more and more becoming their prerogative. In the vindictive " Life of Cardinal Manning," which spoke the hate of the reactionary theologians and their lay acolytes against the Liberal and Democratic Cardinal, though the pen was the pen of Purcell, the revenge was the revenge of the Ignatian Society. Jesuits favoured by this bishop ! Jesuits forbidden by this other bishop ! Jesuits excluded from Uni- versity education at Westminster ! Jesuits granted educational monopoly at Dublin ! It is in face of such glaring and notorious discords and counter- opinions among bishops that it is attempted to establish the supremacy of an Episcopal veto over the Higher Education of Ireland! The necessary conclusion follows, that in face of the innumerable possibilities of divergence between individual bishop and individual bishop upon all matters which have not been absolutely settled by the universal teaching of the Church, the recognition of any University censorship by individual bishops must be a matter open to the very gravest objection on the part of Catholics, still more perhaps than on the part of Protestants. That alone can be a real offence to the conscience 76 THE IRISH FANAR of a student which is condemned as anti-Catholic by the entire Episcopate of Ireland, and nothing less than that unanimous condemnation can be a Religious guarantee of Catholic doctrine instead of individual fn Queen's opiuiou. I need not say that teaching, unanimously statufes. condemned on grounds of Faith or Morals by the Episcopate of the country, would clearly amount to that " offensiveness towards the religious convictions of a student" which is specially prohibited by the statutes of Queen's College, Galway. I think the exact words of the Queen's College statutes are : " Offending the religious beliefs of any student of the class." No difficulty, accordingly, need be appre- hended in case of this solution, at all events, on the part of men of good-will. The endowinent of the Three Special Catholic Chairs could easily be supplied by a better application of the Catholic Fellowship Funds of the Royal University, or by the private sttbscriptions of the Catholics of Ireland. The few thousands a year required for such a purpose could easily be supplied, even if it involved a somewhat decreased patronage of the alleged ecclesiastical art of Italy and Bavaria. A poor nation which has ;^6o, 000,000 on deposit in Joint Stock Banks and Savings Banks, and which indulges in alcoholic beverages to the annual cost of ;/^ 1 3,000,000, can still provide a few thousands ster- ling a year without being accused of any excessive attachment to Catholic University Education. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION // CATHOLIC PROFESSORS AND CLERICAL UNIVERSITIES In immediate connection with the demands for episcopal supervision of Catholic professors, I feel it would be a breach of public duty to ignore the reluctance of numbers of Catholic scholars to place Catholic themselves or their future in any sort of menial d^struJf dependence upon an ecclesiastical administration. <^'^"«^^' ^ t^ governors, This is a vital matter which clerical advocates cheer- fully discredit. You may, of course, find men of quite respectable attainments who are ready to make this submission ; and who may be blinded to the humility of their position by the real piety of their sentiments and by their readiness to sacrifice much to the success of a cause. The struggle for existence also is very hard, and, it must never be forgotten, it is exceptionally hard for Catholic professors in face of the overpowering competition of clerical chair- snatchers, absolved from the duties of family life, and above the incitement of scholarly ambition. But even in the case of such martyrs of self-efface- ment and lowliness, the loss of dignity must sooner or later affect self-respect as well as the world's respect. Personal subordination to a Catholic eccle- siastic is subordination to a venerated personage who, easily transferring to most of his proceedings the sanctity which attaches to his special functions, often considers the ones and the others alike to 78 THE IRISH FANAR Bishops and their theo- logians. Vatican Council useful to intellectual liberty of Catholics. be above criticism. He has come to hold quite honestly that the Church must suffer in his person, even when he has thrust his person into enterprises which are as harmful as possible to the real interests of his Church. What especially affects the status of a Catholic professor in face of a bishop and his theologians is that there are very many schools of thought in the Catholic Church outside of the domain of distinct and universal dogma ; and that the ecclesiastics, who are divided by these different schools, some- times appear to have few sentiments in common beyond the common conviction of the deference which laymen owe to clerics, perhaps especially in matters of which the layman is by far the best judge. According to the school of thought in the ascendant in a diocese, or a couple of dioceses, it might be life or death to a branch of lay learning, to which school of theologians the ecclesiastical authorities belonged. It is true that, since the Vatican Council, the sphere of liberty for Catholic thinkers has been immensely widened by being more clearly defined. To non-Catholics, accustomed to reason impulsively about Catholic dogma, this view may be surprising. The fact remains that through the strict definition of the Infallible Magisterium of the Papacy as confined to the region of universal declarations of Faith and Morals, hundreds of cases of private or personal decision, or argumentation by scores of Popes, are now outside the sacred and intangible arena. But in spite THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 79 of this improvement, after the Council of the Renewal of Vatican just as before, there are counsellors of [nrdgurs."^^ reaction and sycophants of Papo-caesarism, who are almost as busy with their embroideries of doctrine as in the finest times of the Degenerate Scholastics and the Galilaean Inquisition. It naturally follows that the more respected the bishop and the more in- fluential the bishop, the more formidable would be his arbitrament in a Catholic University upon all matters upon which he had been indoctrinated with maxims of a theological school of reaction and repression. In this connection, above all, it must not be forgotten that there are many utterances of the Sovereign Pontiffs which bear the strongest impress of the personal provocations or the temporal necessities in which they originated. A Pope who is very angry will not always choose his expression of the highest truths with the careful gentleness of a Pope who is quite content with his surroundings. An Encyclical of Pius IX., incensed by revolu- tionary aggression and royal evasion, may ring like the blare of an accusing trumpet ; while an Ency- clical of Leo XIII., commiserating the hardship of labour, may console like tender music. The same Pope may be gentle or irate at different epochs. A repressive and medisevalist theologian, who had become the oracle of a group of bishops, might make rare mischief out of the minatory language of many an indignant document ; and, even outside the domain of material science, a Catholic professor or a 8o THE IRISH FANAR The risk in small boards of bishops. A Catholic warning from Austria. Catholic Faculty might have painful experiences under such a domination, in connection with the history of civilisation, the principles of jurispru- dence, the constituents of free government, the essentials of social and political economy, the liberty of opinion, the rights of citizens. In a quarrel between a professor and a bishop, before a small board of bishops especially, few would guarantee the absolute impartiality of the tribunal ; and this apprehension will always depress the position of a University which depends upon an episcopal authority. One of the most scientific scholars of Catholic Austria, a Catholic professor of the State University of Vienna, has quite recently revealed this fear in a book published in connection with the proposal of the Austrian Episcopate to establish a Catholic University for the Austrian dominions. This project is warmly combated not only by many laymen but by many ecclesiastical scholars. Still it may have justification, so far as it does not injure the participation of Catholic learning in the Un- sectarian Universities of the State ; and, as it will be supported entirely by private subscriptions — like in Belgium and Canada — the State can only be interested in the ascertainment of its educational value. It is the expected subordination of the Pro- fessoriate to the Episcopacy, even outside the domain of dogma, which creates the special reluctance ot learned Catholics to compete for the occupation of its Chairs. Of course, the Jesuits will not lament too inconsolably over the abstention of the learned laity, THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 8i precisely because they are specially constituted to supply Jesuit professors all over the world ; and with Jesuit professors even the local Episcopate dare not meddle ; and against them lay rivalry is a vain thing. The book of the Catholic professor to which I ;;^^f ^j^' refer, and to which I venture to draw the attention 5^^j5°Jy:,y , of the Commission, is the work entitled " Voraus- setzungslose Forschung und Katholicismus*' by Hofrath Dr. Pernter, Professor of Physics and Director of the Imperial and Royal Institution for Meteorology, Vienna. It is published by Brau- mueller : Vienna. This distinguished Catholic pro- fessor, while expressing his own confidence that the Catholic religion has nothing to fear from science, bluntly states that very few Catholic scholars of eminence would accept a Chair in the proposed Clerical University, because "the disadvantages of a specifically Catholic University are far greater than is commonly understood in the circles of its sup- porters." Hofrath Dr. Pernter mentions, in the forefront of these disadvantages, " the exposure of the professors of such a University to the domina- tion of a School of Theologians {Herrschaft einer Theologenschule), to whose carping chicanery and schoolmastering they would be subjected." Hofrath Dr. Pernter justly adds that the pious contrivers of such schemes " look as if they never had any ex- perience of the institutions and the scope of a University." The remark applies exactly in Ireland. The Commissioners will perceive that this Catholic 82 THE IRISH FANAR A super- professor raises explicitly the question of theological ^ dogma^° schools, as Something which is superadded to Catholic dogma, and which is more serious for science and learning than all the definitions of all the GEcu- menical Councils during twenty centuries, or twice twenty. It is to this fact that I referred in some foresfoinof observations. Let me now show how the peril can become at any moment incarnate and operative. The universal consent and practice of the Church being, of course, practically equivalent to dogmatic definitions, whether by Popes or Councils, the question may always arise : What is the consent and practice of the Church? In an Apostolic Brief issued by Pope Pius IX. in 1863, in reference to an Italian dispute, that Pontiff laid down the rule to be observed in these words : ** A'dotti non basta di ammettere e venerare i dommi definiti della Chiesa, ma e necessario ancora che si sottometono tanto alle decisioni dottrinali proferite dalle Congregatzioni pontificie, quanto a quel capi di dottrina che dal commune e costante consenso dei cattolici sono ritenuti quali verita." This special admonition of Pope Pius IX. to the learned, "It is not enough for learned men to admit and vindicate the defined Dogmas of the Church," opens the finest field for the interpretation of what is "the common and constant consent of Catholics" according to this, that, and the other school of theo- logians. It is true that the language and the argu- ments; with which Pius IX. supported his rendering THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 83 of Catholic Truth, are in no way covered by the Oppressive infallibility which is restricted to the Catholic Truth tions. itself ; while, at the same time, they frequently bear, as I have already observed, the impress of that Pontift^s passionate protest against the evils which he readily discerned in the movement of the time. It is precisely this admixttire of the eternal and the temporary, of the part which belongs to doctrine and the part which belongs to circumstances, ivhich offers the grand opportunity to the hiterpretations of Schools of Theologians. As I show in exacter detail in the Explanatory Chapters and Appendix, which follow this evidence, the interpretations of the theological school which now rules the Catholic University College, Dublin, are certainly not likely to be the least oppressive to a Lay Catholic Professoriate. And when the Jesuit Theologians have extirpated a Lay Professor, the Jesuit Rectors are always ready to supply a docile substitute, certified to bear on the most prominent part of his individuality the hall- mark of the Father General. A • • • • As a concrete example of the manner in which the trained adepts of a theological school can wriggle and quibble to twist even political questions under interpretations of dogma, I can quote a recent illus- tration from the domain of social politics. Follow- ing on the appeal of Leo XIII., in 1891, to a " Christian Democracy " to constitute itself, in order to apply Catholic principles to the amelioration of the condition of labour, a great association of 84 THE IRISH FANAR Interference Italian CathoHcs Sprang into existence and very L'nd^sociS rapidly covered Italy with organisations, clubs, science. journals, lectures, in support of Christian Democracy. There had been already an organisation nominally devoted to the same purpose, the " Second Section," namely, of the " Opera dei Comitati e Congressi CattolicV \ but, as even the clerical correspondent at Rome of Cardinal Vaughan's organ. The Tablet, has to admit, "the older men who directed this social and economical section, partly through inertia and partly through a too conservative spirit, did little to correspond to the Papal appeal." In fact, this Second Section accurately represented nobody but the ultras of conservatism who, reflecting the anti- popular prejudices of reactionary Catholics, both clerical and lay, had made that utter wreck of Catholic politics which we see in Italy and many other countries. There is a wider difference between them and the " Democrazia Christiana " than between the present Cardinal Vaughan and his predecessor, Cardinal Manning. As the Christian Democracy advanced throughout Italy, laying stress on the rights of men and the duties of property, the fossilised Catholics became more and more indignant. They had never heard of a Catholicism like that ! Meantime, the Pope is getting older, as well as getting more alarmed by Anarchism, Socialism, and other evils. The Jesuits ever mindful of their Spanish origin, saw their chance and used it. In the January number of the *' Civilta Cattolica^' the well-known Jesuit Review, THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 85 appeared a vehement diatribe against the popular disposition of the new party of Italian Catholics imperiously reproving them for their political ten- dencies, and summoning them to abandon their revolutionary sympathies with the labouring masses. It was all in the finest spirit of the Society of Jesuit St. Ignatius. The learned fathers had borne with mMiufac- angelic patience for generations the spectacle of ^^^^' the Temporal Government of the Popes being sustained by French and Austrian bayonets. The sight of Catholic associations professing the defence of the people filled them with the cruellest anxiety. Nay more, the *^Civilta Cattolica " declared that the Christian Democracy would very soon find itself condemned by the Papal authority, and that the Pope was just as infallible in politics as in religion. The very title of the Jesuit deliverance ran as follows : " L'autorita della Santa Sede nel' azione cattolica degl' Italiani " ; and a long string of casuistical distinctions proved triumphantly that when the Vatican Council limited the Papal Infalli- bility to Faith and Morals, it clearly included Politics and anything which happened to be lying about handy. "As the Pope is the infallible teacher of Morality, and as Politics are a branch of Morals, it follows that the Pope is supreme in Politics." Q. E. D. When Jesuit witnesses appear before University Commissions in Dublin, they become curiously oblivious of the dialectics of their Order at Rome. But the prophecies of the " Civiltd Cattolica " were to realise themselves very quickly. In less 86 THE IRISH FANAR Censorship than a fortnight afterwards, Cardinal Ranipolla issued sion!"^^^^^" a mandamus, entitled " Instructions of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs regarding popular Christian action and democratic Christian action in Italy," which curiously justified the confident foreknowledge exhibited by the Jesuit organ. What the Jesuit wrote the Cardinal decreed. The political action of Catholic societies purporting to deal with democratic progress in Italy — it might equally apply to Ireland or Germany — was strictly subordinated to ecclesiastical supervision. Catholic journals discussing the formidable topic must submit their leading articles to the previous censorship of the bishop of the diocese ! Meetings of Catholics must obtain ecclesiastical approval of their principles and propositions. Lectures must obtain the consent of the bishop. Peace, as in Warsaw, was to reign along the line. The societies of the " Christian Democracy " themselves were regulated wholesale, and ordered to incorporate themselves in the afore- said Organisation of Fossils, the reactionary and un- popular " Second Section." In fact, they were strictly forbidden to take any action on behalf of the miserable proletariate of Italy without the approval and direc- tion of the very people who had ignored the Labour Question for generations and centuries ! When the Domani d Italia, a leading organ of the '* Christian Democracy, "reverently petitioned for leave to express reasons to the Holy See against this oppressive step. Cardinal Rampolla, Papal Secretary of State, had the petition summarily rejected. In 1891 the THE RUIxM OF IRISH EDUCATION Zj " Christian Democracy " started amid the direct encouragements of the Papacy; in 1902 they are subordinated to the inveterate and traditional oppo- nents of progress! In effect, it has been precisely The old the same tragi-comedy which followed the Constitu- comedy, tionalism of Pius IX., and the Jesuits are as proud of their work to-day as they were fifty years ago. Whenever the Father General feels that he has brought the Catholic world up with a roimd turn to the gates of the Escorial and the policy of Philip II., he knows that his Order has not been revived in vain. The distinguished historian of the church, Her- genroether, himself a Cardinal, had to write of a Pope of old who did not hesitate to lead his pikemen and hackbuteers to the extension of his Temporal Power. *' With him not seldom was the Pope thrown into the shade by the Italian Prince." It was the " Italian Princedom," it was the Temporal Power which loosed the thunders of the Jesuit General upon the Catholic popular association. The Christian Democracy, in passing resolutions at crowded meetings against bad laws, had been met by the cry, "Why not choose better legislators?" Increasing multitudes of Catholics from one end of Italy to the other joined to swell this demand ; and assuredly it were difficult to see how legislation can be improved except by improving the legislature. But it has been the disastrous policy of the Papal advisers, the Jesuits in the front rank, to seek the recovery of the " Italian Princedom " by imposing the policy of electoral abstention on the Catholic 88 THE IRISH FANAR voters of Italy. '* AV elettori ne eletti." The statesmanlike notion at the back of this curious to il^iand^ policy is, that by the abstention of the most orderly elements of the country the forces of disorder, dissolution, and revolution may become so pre- dominant as to force the House of Savoy to capitu- late to the Temporal Power. I am not sure if the fierce manslaying of Julius II's policy of battles and sieges was not, at any rate, cleaner than this loathsome plan for reducing New Italy to submission by pro- moting the victory of civic crime and social desola- tion. The eminent casuists, Busenbaum and Esco- bar, had never devised a more genial illustration of moral distinctions. But the Democrazia Cristiana did not admire the beauty of assisting revolution byabstaining from opposition to revolutionists. They asked in increasing numbers to be electors, and to elect good representatives for the greater happiness of Italy. Against this heretical pretension the Sword of Loyola was drawn from the scabbard, and the Father General of Catholic University College, Dublin, suppressed the popular associations of the Italian Catholics, by way of proving to the Univer- sity Commission, of course, how safe and ennobling must be the monopoly of Irish Education in the hands of his sworn servitors and lifelong liege- men. In itself, the ukase against the ''Democrazia Cristiana " possesses exactly the dogmatic validity of the ukase against the motion of the earth round the sun ; but a great array of clericalism will support it THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 89 from one end of the world to the other. Were a Minds in Professor of the History of Civih'sation in a Univer- ^°'^^^ ^' sity to be subject to such a clericalism, he could be driven from his Chair with less ceremony than a weekly tenant. In Ireland, similarly, it is clear that not Physical Science alone, but History, Social Science, Political Economy, General Jurisprudence, Literary Criticism, when involving the ethical values of literary schools ; in a word, everything might be at the mercy of a Venerable Board of Visitors, whose studies had never transgressed their Maynooth curriculum, and whose eyes had never looked upon the external world except, perhaps, through the medium of the Jesuit periodicals. It would be simply inviting a catastrophe to give a new opportu- tunity to such a power. As for endowing it out of public funds, no Catholic empire, kingdom, or re- public can be discovered throughout Civilisation, in the Old World or the New, capable of such a proceeding. For centuries Catholic Christendom had placed its trust in ultra-clerical Universities : and the result was the notorious degeneration which could not prevent the Protestant Reforma- tion, and which has since collapsed so often before the Rationalist Revolution. Minds in go-carts lose the potency of minds. Unfortunately, instances can be multiplied to any extent in illustration of these invasions of every domain of political, social, and historical science by webspinning schools of theologians. I shall only add one more example in confirmation of my view 90 THE IRISH FANAR Another that Social and Historical Studies, far more than any Physical Sciences nowadays, have to fear the interpretations and intermeddlings of these ingenious persons. A National Synod of Bishops would be the very least defence which, to be fairly effective, could be erected against them. A mere Board of Visitors would be the poorest sort of guarantee. But, best of all, until some definite check can be devised for their syllogising fanaticism, is the guarantee of a National and Unsectarian University, in which the affectionate comradeship of Catholics and Protestants, while respectful of religion, would defy the casuistry of bigoted anachronisms. I take my example again from Catholic Germany. The Dublin We have heard a Catholic professor, following the G^ennany. initiative of Kraus and Ehrhard and so many other orthodox scholars, protesting against the humilia- tions which await the holders of University Chairs under clerical dictators. We shall now behold the ubiquitous Jesuit as keen on the chase of German Catholic teachers of learning as of Italian Catholic friends of emancipation. Both in Germany and Austria at this moment the Jesuits are endeavouring to obtain the erection of Clerical Universities, directed, immediately or mediately, by themselves, instead of the National and Mixed Universities which have been the training schools of the German laity since so many generations, /n fact, it is ike Dublin Game which is being played over again ; and it is being worked far more keenly against Catholic THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 91 Governments at Munich and Vienna than against any accommodating Protestantism whatsoever. As part of this game, every utterance of a Catholic professor in a Mixed University is followed with the scent of witchfinders, and with the dexterity of special pleaders or casuists, who are the ne plus ultra of special pleading. Just at present, in fact, the following announce- ment is in circulation in the German daily press : -The Congregation of the Index, under the presi- Jh^e Jesuit dency of Cardinal Steinhuber, S.J.,* has demanded the index, the examination, as suspicious works, of the follow- ing publications : •' Count Cavour and the Resurgence of Italy in the Nineteenth Century, by F. X. Kraus, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Frei- burg ; ''Saint Augustine, by Freiherr v. Hertling, * Here can be seen, in a crucial instance, how the strategic eye of the Ignatian General discerns with military promptitude the best positions for the operations of his lieutenants. A Jesuit Cardmal in the Chair of the Congregation of the Index, the august Reviewing Board which speaks the sentence of orthodoxy or heterodoxy over the literary productions of civilisation, must be admitted, by the most prejudiced opponent, to be emphatically the right man in the right place for the interests of the ubiquitous Order. ^ If there appea'r a publication which duly acknowledges the merits of the Company, that book need not be discredited. If a book con- travenes the wisdom of the sons of Loyola, there can be no harm in exposing its demerits, if it have them. A Jesuit Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Index ! Can there be a surer guarantee for the correct! lude, from the Jesuit standpoint, of Catholic literary opinion ? 92 THE IRISH FANAR The cast of Professor of Catholic Philosophy in the University of Munich ; •' The Ethics of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, by Anton Koch, Professor of Catholic Ethics in the University of Tubingen." It may be admitted that this is a comprehensive cast of the net. Three Catholic professors in three State Universities, which have educated tens of thousands of Catholic students true to their religion and loyal to their country, are all defamed together as dangerous to Faith and Morals. And, of course, the seriousness of the affair is precisely this : that in any extensive work, which is more than a mere compilation from the past, there are perfectly certain to be some views or some expressions which some ingenuity and some goodwill can torture into innuendoes of heretical siofnificance. Whether the machination will succeed remains to be seen. But if National Universities, surrounded by the most august memories, can be thus assailed by the cease- less molework of a monopolist association, what would be the plight of Catholic professors in an establishment entirely abandoned, like Catholic University College, Dublin, to the autocracy of the Father General ? RESUMPTION OF PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS After this lengthy but necessary reference to theological schools, I resume my suggestions of practical reforms at Queen's College, Galway. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 93 I consider that the Faculty of Engineering, at Reforms at Galway, should have a future before it, especially in connection with a large system of technical education, precisely in such a province as Con- naught, where all kinds of resources, from water pow'er to fishing harbours, are notoriously awaiting development. I look upon the foundation and growth of a lay system of technical education as absolutely necessary, and certain to follow, or ac- company, the gradual elimination of those so- called schools of Intermediate Education now taught by clerical smatterers of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. I think that the School of Law, at Galway, will be always useful, is inexpensive, and could be improved. Though the School of Medicine is obviously incapable of giving a complete training, through the absence of adequate means of clinical study, it could with advantage be continued, as regards some of its professorships, as a preparatory school, giving pre-clinical instruction which could be completed in Dublin. I think it is public policy to keep, as much as possible, at least some inducements for the presence of medical and surgical experts outside of Dublin and the larger Irish cities. I support at least three most important additions to the existing scheme of studies at Queen's College, Galway, all of them especially suited to the position at Galway, namely, Celtic, Commerce, and Agri. culture. There should be a great School of Celtic Studies, with, at least, one professor, say, of Celtic Compara- 94 THE IRISH FANAR Languages tivc Philology and Ancient and Middle Irish ; and a merce. " second professor of Modern Irish and its dialects. There should be, at least, two or four salaried tutors to assist amone the students of the classes the work of the Chairs. Galway is still the centre of a large Irish speaking population. It should be Irish national policy to promote the creation of such a school of Irish studies in the West, and it could only be anti- Irish policy to oppose it. I propose that Schools of Commerce and Naviga- tion should be established in Oueen's Colleo^e, Cork: Queen's College, Galway; and elsewhere. A nation of islanders, we might take our share of the world's carrying trade, so far, at least, as supplying capable representatives of commerce and able masters of ships can afford a share. Why should useful careers of daily increasing importance be closed to Irish intelligence, and to Irish enterprise and courage.'* Commercial Geography, the knowledge of the products and the wants of the countries of the world, can be made a training of high promise. And Modern Languages, are they not called to something better than the semi-sesthetic enjoyment of foreign prose-writers and foreign poets ? If our young men are taught the useful practice of language, they can find its aesthetic qualities at their leisure and disposition. There ought emphatically to be Chairs of Com- mercial Languages, including Spanish and Hindu- stani, through Ireland. Spanish is the key to South America, and South America is a gold mine THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 95 o( trade in the near future, still more than now. Hindustani fits a man for innumerable oppor- tunities in a country of 300,000,000 inhabitants. The facetious acumen of frivolous intelligence will probably inquire, as capping the joke : " And why not Chinese, or, maybe, Arabic ? " The funniness of practical persons is a sacred tradition on the Liffey. Hindustani is to leave or to take. Even Arabic and Chinese are studied for the advantages of trade. But I lay special stress upon Spanish, the commercial advantages of which are fully appre- ciated in the commercial schools of Germany. In intimate connection with the study of the Travelling !• " 1 • 1 ^ • 1 T Bursaries. hving languages as aids to commercial careers, I recommend the establishment of Bourses de sejour a rdtranger, travelling or residential bursaries, to enable the student to complete his linguistic know- ledge in the home of the language. I also propose a large, well-equipped, and richly endowed School of Agriculture, the students of which, drawn from the class of intending farmers, should, along with the much needed instruction in agricultural science and practice, be required to aUend at least some of the classes in Arts and Engineering or Technical education. There ought to be immense opportunities for the utility of a School of Fish Breeding at Galway, not only in connection with the sea fisheries, but also with the great extent of lakes and lakelets through- out Connaught. Hundreds of tons of food might be at the disposal of the population, if the inland 96 THE IRISH FANAR waters were not only stocked with various sorts o{ fish, but sown and cultivated with the means oC supplying sustenance for the fish. I have heard experienced authorities say that the inland waters of Ireland ought to be one of the most valuable sources of healthy nourishment for a large population. A TECHNICAL SCHOOL POSTSCRIPT : THE BOYCOTT AT WORK Raid on a In immediate connection with the development of school. technical education at Galway College, perhaps the Commissioners might do well to inquire into some recent transactions affecting a very promising school of technical education in the town of Galway, which had been carried on for the past ten years by a committee of leading people, both Catholics and Protestants ; and which had in fact obtained a first place among such schools in Ireland. These recent transactions will also illustrate the disastrous working of the political clericalism, which, promptly exploiting the New Local Government, is grabbing the funds of Technical Education. At the last Parliamentary Election for Galway, a few months ago, the United Irish League — so called from the internecine discords it propagates — • .procured, with the aid of the local clergy, the return of the Boer colonel, Mr.] Arthur Lynch, the object of the League being to stimulate the contributions of the American Irish to Mr. John Redmond's THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 97 collecting tour in the United States. Most of" a clean the members of the technical school committee, ^^^^p* being in their civil and individual capacity — like all Galwaymen attached to the interests of the town — totally opposed to making this financial experi- ment at the expense of GaWay, there followed a campaign of calumny and coercion by the usual organs of the League. The Gal way Urban Council, one of the products of the Local Government Revolution, completely dominated by the clerico- boycotting faction, resolved to employ its powers under the Local Government Acts in order to make a clean sweep of that admirable technical school committee, whose devotion and experience had deserved such different treatment. A brand new committee of boycotting leaguers was nominated in their place. By a graceful and grateful vote the local bishop was elected chairman of the new committee. The clean sweep was carried out to the last detail, and all the veneration for the sacerdotal character advertised by the League did not impede them in any way from appearing to associate their beloved clergy with the execution of their mean and mischievous revenge. Catholic and Protestant alike, the " old ascendency " of the technical school, as a League orator had the unconscious absurdity to call those faithful stewards of the public interest, were insultingly cast aside, and the nominees of the League entered into the stolen inheritance. The Government and Municipal Grants to the school, amounting to some ^900 a year, are now practically G 98 THE IRISH FANAR The spoils added to the appanage of the League, and they P° '^y- will be employed with the proper discrimination between its champions and its victims — the latter including all Galwaymen who refuse to bow to its sordid and thankless dictation. " To the victors the spoils." As a happy illustration of political clericalism, and the educational security derivable from the " nouvelles couches sociales," called by English-made law to administer the Local Government of the country, this Galway example is not uninstructive. When the clerical monopolist cannot rule by his own gentle genius, a mutual compact with the professional agitator can almost always give him the supremacy, which he regards as far outweighing the minor claims of education, progress, national concord, and brotherhood. Of course, the interests of technical education at once began to suffer while the boycotters were making a clean sweep of the old committee, which had brought the school to its high standard of efficiency ; and a Government inspector sought to stop the work of dissension and intolerance by pointing to its effects upon the attendance. To quote from a Galway paper : " The Inspector regretted that in two classes there would be no examination in consequence of the falling off of pupils, the numbers having in the last few weeks fallen in one class from sixteen to six." By the way, I saw that, although the secretary of the old committee was a Catholic priest — there are Irish priests who are victims, beside those who are authors. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 99 of the boycotting abomination — the Protestant Generous Rector of Galway, the Reverend Mr. Berry, came p'°^^^^- forward with a generous letter to protest against the ingratitude shown to one " through whose able and unremitting exertions the school got on so well as it did." If the Commission will obtain the evidence of that excellent priest and that generous rector, their explanation of Boycotting versus Progress in Technical Education, at Galway, may be none the less valuable, because it is not likely to be solicited by the intriguers who are trying to wirepull the calling of witnesses before this inquiry. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS The reform of Irish education must be difficult, but it is in no way impossible. The old attitude of the Irish Bishops, more bark than bite, towards Mixed Education, can never become effectively hostile if Mixed Education shall only be realised on generous and impartial principles, comforming in spirit as well as in the letter to the statutes of the Queen's Uni- versity and the Queen's Colleges. In face of the proved fact of Catholic students, Irish as well as English, attending unharmed amid the ultra-Pro- testant traditions of Oxford and Cambridge, it is simply ridiculous to allege the overwhelming perils to Catholic attendance in the predominantly Catholic atmosphere of Irish Collegiate towns. But the lOO THE IRISH FANAR reform of Irish University education equally de- mands the reform of the Secondary and Primary Systems. The Catholic Laity must be encouraged, and must no longer be hindered, in the adoption of the profession of teaching throughout the inter- mediate schools of the country. The boycott of the laity has been the death-knell of learning throughout To protect ^^^^ regious of the Catholic continent. The position lay learning. Qf schoolmasters in the primary schools must also be made worthy of an honourable and important and responsible career. The Church has the right and the duty to control faith and morals for Catholic students and for Catholic teachers of Catholics. Individual clergyman have no right whatever to be universal dictators or autocratic employers to public servants. The clerical monopoly of the posts of lay learning has so many evils in itself and in its train that it is practically impossible to notice a tithe of the disas- trous total. I cannot avoid pointing out, however, one serious and special disaster to the social system which results from the intrusion of a celibate clergy into the educational sphere. I need not say that, as a Catholic, I accept and admire the imposition of celibacy upon the priests of the Catholic Church. As an Irishman, I have additional reasons for applaud- ing the ordinance. If, indeed, the existing scandals of clerical nepotism seriously menace every depart- ment and situation of Irish life, though only the interests of cousins of clergymen and nephews of clergymen are involved, what would be the prospect THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION loi if clerical founders of families had to quarter on the purses of the faithful a whole population of hopeful sons and darling daughters ? But celibates in sacerdotal offices, and celibates in lay situations, are very different influences. Lay professors, tutors, and schoolmasters will naturally bring up families imbued with the culture of the parental profession and society, and in this way an increasing body of educated men and women grow up around every seat of learned activity. When priests usur^ the places of lay The whole teacher's, that learned, cultured, and civilising society poorer. disappears^ and the Teaching Congregation not only robs the nation of lay learning in the persons of the professors, but makes the whole land poorer by the extinction and prevention of a cultured stratum of society. No Catholic land can compete with non- Catholic rivals on equal terms in face of such a hindrance and such an incubus. The evils which the friends of education have to remove are so widely extended and so cunningly devised, so rooted in misuse and so confirmed by duration, that no mere palliatives can have a possi- bility of success. University Education must ascend from the secondary schools, and the secondary schools have their roots in the primary system. The pupil may stop at the stage which necessity or convenience imposes ; but the education of a nation is a co-ordinated whole, and not an irregular outcrop of irregular institutions, with little connection but chance, with little inspiration but huxtering, with I02 THE IRISH FANAR few aims higher than the bigotry of domination and Ubiquitous the acquisition of pelf. The condition of CathoHc tenc™^^ Education in Ireland is oppressed at every stage by monotonous varieties of the same calamity, the ubiquitous intrusion of an incompetent and usurping clericalism, into the sphere of lay rights and lay duties. In the primary schools the original shortcomings of a defective system are aggravated almost beyond the hope of reform by the unlimited despotism of that class, phenomenal for its ignorance, and worsening ignorance by nepotism and negligence, the parochial clergy produced by Maynooth. The menial condition of the national schoolmasters is a danger to society and a sure preventive of the education of the people. Secondary instruction must not be monopolised by overgrown confederacies of half-trained or untrained religious, unacquainted with, and indifferent to, the fundamental wants of an educated laity ; identifying the profit of their Congregations with the welfare of the country ; tempted by the clericalised administra- tion of the Education Departments to employ with- out public advantage the public funds which they are allowed to amass without public investigation ; and forming a selfish and immovable block against the development of that indispensable prerequisite of general culture, the Lay Teaching Classes of a nation. These uncontrolled associations systema- tically unfit the bulk of their pupils for the realities of life. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 103 In the case of the Female Orders, their inculca- Defective ^ . . . . , r • 1- 1- 1- nun schools. tion 01 pietistic Ignorance and supernciahty disquali- fies multitudes of Irish girls for the duties of home and the holiest hopes of womanhood. Of course, these defective female schools are not quite the peculiar privilege of Irish clericalism. Their con- geners reign without much restriction through wide regions of the Catholic world. In France, their sentimental piety and their educational inferiority are too notorious, and have powerfully contributed to that regrettable prejudice against religious education which excites such general remark. French prelates, somewhat late, are avowing the evils of the system. A recent article in the English Jesuit Review, the Month, quotes the Archbishop of Avignon as "admit- ting regretfully that the schools belonging to the Teaching Orders of women are inferior from an educational point of view to the lay institutions — a bitter confession for a prelate to be obliged to make." Irish prelates do not make it. The French archbishop shows himself to be gravely alarmed, in face of the lay competition, that ** our teaching com- munities may not continue to preserve the confi- dence of families and maintain the prestige which they have hitherto enjoyed." The young girls of a whole country, steeped and sodden in mawkish senti- mentalities instead of the higher truths of Catholic Religion, and habituated to devout exercises instead of useful learning, form a deplorable contribution to the well-being of the general community. Their vapid and mechanical training largely explains the 104 THE IRISH FANAR character of the pseudo-literary matter they continue to assimilate in after life, that huge bulk of printed twaddle which is known to Catholic booksellers as edifying reading. A veritable fount of unpractical A depopuia- living and uncultured thinking, the Irish Convent School is a perpetual agency for idleness, shiftlessness, depopulation, and emigration. The best of reforms of University Education will be abortive so long as all these parasitical accretions have not been replaced by a true system of Lay Secondary Schools, with all proper provision of religious instruction. Let the religious bodies return to the sphere of religous virtues which they are calculated to adorn, while they only produce injury by their efforts to make their kingdom of this world. Let them cease to snatch the bread, and hinder the capacity, of the educated layman. The process of reform may be gradual, but it must be complete. Not a penny of public money should be given to any institution which does not show a Lay Teaching Staff, of ascertained and academic qualifi- cations, and assured of remuneration and position adequate to the dignity of learning. Finally, I renew my protest against the breach of public trust committed by the hierarchy in selling the control of Catholic University Education to the dictatorial lieutenants of the Jesuit General. The hierarchy had wasted the money of the laity, while continuing to exclude them from the public endow- ments of Maynooth ; and in the crisis of insolvency produced by mismanagement or misappropriation, THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 105 they shuffled off their obligations into the speculative strewn with clutch of the Society of St. Ignatius. I have disaster, studied with care the operation of the Jesuit organi- sation throughout the countries of Catholic Europe. I came to that study with strong prepossessions in their favour, for I had known many gifted and amiable members of the Order, and I had read voluminous laudations of their services to the Church. I have not altered my esteem for individuals, but their system is ruin to the Catholic Religion, They belong to an age before modern times. They may still be in place among barbaric and child-like races, who accept with wondering gratitude the in- scrutable mastery of beneficent preachers of salva- tion. They are incapable of the aspirations of self-governing freemen. They can stimulate fanati- cism. They cannot develop reason. They sup- plant, and call it assistance and direction. They suck the brain of the lay people, and the resulting paralysis they call it peace. They are the pro- fessional flatterers and exaggerators of every eccle- siastical pretension which they can utilise. No dogma of GEcumenical Councils is safe from their interpretations. Their path is strewn with Catholic disaster. Occupation by 2000 Jesuits garrison- ing fifty high schools preceded the Partition of Poland. For centuries they ruled over France and Italy, and their products were petits maitres and revolutions. Their insatiable vanity assails every reputation. They make themselves artless and unsectarian before the University Commission ; io6 THE IRISH FANAR See Notes while, at the same ti77ie, their leading theologian db£, pa|eT" and canonist propounds doctrines of abominable m- ^°^'^' tolerance at home. They are separated from patrio- tism by the vows of men without a country, who may be sent to gather a legacy at San Francisco for the foundation of establishments in the East Indies. I deny the right of any Episcopate and of any Government to give the control of a European National University to the learned liberticides of the Liberticide Order. Let these evangelise Indios Mansos and Asiatics. Their tyrannical constitution and traditions are hostile alike to political and intellectual freedom. State Endowment of sectarian Universities has become not only impossible but undesirable. There is no longer a valid objection to the meeting of all the youth of Ireland — without hostility to religious beliefs, with ample protection for religious beliefs — upon the common ground of love of learning and love of country. A University system established upon these unsectarian principles will be met with- out enmity, and will be endowed with generosity, by the parliamentary representatives of tens of millions of non-Catholics and non-Sectarians. But the reofulation and classification of the schools must accompany the organisation of the University. The school must be the preparation, and not the caricature, of the Higher Culture. The school must be so arranged in its courses, and in its pupils, that it may give a solid body of moderate instruction to the mass of boys destined to earn their bread with- THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 107 out University careers, and a preliminary and pre- paratory course to the students who, besides the general body of medium knowledge, are seeking the qualifications of the University Degrees. It must systematic be clearly settled how the school is to be the highest of pu"bH?'°" stage for the many, and the intermediate stage for education, the less numerous section. The Certificate of School Education should be introduced, and should be insisted upon. The common stock of general instruction, as well as the different courses special to the special Degrees, should be organised in a manner to discourage, if not to prevent, the degrading influences of the lower motives of com- petition. If, also, Catholic women and girls are to cease to lag behind the feminine culture of the foremost nations, more than irreproachable piety and cheap superficiality must be exacted from the establishments advertised for their instruction. Cram must be everywhere disfavoured, if not penalised. The actual application of every penny of public funds granted for education must be ascertained by a full measure of lay supervision. I venture to press these considerations upon the Commissioners. As a Catholic without sectarianism, as a student and graduate, as a constant supporter of denominational education, I have been convinced that, under actual circumstances, the course which I recommend is both feasible and necessary in Ireland. I would only add this observation, which I make most earnestly to the Commission, representing a io8 THE IRISH FANAR The intoier- Protcstant preponderance, not to impose on a eyo e. (;;j^t]^Qij(, country deprived of self-government that yoke which every self-governed nation of Catholi- city has cast off. Raise the national schoolmasters from their menial condition. So long as they are degraded, how can they elevate the masses of the people ? The primary schoolmasters in Ireland are still in the dependence in which their class existed in Italy previous to the Resorgimento, while the Jesuits were in glory, before the Forum Eccle- siastictim was abolished in Piedmont, and when the paternal watchword of the episcopal inspectors of education in Naples was No7i tanta instruzione. Those Italian schoolmasters were under a standing order to kiss the hem of the robes of the clergy. Establish a lay professoriate in the Secondary Schools and in the University Colleges, or never will a learned laity arise in Ireland any more than in all those Catholic countries of former times, in which a celibate clericalism swept almost as bare as a board the entire field of what was lay culture in non-Catholic lands. The history of Ireland, like the history of every Catholic country of Europe, tells with unvarying voice that hardly any Catholic scholar can hope to live by his brains in face of the cheap and confederated monopoly of the Teach- ing Congregations. Refuse every public endowment and public monopoly to the Order of St. Ignatius. Their individual virtues and scholarship do not diminish the formidable hostility of their brother- hood to independence, to progress, to liberty, to THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 109 toleration and concord between citizens of different creeds. They are the pretorians of religious despotism. They are the vehicles of cruel tradi- tions. Can that teaching bring together the Irish Catholic and the Irish Protestant, which st.U founds its theocracy on the faggot and the block, and which maintains the/«. G/««'» against the heretic? ju.G.adU. In an Appendix I subjoin the doctrine of the most authorised of living Jesuit theologians their repre- sentative in the Canonist Chair o the Gregorian U niversity, the Papal U niversity itself. J esuits make themselves sweetspoken when they are petitioners, but a score of countries have seen them m their age of crushing and desolating power. They were introduced into Irish University Education by a breach of trust. The only protection against them is the <.enerous fraternity and patriotism of united and unsectarian education. The Ignatian theories are still as sanguinary as amid the fire and sword of the wars of religion. Their velvet glove covers the same unsparing hand. National union withers in their Upas shade : Catholic progress refuses to be lighted by their San Benito. _ , ,. r»,. Let the Commission observe in Catholic Ger- „any its strong and determined sons, who foiled the Kulturkampf of Bismarck, and whose Centrums partei so often holds the balance of power in the German Reichstag. They are the children o un- sectarian Universities. While France and Italy, those ancient citadels of the clerical monopoly and the Teaching Congregation, have seen every species of no THE IRISH FANAR disaster fall upon a degenerate Catholicism, the German Catholics have won all along the line. Their most illustrious scholars are professors in the State Universities, where no bishop dominates and Some where no Jesuit can enforce the mandate of his clthJ)^" General. Let the Commission but glance at this scholars. list. It is the enumeration of the Catholic men of learning who are now engaged in bringing out a vast work of popular instruction, the *' Epochs of the World's History," in forty or fifty volumes. The editors of the undertaking are three well- known scholars : Dr. Franz Kampers, Sekretar a. d. kgl. bayr. Hof- u. Staats-Bibl. zu Munchen ; D. Dr. Sebastian Merkle, o. Professor d. Kirchen- geschichtea. d. U. Wurzburg; Dr. Martin Spahn, o. Professor d. Geschichte a. d. U. Straszburg i. E. Their colleagues are not less distinguished: Dr. Engelbert Drerup, Privatdozent a. d. U. Munchen ; Dr. iur. et. phil. Christian Eckert, o. Dozent a. d. Handelshochschule Koln ; D. Dr. Albert Ehrhard, o. Professor a. d. U. Wien, Mitglied der kaiserl.osterr. Akademie der Wissenschaften ; Dr. Heinrich Finke, o. Professor a. d. U. Freiburg i. Br. ; Dr. Hermann Grauert, o. Professor a. d. U. Munchen, Mitglied der kgl. bayr. Akademie der Wissenschaften ; Dr. Hubert Grimme, o. Professor a. d. U. Freiburg i. Schw. ; Dr. Georg Grupp, flirstl. otting. Bibliothekar auf Schloss Maihingen ; D. Dr. Edmund Hardy, Professor in Wurzburg ; Dr. Georg Freiherr von Hertling, o. Professor a. d. U. Munchen, Mitglied der kgl. bayr. Akademie der Wissenschaften ; THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION iii Dr. Max lansen in Munchen ; Dr. Wilhelm Free science . 1 r^ 1 T 11 ' r^ and manly Kienzl, Komponist und Schiftsteller in Graz ; faith. D. Dr. Alois Knofler, o. Professor a. d. U. Mun- chen ; D. Dr. Hugo Koch, Stadtpfarrer zu Reut- lingen ; D. Dr. Franz Xaver Kraus, o. Professor a. d. U. Freiburg i. Br., Geh. Hofrat ; Dr. Ernest Lindl, Privatdozent a. d. U. Munchen ; Karl Muth, Hauptredakteur in Einsiedeln ; Dr. Georg Pfeils- chifter, a. o. Professor am Lyceum in Freising ; Dr. Clemens Schafer, Assistent am physik. Institut d. techn. Hochschule zu Charlottenburg ; Dr. Aloys Schulte, o. Professor a. d. U. Breslau ; D. Dr. Max Sdralek, o. Professor a. d. U. Breslau ; Dr. Karl Weyman, a. o. Professor a. d. U. Munchen. Most of them are professors in unsectarian Uni- versities and high schools. Many of them are priests. All of them are Catholics, who do not stoop to love the twilight, nor to hate the comrade- ship of brother Germans professing a different religion. There is the example which the Com- mission should follow and approve, the example of Free Science and Manly Faith. The dishonest coiip dMat which dissolved the Queen's University has thrown back Ireland fifty years. It wronged and disheartened thousands of Catholic students and graduates, belonging to all classes and professions, who were entrenching the principles of patriotic toleration in the very heart of the Irish nation. The only excuse for the injury done to them and to the country was, that they were not still more numerous; and it was blindly 112 THE IRISH FANAR Regenera- repeated that the Catholic Conscience was against tionofedu- , ^, /• . itt-i • i cation in them. It was a lie / What was against them was the miserable preparation in the diocesan dunce* schools and the shoppy speculations of the Teaching Congregations. What was against them was the stupid stinginess of ignorant Governments and the poor, little expediencies of an Accommodating Protestantism. Restore to Ireland that consoling vision of widening education and disappearing hates. The last pretence of dogmatic scruple is exploded. Why shall not Irish Catholics enjoy as full a right to mingle with their countrymen as English Catholics in the common halls of Oxford and Cambridge } PART II NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS " The best educated and the cleverest young priests come out of Maynooth, absolutely deficient in all classical educa- tion, and in all scientific and mathematical education, and, above all, deficient in that undefiuable thing that is not knowledge, but culture." Evidence of Most Rev. Dr. O'Dwyer, Catholic Bishop of Livicyick, before the University Commission. •' No people will suffer more than Catholics if they are not to meet in their student days, between the ages, say, ot twenty and twenty-five, the men whom they will meet in the honourable ccinpetition of the professions afterwards. . . . The solution of a separate University would not be accepted as adequate or final by a large body of Cathohc laymen." Evidence of Mr. N.f. Synnott, B.A., a Catholic witness before the University Commission. " Unless Religious Catholicism takes the place of Political CathoUcism, that curse of Catholic society, there can be little hope for the progress of the Church among modem nations." Very Rev. Dr. F. X. Kraus, Royal Bavarian Hofrath, Catholic Professor of History in. tks^ University of Freibtirg-in-Breisgau. **The most important question of all is, whence comes the want of initiative and enterprise in the field of Science among those Catholics who are in a position to devote them- selves to this undertaking ? . . . There can be no doubt that the explanatiorr of the want of Catholic initiative in many departments of culture, and the failure to pursue the highest ideals in conformity with the spiritual wealth and elevation of the Catholic religion, is to be found in the hostility to all progress which is exhibited by a Tradition- alist Party for ever persecuting every larger aim with sus- picion and censorship." Rev. Dr. Schell, Cathohc Professor of Theology in the University of Wurzburg. & THE MYSTERIES OF FANAEIOTE FINANCE IN IRELAND How persecution produced monopoly, and how penal prohibition confers absolute licence — this might be the title of a chapter on Ecclesiastical Finance in Ireland. By Ecclesiastical Finance I mean the doings of Ecclesiastics with the finances of the Irish Laity. In dealing with this subject I do not mean for the world to intermeddle with the precept that Those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel. The amount of lay contributions which are expended on the preaching of the Gospel, and the amount which goes upon undetermined items of expenditure or investment, are very different matters. Even with regard to the former, there is no Gospel precept against showing that it is actually devoted to its sacred purpose ; while as regards the latter neither Scripture nor Equity can have a word to say against the stewards of the Church making answer to the Church, and not merely to themselves, for the moneys entrusted to their stewardship. All over Ireland, urgent wants of the lay Catholic community are left unattended. All over Ireland, not even v^ants, but mere caprices of the ii6 THE IRISH FANAR Clergy are the excuse for costly outlay, v All over Ireland, and outside of Ireland, the sight of Collecting Priests on all sorts of mendicant missions is an abiding vision. Sometimes it is to construct a sumptuous cathedral in a hamlet of grog shops and hovels. Sometimes it is to raise a memorial church of marble, at a cost of ;^8o,ooo, on an unin- habited hillside in Kerry out of respect to the birth- place of Daniel O'Connell. Sometimes it is to defray the mistake of an architect. Sometimes it is to pay the bill of a Jew purveyor of decorative mon- strosities. Never is it to endow the most crying needs of a Catholic University. If anybody asks for an account, the reply will be that of the venerable Prelate who, presiding over the building committee of his own cathedral, genially remarked to an in- quisitive contributor : "There is perfect liberty of opinion on this committee, but if these offensive questions are continued, I shall be driven to resign the chair." As I was sending this page to the printers, I found in a clerical journal another gratifying example of the pious care of the venerable Episcopate for everything except a Catholic University, lender the familiar heading of "New Episcopal Residence," the sympathetic journalist announces the issue of another pastoral exhortation to the faithful laity of another Irish diocese, *' pastoral " signifying for the benefit of the pastor : " The Most Rev. Dr. Owens, Bishop of Clogher, has issued a pastoral appealing for aid in the building of a suitable episcopal THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 117 residence adjoining St. Macarten's Cathedral, Monaghan. His lordship obtained a suitable plot of five acres on a lease for 999 years, 'at a reasonable price, from Lord Rossmore, and the building is now nearly finished. The total cost is estimated at ;,^5ooo, of which ^2000 has beeti already contributed by the clergy. A collection in Monaghan realised ;^255, and his lordship now appeals to the laity throughout his diocese to contribute to a general collection to be made in all the churches during the present month." How delightfully characteristic that touch about the fund "contributed by the clergy," as if every shilling of it had not been collected from the laity ! What more natural than that a new episcopal resi- dence should follow a new episcopal cathedral ? Finis coronal opus. At the same time, I learn that amid the dwindling population and educational misery of the Diocese of Meath, the local bishop is organising his devout lieges for the construction of — again not, certainly not, a Catholic University — another New Cathedral ! A new residence, beyond a doubt, will necessarily follow as usual, il it has not preceded. There will, doubtless, continue to be several meetings of powerful patriots and patriotic priests within the culture-loving bounds of Clogher and Meath to bewail the wants of Irish Education, and to denounce the indifference of a Saxon Government. Those admirable ministers of religion simply cannot sleep o' nights for pastoral anxiety about bursaries for poor students and the burning love of popular instruction ! But will the Commissioners inquire how many thousands of pounds, or pence, were recently contributed in these ii8 THE IRISH FANAR " pastoral " dioceses for the University Education of lay students ; and will they ask to see the vouchers ? Every kind and category of Trust Funds in Ireland may be matter of account and explanation, except the Religious and Educational Trusts of the Catholic Laity. For them the outlawry of the Penal Days has never been repealed. Irish Catholics have no legal right to a knowledge of what becomes of their own money. The protective aegis of Accommodating Protestantism, mirabile visu, guarantees the Clerical Trustees of Catholicism from every species of respon- sibility. We give millions out of our poverty or our mediocrity. Our contributions are collected, and lo ! already they are not. We have no Ministry of Education or Worship, as in Catholic Governments, to ensure the attainment of the objects we meant to support. The quarter-million sterling, at least, which was subscribed by the Catholic laity to the Catholic University, disappeared, and left nothing but " bare walls" behind. "When I received Catholic Univer- sityCollegein 1883 from the Bishops,"says its present Rector, Rev. Dr. Delaney, S.J , " there were nothing but bare walls, without libraries, museums, or laboratories." Yet in a single year, I have said, the Most Eminent Cardinal Logue — a most unselfish prelate — was able to collect, as the net product of a fancy fair, ;^30,ooo for the decoration of an overgrown cathedral, which had already ex- ceeded ;^ 1 00, 000 in a petty town of some 5000 or 6000 Catholics ! Let me give more fully than before the evidence THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 119 that the Fellowships of the Royal University, in- tended by Parliament for the provision of efficient professors and examiners for the Catholic laity, were diverted to the useless support of outworn servants of the hierarchy, who were long past teaching, and who were incapable of efficiency. The characteristic job was the scandal and the mirth of Dublin. It stands thus recorded in the testimony of the reverend Jesuit who has become Rector of the long suffering institution : " When the College was handed over first to me there were then at the institution, as Fellows, eight gentlemen who had been Professors in the Catholic University, many of whom came with Dr. Newman. They were mostly elderly men, and I found when I undertook the management of the College that the students would not attend their lectures. I was, therefore, obliged to employ a very large staff of tutors, so much that there was a deficit of close upon £x^oo at the end of the first year, which my colleagues and I had to provide. We undertook the heavy obligation of working the College and finding the necessary tutors. At the end of five years a debt had been incurred of ;^6ooo, of which ;^2000 still remain." No one can deny to the Jesuit Order tne most thorough devotion to their object, the most un- shrinking sacrifices to their end. But what is to be said of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy who had per- petrated this . . . irregularity ? They went on building fancy cathedrals and episcopal villas ; but they saddled their outworn Professors on the Fellowship Ftmd of the Royal University as tipon an Old Age Pension. I can fully understand the Protestant Senators of the Royal University being inexperienced 120 THE IRISH FANAR in these refinements of Irish Episcopal Financing ; but what of the Catholic Senators ? It is true that they were among the other blessings imposed by our Protestant Government upon the laity of Ireland. From the days of Cardinal Newman in Ireland, half a century ago, the amount of money raised by the Catholic Hierarchy from the Catholic Laity for every kind of ecclesiastical and quasi-ecclesiastical object has been simply enormous. At the very lowest figure it cannot have been less than ;^2 0,000,000 sterling, and probably a great deal more. Nobody knows how it was spent. At any rate, no part of it was spent upon providing the most necessary furniture for the Catholic University, nor for paying a retiring allowance to the worn out and weary old professors, who had once shared the hopes of Newman, and who had to face the disappointing reality of an Episcopate prodigal of expenditure in every direction except education. That Episcopate preferred to misappropriate the Fellowship Foundations of a University, specially created by Parliament to aid Catholic learning, and preferred to neglect Catholic learning in order to discharge their overdue debt to deserving vetera7is. If this is done in the green tree, what will be done with the rich endowments which this same Episcopate expect from Mr. Bal- four's good-natured proposals } If this has been done with public funds, ear-marked and set apart for a special purpose, what use is being made of the hundred thousands sterling of Result Fees, which have been "conveyed" by the ecclesiastical THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 121 authorities of Irish Catholic Education, " without the slightest inquiry," since the passing of the Inter- mediate Schools Act ? As the Catholic Bishop of Limerick very candidly testified before the Univer- sity Commission the other day, on the subject of the unchecked disposal of the tens of thousands a year under the Intermediate System : " There is absolutely no inquiry of any kind. My Diocesan Schoolis in receipt of ;^5oo or ;£6oo a year. I can do absolutely what I like with the money. I can build a Catholic Church with it. I can use it to send missionaries to any quarter of the globe. No one ever asks what is done with the mo?iey." Without account to render to Catholic contributors or to Protestant taxpayers, how blessed, and thrice blessed, is the Finance of our Fanariote Hierarchy ! PRIESTS AND TEMPORALITIES : A SPECIAL DANGER There is one special danger in the exercise of authority, perhaps specially financial authority, by priests outside of their sacerdotal sphere ; which, though most honourable to the true priest, is full of ruin to the general community. I refer to the merciful side of the priest's mission, to the infinite charity of his ministrations ; to his habit of seeing the best in the worst of men ; to his perpetual expectation of amendment; to his faith and confi- dence in the regeneration of repentance ; to his desire to conciliate, to arrange compromises, to hush 122 THE IRISH FANAR up scandals ; to give a start to new lives on a basis of pardon and promises, in the pious hope of performances. All that conduct is admirable and angelical in the office of spiritual father, in family councils, in the sphere of charity, and frailty, and forgiveness without end. Protestant or Catholic, the unbusinesslike minister of religion is a darling of popular affection throughout the world. But all that prodtices habits of mind absolutely fatal to the management of public af[airs, to the exaction of stainless standards of public duty, to the safeguarding, against even the shade of sus- picion, of a proud and delicate sense of public honour. In the tribunal of conscience the darkest offences may hope in the infinite mercy of God. In the Councils of the Nation, in the functions of Public Trust, the lightest contagion of dishonour must create a disqualification to endure eternally so far as this earth is concerned. A converted criminal recovers his rights in Christ's Kingdom ; but a national legislature cannot exercise the compassion which belongs to infinite knowledge and power. The pardon of the priest leaves unmoved and immovable the ban of the citizen. No assurance of personal salvation can be a guarantee to the honour of the State. It is impossible for the student of society to over look a thousand indications of the intrusion of the inopportune mercy of the sanctuary into the concerns of public life in Ireland. Especially in conjunction THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 123 with the degrading interpenetration of the lower politics and electioneering into the habits of the Irish priesthood, the merciful maxim about ** pardonable frailty " means laxity, mismanagement, mendacity, dishonesty in the municipality, the public council, the legislative representation I vividly remember the anecdote told by an experienced friend of mine, who had sought by multiplied testimonies to convince a white-haired priest, an angel of goodness, of the perfect unworthiness ot his Member of Parliament. Instance after mstance had been given of the representative ^ abuse of his position of public trust to improve his private fortune. "And now, Father, what can you say to that ? " The response was simply annihilating ' And how do ye know thin that he is so much worse than the other blaggards?" When you see in Ireland the same election committee uniting, round the same greasy table, the vicars-general ot the Bishop, the shady attorney known for sharp practices, the habitual drunkard who is mfluential as a money-lender, and the corner publican who drenches with vice a whole quarter of the city , when you see, hundred times repeated, these examples of clerical simplicity or obtuseness, you can have no difficulty about appreci- ating the part which an easy-gotng priesthood ca7t play m the demoralisation of public affairs Nor, in turn, can it be hard to understand that there must be deterioration also for the electioneering priest himself when he returns to the exercise of his Christian ministry after those days and weeks of 124 THE IRISH FANAR uproarious intimacy — on the canvass, on the platform, haunted by few scruples — with the cute practitioner of intimidation and the sottish debaucher of a town- land, who were such stout political allies.^ Yet this is the troubled fount of that clerical authority, which dominates the primary school, which trades on the intermediate school, which claims the censorship of learning and the selection of professors in the Universities of the nation ! THE TRIFOLD FUNCTIONS OF AN IRISH CATHOLIC BISHOP As I was led to remark about the Greek Clergy in Constantinople, after the conquest by the Turks, a period of uncontrolled ascendency over the Greek laity set in for the ecclesiastical element under the protection of the Ottoman Government. There had been nothing of the kind in Greek Christian times. So long as the Comneni and the Palseologi wore the Imperial Crown of Constantine, even the * The relations between priests and publicans form one of the most disheartening features of the Irish social situation. While episcopal pastorals lament the drink traffic, episcopal purses wel- come the devout generosity of the drink-trafficker. The collecting priest is in the back parlour of the alcohol shop, while the par- ishioners are getting drunk in the taproom. The Catholic Justices of the Peace, nominees of the bishops and the boycotters, crowd every licensing sessions to grant superfluous licences to drunken neighbourhoods. In clerical Dublin there is an alcohol shop to every fifty adult males in the population. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 125 Patriarch had to mind his manners and his practices in everything which touched the lay domain, and in a good many things which he might call the ecclesiastical domain. Happy was the Greek prelate who never incurred the stern reprimand of the Lay Autocrat of Christian Byzantium! Under the standard of Mohammed all that was changed. The lordly Moslim regarded the conquered Chris- tians merely according to their ''religion," and recognisc:d in the Religious Pontiffs the heads of the subject race. The last Emperor lay in his hero grave. The Patriarch became Emperor and Patriarch combined, so long as he was the useful vassal of Bajazet or Selim. The iChristian layman was his to fleece and flay. Mr. John Morley or Mr. Arthur Balfour is hardly a precise equivalent for the least of the Padishahs, and even dissipating the resources of the Catholic University does not reproduce the recorded exploits of the original Fanariotes. But the substance of the thing is there. A non- Catholic Power, at first too scornful, latterly too stupid, to distinguish between Laity and Clericality in the conquered nation, found it contemptuous or convenient to throw the former to the discretion of the latter; and to expect, in return, that the Venerable Bishops would not make themselves too uncomfortably irreconcilable towards his Majesty's Government. Having begun by forbidding the Catholic Clergy to do anything, his Majesty's Government went on to wink at their doing every- 126 THE IRISH FANAR thing. Even in penal days, there was often a subterranean or an aerial telegraph at work between the King's Viceroy and the Prohibited Episcopacy of the four provinces The Protestant wind was officially tempered to the Hierarchical lamb. Pitt and Castlereagh did not wait for Catholic Emancipa- tion before consulting Archbishop Troy about the Act of Union. The process has continued and developed. Some of the old impoliteness remains. Though an Eminence of Armagh be commanded to dinner with a British Sovereign, there are still nominal enactments against bequests for superstitious uses. E nactments which have been utilised to prove to pious donors the necessity of making their donations in a manner which cannot be traced by the tribunals, nor by any one else! The Coronation Oath lacks some graces of language, but a Bishop can always secure the making of a J.P. ; and though nobody thought of consulting the Catholic graduates about a seat on the University Commission, the See of Clonfert is not only represented, but is backed by a couple of very good friends. The lines of the Irish Fanariotes are laid in very pleasant places. As for lay Catholic rights, they are as unwritten in the Authorised Version as in the Koran of the Seljuks I am sometimes tempted to recognise a sectarian purpose, I might say a controversial purpose, in the deliberate manner in which the Protestant Govern- ment in Ireland leaves every lay Catholic right at the mercy of the clerical dictatorship. In order to prove, it would seem, that Catholic laymen are THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 127 naturally priest-ridden, our Protestant Government sets the priest astride of the layman in every department of life, no matter how foreif^n to the legitimate scope of clerical duty. If this be the calculation, it is a vile, a heartless, and a dishonour- able one. No Catholic Government, unless wilfully blind to the catastrophes of a dozen Catholic nations, would tolerate for an hour the intrusion of the ecclesiastic into the domain of the laity, which is forced upon the Irish nation by the English policy. The Protestant Government has made Ireland the paradise of Catholic Clericalism. The spiritual and temporal representative of Harry the Eighth, even when not engaged in heaping Royal University Fellowships on the employees of the General of the Jesuits, forces every corner of lay life, however humble, under the ubiquitous domination of the privileged croziers. A simple illustration, one of hundreds, of the ascendency in lay affairs which is accorded to the cleric, is afforded by a recent occurrence in the temporal principality of a venerable personage, who combines the triple distinction of Catholic Bishop, Agrarian Leaguer, and Government Functionary ! In the Poor Law Union of Glenties, in the poorest and most Irish-speaking district of Donegal, the local guardians, the other day, had to elect a master for the workhouse. Seeing the Irish-speaking character of the population, the Glenties Guardians had passed a resolution binding themselves to prefer Irish-speaking applicants. Nobody, indeed, who 128 THE IRISH FANAR does not understand Gaelic, can speak with the majority of the poor inmates of the workhouse. Of four candidates for the post only one could speak Irish. Being a respectable man, with good recom- mendations, was he appointed master } A higher authority than consistency with policy, or care for the poor, intervened in the matter. The following letter was addressed to the Guardians by a repre- sentative of the Supreme Domination. At the same time, the Supreme Domination took measures for the disposal of another salaried office in the theo- retical and legal appointment of the Board of Guardians. " Dear Mr. , I shall feel exceedingly grateful to you if you will support the candidate of my choice for the Mastership of the Glenties Workhouse, Mr. Bernard Quigley. He is highly qualified for the position, having been trained for some time as clerk in the office of the County Council. On the score of family connections, being nephew of the Noble Bishop of the Diocese^ he stands high. His character, too, is blameless and irreproachable. On the matter of the Medical Officership, I hope you will have the kindness to hold yourself free until all the candidates are in the field, and that you will decide to support the man whom, after full and serious consideration, I shall regard best deserving of your vote. On this matter of Medical Officer I hope to address you again further on. — I remain, yours always truly, James M'Fadden, P.P. Without an instant's hesitation the resolution in favour of Gaelic-speaking applicants was thrown overboard, and " the nephew of the Noble Bishop " got the job. When the time came, the Medical Officership could be filled on the same principle THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 129 And this is the sort of influence which is to govern the appointments to the Senate and Professorships of a Catholic University ! Here we have the regen- erating "atmosphere," which is wanting to Oxford and Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin ; but which will supply just the one touch of climatic perfection for ripening all the fruits of intellect and character ! The Noble Bishop of the Diocese of Raphoe, whose pastoral lineage can seat themselves on the thrones of the workhouses of Donegal, is a Prelate of the usual good repute in his Episcopal office. Personally he is without blame for the existing system. But the episcopal office and the cure of souls need form only one of the attributions of a Catholic Bishop under that clerical providence, the English Government of Ireland. Not only is the Bishop of Raphoe one of the stoutest of militant agrarians and United Irish leaguers, ex-chairman of Irish Race Conventions, &c. He is also one of the most I7ifiue7itial Government functionaries in Ireland. Mr. Healy states, that the political and agrarian Prelate received his Government nomination to the Congested Districts Board immediately after placing the Dillon Party in control of the Freemans Journal; but I have not consulted Mr. John Morley on the connection. Most probably Mr. John Morley, a passing visitor to Dublin Castle, knew no more of the inwardness of the transaction beyond that he was following the good old Castle maxim : " Always give a leg up to a Bishop." I I30 THE IRISH FANAR The Congested Districts Board, best known to Englishmen in connection with Mr. Horace Plunkett, is that useful endowment of administration in Ireland, which distributes scores of thousands of pounds yearly to parcel out the estates of landlords and to subsidise the breeders of Connemara ponies and the workers in Donegal cottage industries. Why a Catholic Bishop should be distracted from the spiritual charge of a vast Donegal diocese, always urgently in want of religious attention, in order to preside over the selection of fishery piers at Killybegs and donkey stallions in West Sligo ; why this curious accumulation of pastoral cares and public subsidies should have occurred at all, can only be adumbrated by a reference to the relations of Dublin Castle and its clerical darlings. When " the Noble Bishop of the Diocese " quits the Council Chamber in Castle Yard to preside over an O'Brienite Convention for the abolition of the English Garrison, the inter- dependence of the two proceedings might require an Irish Chief Secretary to annotate. Assuredly, I think, you might search civilisation in vain for such another remarkable representative of the Church, the State, and the Revolution. Tria juncta in tmo, with a vengeance! It can escape nobody, however, that a clerical magnate, who, to all the exceptional domination of an Irish prelate, adds the disposal of the Public Aid to Distressed Ireland, may be reason- ably regarded by his lowly flock as entitled to much more than the decisive voice in Workhouse Master- ships and Medical Relief. As a matter of fact, at THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 131 the last Elections, " the Noble Bishop " hunted every Member of Parliament for a Donegal constituency who had not received the saving grace of confirmation by a Convention of the United Irish League. Such may be the uses to which a Protestant Government can put even a Congested Districts Board, under the influence of that fixed idea of making a Catholic Clericalism the alpha and omega of unfortunate Ireland. When that clericalism gets the grip on the Future Education Budget, what good times it will bring to conscience and intelligence in every Irish seat of learning ! It would be unjust, I repeat, to blame the " Noble Bishop of the Diocese " for this state of things. It is the Fanariote System, the system bringing the Clergy into lay positions and lay authority, which produces this humiliating and repulsive confusion of things temporal and things spiritual ; ecclesiastics touting for relatives of ecclesiastics ; episcopal ascendency and poor law relief; denunciation of Government and endowment by Government ; the Apostolic Succession and the mastership of a work- house ; the ministry of the Gospel and the manu- facture of Members of Parliament. Self-respect, self-government, loyalty, nationality, everything becomes extraordinary in this extraordinary hotch- potch of citizenship and churchmanship. In a Catholic country the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Worship would settle the whole confusion in a week. If it is only to exhibit Catholics as incompetent and incapable, as a sort of 132 THE IRISH FANAR "drunken helots," that these abuses are perpetrated by a Protestant Government, the trick is hardly creditable either to Government or to Protestantism. SOME DEDUCTIONS FROM THE AVOWED IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY In the admissions or avowals which the Catholic Bishop of Limerick made before the Irish Uni- versity Commission with regard to the appalling ignorance of the Irish Clergy, even those of its members who are selected for their superior attain- ments to teach the secondary schools, there are to be noted, first, the avowals ; and, secondly, what is implied in this condition of clerical unculture. And let us not forget that Maynooth College, the grand training college of these incapables, has been en- dowed generously by the State for a century ; that its resources have been denied to all but clerical students ; and that in a hundred years there was ample time to found and form a body of accom- plished teachers and professors in this great seminary of the Irish Clergy. With these preliminaries in mind, we can now follow the Bishop of Limerick's testimony. In his evidence on September 19, 1901, the Bishop of Limerick stated : " The clergy have no education corresponding to their posi- tion. . . Of 118 secular priests under my jurisdiction, none, save six. have any University degree or education whatever. . . . THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 133 Almost all secondary education in Ireland is in the hands of the Clergy. In almost every diocese there is a seminary, which is the school both for candidates for ecclesiastical colleges and for lay- men. . . The Clergy that teach them have never received a true education. . . The Bishop selects amongst his young priests generally one just ordained. He chooses the best educated and cleverest as teacher of the school. . . These young priests are clever men . . . bttt they come out of May fiooth absolutely deficient in all classical education, and in all scietitific and mathematical education, and, above all, deficient in that undefinable thing that is not knowledge, but culture — something which you cannot put your hand on, a something which cultivates a sense of honour, and a right judgment with regard to the affairs of life. I could not find among the priests of my diocese a single man who was co77ipe- tent to teach the schoolboys in my school the very elements of either Chemistry, Botany, Physics, or any of the Natural Sciences." Now this is a very horrible state of ignorance among even " the best educated and cleverest " members of the Irish Catholic Clergy. Of course, we are well aware of it in Ireland, where every man of culture and learning has to bewail the ascendency, the crushing predominance, in every department of life of a vast and omnipotent organisation destitute of every claim to intellectual leadership. Thanks to this candid Irish Catholic Bishop, we have the frightful business now divulged on the best authority to the general public of the three king- doms. We may assume that the Bishop had a motive for his candour. As a matter of fact, he, like every other Irish Bishop, is engaged in trying to work upon the feelings of the public, so as to obtain the grant of large endowments, which are to be applied to education, as the Bishops understand 134 THE IRISH FANAR it, under the existing supremacy of the Episcopal Power and Clerical Organisation. We may presume, however, that the most reverend witness, a bishop of exceptional merit, would have given no different testimony, even if he had not the same motive. As to the need of endowments for education in Ireland there can be no doubt. As for pouring those en- dowments into the Episcopal sieve or the Episcopal collecting-box, that is a totally different question. What arises directly, however, from this revelation of the wholesale manufacture of clerical persons of the most negative education is of the most vital importance to the comprehension of the desolating gravity of the entire social situation in Ireland. As the illustration of the sum of the efforts which the Irish clerical authorities have put forth during a century of Maynooth endowments and lay subscrip- tions, of architectural constructions of the most expensive kind, and remunerative fancy fairs, and devout lotteries, and the rest of the hundred and one means for the acquisition of millions sterling, as the crowning illustration of what the Irish Bishops have done for the education even of "the best educated and the cleverest " of the priests, this narrative is at once overwhelming and fearful. Not that the holiest minister of religion who ever lived has any need, as regards the most sacred efficiency of his sacred office, of any learning beyond the Scriptures and the mission of the Church ; but such holy priests, devoted to religion and morals alone, do not tout for paid situations for the relatives THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 135 of priests, do not domineer and electioneer the civic life of their country, do not boycott lay learning, do not snatch the bread of subsistence out of the mouths of lay competitors in every walk of lay employment. It is the overwhelming ignorance of the Irish clergy, when taken in connection with their overwhelming interference, which makes that ignorance the terror and the despair of the reformer and the patriot. In the first place, while "the best educated and the cleverest" are reserved to be the incompetent and ludicrous teachers of the secondary schools, and very often afterwards to bud and blossom into bishops as the least unpresentable specimens pro- curable, the whole mass of the others, who are not even fit for this burlesque of teaching, form the rank and file of the parochial clergy ; and that parochial clergy dominates the public life of Ireland. Imagine the parliamentary candidates who represent the choice of that clerical directory ! Nay, it is not necessary to imagine. We have seen them in the flesh. Every social undertaking, every sort of function of public and private life, is permeated by the intellectuality of that unlettered multitude. And remember the Irish priests are no fools. They are quick and keen. But in the absence of knowledge and culture, their native ability, stimulated by their professional sense of importance — a sense of im- portance which may be quite just in itself — adds to the hopelessness of the outlook. In the second place, all that mass of clerical ignorance, too gross even for teachership in the 136 THE IRISH FANAR diocesan dunce-schools, is the legal and omnipotent and irresponsible master of the primary schools and primary schoolmasters of the country. This is just one of the appalling features of the situation, this absolute subjection, not only in Faith and Morals but in everything, of the 3000 or 4000 National School Teachers of Catholic Ireland. The vast bulk of the population of Ireland is educated by National School Teachers, who might be sources of intellectual and social reform, but who are the help- less serfs of that parochial clergy. The Catholic Bishop of Limerick, in his convin^ cing evidence before the University Commission, shows that he can appreciate some of the gravity of this situation. " There is another relation of the Clergy to Education," he says, "which, I think, is extremely important, and might be referred to here, and that is, that throughout all Ireland, or the greater part of Ireland, the Clergy of the Catholic Church are the managers of the primary schools under the National Board ; and the managers of the primary schools under the National Board are vested with very great authority. They select the teachers ; they locally control the whole working of the schools. . . Therefco, I think, it is a most desirable thing that the Clergy who hold that most responsible position in relation to primary education should themselves have had a good higher education and be able to appreciate the issues that are at stake in the working of the primary schools." The Bishop of Limerick is a thousand times right. He cannot deny that the parochial clergy are about the most incompetent managers of Irish primary education who can be possibly conceived. But he THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 137 does not propose that the parochial clergy should have no part in the management of the primary schools beyond the requisite supervision of Faith and Morals. No, he, like all the bishops, wants to keep Primary, Secondary, and University Education, strictly under the clerical thumb, strictly in the same clerical chokefast, which has paralysed the intellectual energies of the Irish race since generations. Those ignorant clergymen, parochial priests and curates, who are even more ignorant than the ignorant teachers of the diocesan schools, it is they who " manage the primary schools " ; it is they who "select the teachers," on the principles of selection d{ that Glenties Union, the principle of comparative relationship to the clerical dispenser of patronage. They "locally control the whole working of the schools ! " They can dismiss any unfortunate teacher whom they do not find sufficiently servile, or whose situation they require for another nominee. Though unable " to appreciate the issues that are at stake in the working of the primary schools," they can decide those issues precisely as they choose, and without the slighest knowledge or care of the interests involved. I suppose there is nothing on earth much more appalling than the ignorance which is daily and yearly disseminated throughout the Irish population by these clericalised national schools, under the hands of their crushed and dominated teachers, and under the heel of that managing parochialism, so absolute, so arrogant, and so incompetent. 138 THE IRISH FANAR Let us see the sort of pupils whom the clericalised primary school turns out to be the parliamentary- electors and the municipal rulers of unfortunate Ireland. It is perfectly evident that as regards the vast majority of the poorer classes — the men who wield political power in Ireland, and who would be the masters of Ireland in case of Home Rule — their National School Education has left them absolutely ignorant. The Bishop of Limerick speaks with undisguised dread of their dangerous illiteracy. They have been so slightly tinctured with even the most elementary education that they forget it all, or they have never acquired it. " Uneducated, un- enlightened, absolutely unfit for the duties they have to discharge, hardly able to write their own names," such is the description which he applies to the electors of Limerick. His pictures of a class above these darkened masses, even the writers who cater for the reading portion of them, throws a not less lurid light upon the hopeless incapacity of the sort of Denominational Education which generations of priests and bishops, under the combined benedic- tions of Maynooth and Dublin Castle, have main- tained and enforced in Ireland. "Take up our Catholic newspapers — papers that profess to support Catholic principles — they write things that are shocking to a man who understands Catholic principles, that are simply revolutionary, that are simply Socialistic, and which, if they were carried out to their logical conclusion, would simply turn society topsy-turvy. . . The articles," continued the Bishop of Limerick, " are written by uneducated Catholic men, and I think they are the most dangerous class the country was ever left to." THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 139 What a testimony to the priest managed, priest taught, " thoroughly denominational," schools, pri- mary and secondary, which have produced this ignorance, this unscrupulousness, and this public and private danger to liberty, to property, to order ! When I flung down my membership of the Irish Parliamentary Party in March or April 1883, 1 clearly saw that the greatest obstacle to Irish self-government would be the Irish themselves, and that it was not Home Rule in itself, but Home Rule as it threatened to be carried out, which barred the road of Irish Nationhood. Was there ever such a cruel commentary upon the educational influence of a Denominational, nay rather a Sacer- dotal, Monopoly ? Surely it did not want the endowments of a Protestant State in order to teach the elements of social morality and Christian Civilisa- tion. Maynooth has been pouring out generations of ignorant ecclesiastics for a whole century. It has been teaching in secondary schools and manag- ing in primary schools for three-quarters of a century. Maynooth has been satisfied with do7nination and has ignored education. It has possessed everything and depressed everything. It has covered the country with material architecture and with intel- lectual ruin. No penal laws forced it to produce those hundreds and those thousands of illiterate priests, who were unfit to be the teachers ot a dunce-school, but who controlled everything and deteriorated everything from workhouse situations 140 THE IRISH FANAR to the representation of the people. As the reward of their waste, they now want more endowment! As the reward of their incapacity, they demand a renewed and extended charter of domination! Does the Fanar beheve itself to be so indispens- able ? The Irish Episcopate, which insists upon holding the reins, or rather maintaining the gags, of Irish Education, would do well to explain an apparent misapplication of public funds in Maynooth itself. The Protestant Parliament of Ireland and the Protestant Parliament of England have endowed Maynooth with annual sums which usually came nearer to ;^30,ooo a year than to ;^20,ooo a year. Beyond locking the Catholic Laity out of doors, what have the clerical managers of Maynooth done for even clerical ediication ? Did they spend the Maynooth Grant on Old Age Pensions as they did the Fellowships of the Royal University } HOW DENOxMINATIONAL EDUCATION IS NOT RELIGIOUS EDUCATION At the first blush Denominationalism seems to be an incredibly roundabout way of spelling Shop ; but the more careful study of the so-called Catholic Colleges and Schools in Ireland will easily dispel the last doubts about this orthographical puzzle. In other words, however much the Catholic schools of Ireland may merit the designation of clerical, their claim to the description of Catholic in anv religious THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 141 sense is distinctly small. They are shops of inferior education for the profit of clerical shopkeepers, and their Catholicism mainly consists in the transfer of coin of the reahn from the pockets of their customers to the tills of the shopkeepers. If you take an average pupil, or even a pupil far above the average, of those schools, and question him upon anything Catholic much above the compass of the penny Catechism, you will, in nine cases in ten, find the most negative results. The history, the civilisation, the literature of Catholic Christianity, the movements of European morals, the leaders and the leading features of Catholic society through the ages, the differences or the similarities between the characteristics of Christian countries, centuries, or social and political systems — all, all is a closed book to the boys and girls whom the clerical profession of the schoolkeepers has attracted to the classes and the cashier's office of the institution. Nor need it be supposed that there is any, even the slightest, deception or dishonesty of any con- scious kind about these monastic and conventual undertakings. The habits of ignorance, the freedom from criticism, the sweet confidence that when it is well with the Teaching Congregation it must be well with the pupils ; the feeling and conviction that the pious invocations and devout exercises of the curriculum are, in fact, the best education con- ceivable or desirable ; the absence of any com- petition or possibility of competition ; this suffices 142 THE IRISH FANAR to explain why a young Catholic can spend his entire youth in these edifying establishments, and come out a thoroughly ignorant Catholic to face the world, to meet with men of other religions, or to defend his own. The clerical keepers of these schools see nothing incongruous in employing Protestant teachers rather than Catholic, especially if the former are reputed to be more expert in tuning up their pupils to Result Fee pitch. Why should they? The school is a Catholic school, because its proprietors are Catholics and priests into the bargain. When a hundred boys have earned ;^iooo for the private treasury of the Athanasians or Protasians, that must be Catholic education. If the boys go out into the world, half crammed and wholly incapable Catholics of a nominal sort, nobody is more innocently perplexed, if he thinks about it at all, than the Provincial of the Protasians or the Rector of the Athanasians. They have made the money in the most legitimate way in the world. Even the Protestant Government asks no questions! The place and the plan must be perfection. If we look at some of the evidence about teachers and teaching in these institutions of nominal Catholicism, we shall recognise the de- lightful airs of superiority to any question of Real Denominationalism, which pervade these establish- ments from top to bottom. We find an excellent Protestant teacher, who is now headmaster of the Methodist College, Belfast, relating how he used to be one of the Protestant Masters of the Fathers THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 143 of the Holy Ghost at Blackrock, and of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, and that so far as anything specially Catholic existed in the education, why, he never perceived it. It might have been the College of Luther and Calvin, or the College of Cromwell and Cranmer, for all the Catholicism there was in the education. In fact, Mr. Mcintosh, M.A., the witness in question, added that, if the Irish Protestants ran short of schools anywhere, they could not do better than go to the schools of the Catholic Teaching Congregations. Nobody could tell they are Catholic by the educa- tion. You pay your money. Yom get no Catho- licity. And that is a Catholic School! Here are the words of Mr. Mcintosh : " I call attention to the fact that the Catholic teaching bodies have never shown themselves in the least bit averse from having Protestants on their staff. We have a few striking cases of that : Professor Preston and Professor Stewart at the Catholic University. Then you have Clongowes Wood College. When I was there the head and second Mathematical masters were not only Protes- tants, but resided in the College; and when at the French College I had the post of first Classical master, the second Classical master was a Protestant, and the head Mathematical master was a Protestant. They have shown no disposition what- ever to exclude Protestants from the teaching staff. . . If a Protes- tant likes to send his boys tJure, he can do so without their religious persuasion being interfered withP Such is the Denominational Education for which the universe has been filled with the wails of unflinching, exhausted, and persecuted Ireland, according to the Maynooth resolutions ! Protestant 144 THE IRISH FANAR teachers, Protestant pupils, if the good Fathers can catch them ; no religious influence perceptible in the education; satisfactory settlements quarterly with the clerical proprietors ; and there you have Denomi- national Education, the best of all clerical education in the best of all clerical worlds — Ireland ! Let us come to denominational education under the General of the Jesuits in the Catholic University College, which the Irish Bishops have handed over to the unquestioned and unquestionable autocracy of the Rule of Loyola. I have already referred to the fact that the religious misfortunes of a dozen Catholic nations during three centuries have uniformly shown that the Jesuit ideal of education is, very little Catholic Ctdture and very much Jesuit Direction, So long as the good Fathers believed that they had surrounded their pupils with a perfect web of Jesuit Indispensability in all the callings of life, those pupils were free to grow up to be orna- ments of the Court and the City from Versailles to the H of burg, and from Lisbon to Warsaw. Catholic ignorance and Catholic ruin have attended every- where the Jesuit monopoly. Where the Jesuit plants, the crops are indifference, emasculation, and decay. Certainly one cannot accuse the Jesuit lessees oi the Catholic University College, Dublin, of introduc- ing any Catholic element into their University classes which can offend the religious feelings of any creed, sect, or persuasion, from the Ruling Elder of the Old Cameronians to the Grand Lama of Thibet. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 145 Catholicism may be mentioned, as a historical phenomenon, just as the Sultan of Turkey might mention it over a cup of coffee at an audience of the Most Catholic Ambassador. Here is the testimony of the Rev. Dr. Delany, the Jesuit Rector, and I am perfectly sure that the reverend Rector is a well- meaning and earnest man, dominated and inspired by the Rule of his Order. " University College is open to students of all denominations," said Dr. Delany. "It is known in Dublin that we have them from all denominations. . . Some of the students were Methodists, some Presbyterians, some Protestant clergymen holding ofificial positions, and some were Jews. The son of the Chief Rabbi is in attendance at the College. . . I have a long list of gentlemen of other denominations who have been attending the College, some of them attaining the highest distinctions. . . In the Arts classes there is fio Catholic trend whatever. There is nothing to indicate that the teacher is one who belo?igs to any one religion more than another^* There is Catholic Denominational Education again ! Pity the sorrows of a Maynooth Episcopate who appeal to the agonised consciences of Civilisa- tion, because they cannot get plenty of Public Money for that ! It was no wonder that the learned Chairman of the Commission, the Right. Hon. Lord Robertson, burst out with the inquiry to this Jesuit Rector, " What is the raison detre of the University College as distinguished from the Queen's Colleges .-* " I am afraid I could have told Lord Robertson exactly, but let us get the Jesuit Rector's answer. It is perfect in its way. K 146 THE IRISH FANAR *' In University College the government is in the hands of persons in whom the Catholics will have confidence that great care will be taken to see that the faith of the students is not under- mined, directly or indirectly, in the teaching of the College. Catholics will feel that confidence, and they also feel that the tone of a place where Catholics are predominant will not impress un- favourably their children in matters of faith." Confidence, confidence! Jesuit Education is one vast Confidence Trick practised on the Catholic world since four centuries for the greater glory of the Operator General. The Chairman continued to seek for some more satisfactory presentment of this scheme of Denomi- national Education, whose raison detre was con- fidence as distinguished from reality. " Do you not recognise the more positive duty, in dealing with lads between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, of encouraging and supporting their faith ? " The reply of the Jesuit Rector finally surrenders all claim to a denominational education in the central institu- tion and cynosure of a Denominational Episcopate. " That we deal with by outside work ; we have meetings of sodalities, to which they are not obliged to come, but which they attend voluntarily, and we take great personal care of the students who come to us." There is the incorrigible Jesuitry of four centuries of Catholic disasters — no Catholic teaching, colour- less and well-behaved manners, exclusive reliance on sodalities conducted by Jesuit directors, and " the personal care " of the ubiquitous priest of Loyola. Instead of giving their unfortunate students the solid THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 147 instruction in Christian culture and learning which will enable them to stand alone like manly men in the battle of life, the Jesuits keep them in the go- cart of " outside work," edifying devotions and constant supervision. If the Catholic man cannot stand alone after that enervating superficiality, he has only to lean for ever on his indispensable Jesuit director, from the go-cart to the grave, in every walk of life, in every department of the State. And the General of the Society shall be Lord of All! When a revolution or a change of dynasties or anything of the sort pulls the base from under Jesuitism, down comes the whole Catholic edifice and superstructure, under which the Jesuit had insinuated himself as the one and indispensable support. There in a sentence is the history of Modern Europe. I repeat that I admire and have admired many, very many, good, and kind, and learned, and holy members of the Society of Jesus. Father Michael Bellew, of the House of Mount Bellew, was a saint on earth. Father J. J. O'Carroll, Prince of Ely O'Carroll, was a marvel of erudition. Before the tortures of persecution Jesuits are the bravest of the brave. But their System, their Order, and their Rule are the work of a master of the furtive Castillian statecraft for suppressing human volition and individuality ; for placing a thousand, a million minds, if possible, as tools in the hand of one enlightened despot, who may not always be very 148 THE IRISH FANAR enlightened, but who is always despot ; for making the Indispensability of the Jesuit Director, himself a sacred slave, the corner-stone and the foundation of Catholic Society. The manifold virtues of the individual Jesuits only make their Order the more formidable an obstacle to the progress and the glory of Christian Civilisation. Its civic ideal is always the tame community of the Tame Indians of Paraguay. If the Protestants and Freethinkers of the entire earth were returning to the fold of the Ancient Church, the Jesuits would be enough to send them back to their separation and their independence. For when they learned that a Catholic could hardly seat himself to dinner without a Jesuit under each armpit to lift the poor weakling to his chair, and another Jesuit to tie a bib under his chin, and a couple more of the too attentive Order to cut the decrepit creature's meat and to put it in his mouth ; sooner than endure all that slobbering protection and direction, the best converted convert, who had still an ounce of manhood in him, would start back to some wilderness even, where one of God's free men could, at least, move like a man under the wide heaven of his Omnipotent Father. I have proved enough, and more than enough, to show that the so-called Denominational Schools of the Irish Catholics are only religious in name as to their teaching, though strictly clericalin profit as to their proprietors. With regard to the Jesuits, this superficiality of their Catholic character, involving THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 149 perpetual dependence on the Jesuit director, is, as I have explained, the very essence of the Jesuit pohcy and plan. As regards some other Teaching Congre- gations, their indifference to religion and their concentration on coin can be explained by causes of less complexity. THE RESULT FEES SCANDAL NOT A NECESSITY OF THE ACT The Intermediate Education Acts which placed the chase of the Result Fee, ** with no questions asked or account rendered," within the appetency of the Teaching Congregations, is certainly responsible for all the blame that can be deserved for placing temptation within the reach of institutions prone to temptation. But it must not be supposed that the desolating manufacture of untaught and over- crammed boys and girls, a burthen to their country and a burthen to themselves, which has been for twenty years the main contribution of the Teaching Congregations to the prosperity of Ireland, has been in any necessary or inevitable sense the work of the Intermediate System. Out of the long lists of subjects of study, some useful, some useless, all capable of good or evil cultivation, which were within the scope of the Intermediate Schools, it was really not necessary for them to choose the most disastrous combinations. It was perfectly open to thetn to meet among themselves, to deliberate 150 THE IRISH FANAR among themselves, to combine among themselves, and to arrange plans of studies, which, if less fruitful in pelf to the Teaching Congregations, would be a sounder education for the youth of the nation. The only plan adopted by the Teaching Congregations was to utilise the bright young brains of all those Irish boys and girls in cramming the subjects, which, however futile or injurious to their future lives, had the inestimable advantage of bringing quick returns in coin of the realm into the treasuries of the Congregations. The Intermediate System imagined that the Teaching Congregations would consider themselves above all things guardians of tho^ priceless interests of young lives committed to their clerical character, and would feel bound to act as conscientious trustees. But the very idea of T^msteeship seems to have faded out of too many clerical consciences in Ireland, when Lay Rights have to be balanced against Clerical Expediency. Being able, under the law, to earn or acquire a couple of millions sterling, or more, in twenty years by sacri- ficing the children to the Congregation ; or, on the other hand, to acquire less for the Congregation, but to fit the children better for living a life of usefulness and honour ; the choice of the Teaching Congregations does not appear to have even wavered for an instant. They got the opportunity, and they took advantage of it. That was their Intermediate ^"' System. "They have filled the country with a lot of half-educated boys, who are unfit for the plough, and who can look forward to THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 151 nothing but an examination for the lower grades of the Civil Service," as Professor Lorrain Smith put it in a question to a witness before the University Commission. THE WORTHLESS EDUCATION IN CONVENTUAL FEMALE SCHOOLS The special purpose of my description of the ruin of Irish Education is to direct attention to the spread of that ruin by the clerical institutions for male education. But it would be easy to find a parallel for the worst experiences of this kind among the conventual institutions, which monopolise — with still less inquiry, criticism or public control — the training, or what is called the training, of the Irish Catholic girls. There is perhaps no factor of Irish decay more potent in evil than the ignorant, slovenly, superficial, pietistic parody of instruction ivhich is the fate of the Irish schoolgirl. The Convents, like the Male Congregations, have found a means of utilising those young brains in the accursed chase of the Result Fee, with results even more calamitous than in the case of the young victims of the other sex. High and low, with few exceptions, the Conventual Schools of Ireland are ceaselessly engaged, from year to year, with a monotonous indifference which is worse than monotonous malignity, in manufacturing hundreds of thousands of young feminine failures 152 THE IRISH FANAR and non-values for the decline, the depression, and the destruction of the Irish nation. Goody-goody- ness, and superficiality, and helplessness, trumpery accomplishments, and total unfitness for home and wifehood, these appear to be the darling objects of the saintly and incompetent sisterhoods ; who, havingf forsworn the knowledge and use of the world, devote themselves, for a modest remuneration, to the misinformation and depreparation of the future wives and mothers of the country. As an Irish Catholic barrister said to me, on a recent visit to Ireland : " The Convents are almost the worst thing we have. The girls they bring up are sweet, nice girls, and it is a burning shame that nothing better is made of them. Most of them are fit for nothing under heaven except casting flowers before the Banner of the Sodality. They know nothing. They can do nothing. They sit at home, looking out of the window; or they just take a walk down the street, till it is time to go to vespers or to the Rosary. We are very glad to see them so pious, but they need not be made so useless and so ignorant. The young man would be a fool who thought it would help him to keep his home if he was to marry one of them. And it is the fact that they are frightening the young fellows entirely from marrying. They are clever girls, and they are pretty girls, and they are well-meaning girls, but the Convent Education has spoiled them," I expect, of course, that these plain statements, that are common comment in Irish society, will be denounced as anything from blasphemy to heresy in the obsequious journals of Ireland, which, owned by limited liability companies of corner THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 153 grocers and devout distillers, alternate the literary attractiveness of their matter with puffs of the Leading Whiskey Families and puffs of venerable priests and vituperative politicians. But the simple fact is, that the loss in every way to the welfare of the country, caused by the stunting and wasting of the young minds and capacities of the women of Ireland in those Conventual Factories of Incapacity, is simply incalculable. The poor things are driven wholesale into the vows of religious sisterhoods, and exported for works of mercy to every race and clime of civilisation and barbarism, where their helpless heroism and gentle incompetence achieve a ereat deal more harm to themselves than good to humanity. If they were even brought up to be skilled teachers, zenana doctors, &c., they might be able to be of some use proportionate to their silent and pitiable self-sacrifice. Often, of course, they become nuns in the convents, which gave them their own non-education, and help in turn to non- educate other generations of poor Irish girls. It is perhaps fortunate that I am able to quote a Catholic and Clerical Authority of indisputable weight and gravity in such a matter. The New Ireland Review, published by Burns and Gates, and largely edited and written by some of the ablest and best Jesuits in Ireland — and the Society is full of men who could put forth magnificent powers of service to mankind under a thorough reformation of their anachronistic constitution — this important Catholic and Clerical Review has just published a 154 THE IRISH FANAR criticism, written with the utmost discretion, of the Irish Conventual Schools, which is eloquent of the debilitating abuses of the system. In its December number of last year, the New Ireland Review^ dealing with the subject of Irish Conventual Schools, says plainly : " The religious orders of women might well introduce reforms into the training of women and girls. It must be admitted by every observer that in Ireland a dreadfully high proportion of idle, useless girls are to be met with in every class. . . A disadvantage almost inseparable from bringing up girls in any large institution is that it is almost impossible to give them individual atten- tion. . . A pupil who has been quiet and pious will leave with an excellent character, but when she comes to earn her living, she will be found entirely worthless. . . ' Faith without works ' would appear to be her motto, and in consequence she gives much dis- edification to people who expect that a convent-bred girl will oe better than others. . . She very often enters the world outside the convent walls entirely unsophisticated, in one sense, yet singularly apt to take bad advice and pick up undesirable acquaintances. . . A curious fact to which attention has been drawn is that, although convents, as a rule, are kept very clean, the girls they send out are often exceedingly negligent in their personal habits, and quite tolerant of the wildest disorder in their belongings. Perhaps this arises from their not being trained to depend upon themselves." It will be seen that this clerical authority is really far more severe than either my barrister friend or I. If similar criticism was deserved by lay teachers, nobody would hesitate to call them, as teachers, shameless impostors, shameless and maleficent. But we really have to do with good, easy-going, incapable nuns, free from competition, devoid of training, and sure of the conventional applause and THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 155 rapturous eulogies of priests and press, no matter howgrossly they caricature the function of school-mis- tresses of a Catholic nation. Whence, indeed, could those ignorant priests, and mismanaging bishops, not much better educated than their priests, who have neglected the education of Irish men ; whence ( could they derive the inspiration or the will to deal more conscientiously with the education of Irish women ? It is idle to talk of their violating their duty. They have simply no sense of shortcoming in the matter. Are not the Irish boys and girls taught their prayers, and taught to revere their spiritual pastors and masters as the earthly and heavenly arbiters of everything? Sense of duty! Under the Fanariote System have not the Irish Catholic Clergy got an Accommodating Protestantism at their back, and under their feet the Catholic Laity, taillable et corvdable a discretion ? Could the General of the Jesuits improve upon that, especially since his obedient sons have s^ot the lease of the Catholic University College and the Fellowships of the Royal University into the bargain? If, instead of that Accommodating Protestantism, we could only get the loan for a year or two of a Catholic Minister of Education and Worship from a Catholic Government! The most reverend hierocracy would understand the disadvantages of orthodoxy and the blessings of heresy before they were twenty-four hours older. But I must add yet a couple of quotations from the New Ireland Review. Here are pretty plain IS6 THE IRISH FANAR admissions that nuns cannot be expected to traiir young lay women for lay life and its occupations. " For at least three generations Irish girls, when they have had any training at all, have had it from nuns. One might hope that those who have had this undoubted advantage would be very different from those who have not. This to a certain extent is the case. The convent-trained girl is more refined, more disciplined, that is, more amenable to routine observances ; like all Irish girls, she is pious, modest, and in some instances skilful with her needle. The great defect in her teaching has been, and still is, that, excellent as the nuns are, they scarcely seem to realise that these girls may have ten, twenty, forty, sixty years to live in this world before they go to a better, and that they are equipped with very insufficient means for improving their condition, or making their homes happy and comfortable here below. Matrimony as a probable career for them is ignored, and so, consequently, are its responsibilities. Of the virtues, of the noble self-sacrifice of nuns, there is no need to speak. They are known to every one. At the sa?ne time nuns are unfortunately inclined to lose sight of the plain, practical issues of life, on which so much depends for good and evil. In having done their best to stock a girl with moral principles and heavenly maxims they have not done enough, unless they have at the same time taught her how to make a home." Here, again, are more revelations of the way the convent schools provide helpmates for industrious husbands, who cannot afford to keep an animated doll instead of a good wife, even though the doll be as pious as a praying phonograph. " Even when pious and good, they seem to have no idea of steady, systematic, conscientious work. They are reared too softly and foolishly for the life before them, and as they are not provided with an income to enable them to carry out their ideas of what is fitting, one cannot help asking is this right, or wise, or THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 157 kind ? I have heard of convent girls of seventeen and eighteen taking situations in Dublin, and being found incapable of washing a pocket-handkerchief, or of dusting a room without supervision. One, when asked for a corkscrew, brought a dish-cover ; she was not acquainted with the names of the commonest appliances to be found in a private house. Another professed to know some- thing of cookery, and was desired to roast a leg of mutton. Her attempt at the feat was ludicrous. She seemed to think the mutton could be roasted by placing it on a dish near the fire. Both resented correction, and were given to weeping copiously if any fault was found with their methods. In proof of her know- ledge the latter favoured the family with details of the reign of Elizabeth, and reeled off a list of the kings of Judah and Israel. These may have been extreme cases, but they are by no means without parallel. I have spoken of the probabilities of poor girls marrying poor men, and having to live in a humble cottage, to economise, and learn to spend money to advantage. Of what use to them is a knowledge of fancy-work, of the violin, of the history of England, unless this is accompanied, as it should be, by more solid accom- plishments ? I despise none of these things in their place, but it should be possible to combine with them the knowledge of how to cook a dinner, avoid disease, and keep children clean, instead of sending them to school in filth and tatters. It may sound prosaic, but I think if Irish cookery were better, Irish husbands would be more sober." In fact, the root of the thriftless Irish home is in the Nun School, just as the root of Irish national ignorance is in the clericalised monopoly of all education. It need only be added, that, as in the case of learned laymen, all employment in the teaching profession is practically barred against Irish Catholic girls by the privileged monopoly of incompetent clerical coroorations. Those thousands of coveted 158 THE IRISH FANAR posts in an intellectual calling, which are the natural object and reward of so much lay talent in a Pro- testant country, are closed and locked in the faces of the highly gifted daughters of Catholic Ireland, who, in so many, many cases, have no dowry but their brains. The female clericalism, like the male clericalism, starves the brains of the laity by bad education, and forbids their employment^ wIiQn they survive the starvation. WHY NO CATHOLIC BEQUESTS TO A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY In advising or inviting the learned Commissioners to consult the Department of Wills upon the alleged anxiety of the Irish Catholics for a Catholic University, I have a very distinct knowledge of a state of things which the accompanying copy of a "Notice of Charitable Bequests," copied haphazard from an Irish provincial journal, can serve to illustrate. There is no feature of Catholic sentiment more eloquent of the real drift of clerical direction than the testamentary dispositions of deceased Catholics. In that last hour of consciousness and resignation, when the confessor is standing by the dying-bed, and when the desire to follow the indications of the Church is supreme in the thoughts of the departing mortal, in that solemn hour we can read more clearly than at any other time the solicitude of the Church for the real objects of its care. The reader THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 159 will seek in vain for any indications of the Irish Catholic Church's care for a Catholic University in the following list of pious bequests, committed by a dying Catholic, belonging even to the humbler class of the faithful, to the trust of a priestly executor. Notice of Charitable Bequests. In the Goods of Michael Golding, late of Headford, in the county of Galvvay, ex-Constable R.I.C., deceased. Notice is hereby given, pursuant to the statute of 30 & 31 Vict. c. 54, that the said Michael Golding, who died at Headford, afore- said, on the 27th day of November, 1901, by his will, dated the 7th day of February, 1900, and a codicil, dated the 9th day of February, 1900, made the following bequests : To Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., ^10 for the poor of Headford. To Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., ^10 for the poor of Claran parish. To the Very Rev. P. Canon Heanue, P.P., ^10 for the poor of Donaghpatrick parish. To the Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., ;^3o for the improvement of the Church at Headford and Claran. To the Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., additional for the Church at Headford, ;^35. To the Superioresses of the Convents of the Tuam diocese, ;;^i4o for the benefit of the poor. To the Superioress of the Magdalen Asylum, Gal way, ;!£"io. To Canon Barrett and his curate, and such other clergymen as Canon Barrett selects, for Masses for the souls of his father and mother, ;^ioo. For Masses for the repose of his own soul, ^170. For Masses for the soul of his brother, ;^3o. For Masses for the soul of his sister, ^^i^- To the President of the College of Tuam for the benefit of the College, ^30. To the Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., the residue i6o THE IRISH FANAR of his estate to be disposed of for charitable purposes according to his discretion. And probate of the said Will was granted forth of the Tuam District Registry of the King's Bench Division (Probate) of the High Court of Justice in Ireland, on the 13th day of December, 1901, to the Very Rev. John Canon Barrett, P.P., V.F., of Head- ford, in the County of Galway, the Executor named in said Will. Dated this 17th day of December, 1901. Joseph A. Glynn, Solicitor for said Executor, 15, South Frederick Street, DubUn, and Tuam. To the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests, and to all whom it may concern. The devout testator in this case Is quite a small personage; but thrifty, not poor, and from his official position during life certain to be educated and intelligent. Such a man would feel keenly, if any man might, the want of higher education for his people and the gentle pressure of the Church's zeal for a Catholic University. He has been prepared for his end since many months. He is devoted to his Church and Clergy. The care of his soul, and the care of his beloved priests, speak in every line of his bequests. If either the priests or he cared two pence for a Catholic University, he wotild have put two pence in his Will. Yet out of the large sum of ;^590, distributed in pious and charitable bequests under his Will, not a penny, not a farthing, goes to assuage the distresses, to cover the " bare walls " of the Catholic University. Out of the entire sum there is some ;/^30 left to one of those diocesan seminaries of ignorantist repute, so feelingly denounced by THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION i6i witnesses before the University Commission. Not one farthing to the Catholic University. I question very much also whether the venerable parish priest, to whom the testator bequeathed "the residue of his estate to be disposed of for charitable purposes according to his direction," has considered the en- dowment of Catholic University Education to fall, even to the extent of the smallest banknote, within the scope of his charitable discretion. If the Commissioners will interrogate that De- partment of Wills for the last half-century, since Cardinal Newman was induced to preside, pending disilhtsion, over the episcopal comedy of a Catholic University ; if the Commissioners will ascertain the direction of the enormous flood and inundation of Catholic benefactions, they will find singularly few traces of the Church's influence on behalf of a Catholic University. The blameless lamb of Irish clericalism, while bleating so piteously for help for that advertised object, has lapped up tens of millions sterling from the bounteous benevolence of dying Catholics; but the Catholic University was curiously forgotten. There were only *' bare walls " for it. Even its worn-out professors could only get Old Age Pensions by being foisted by a trick upon the Fellowship Fund of the Royal University. I, who write these lines, was in less experienced years a believer of that touching tale of episcopal fosterers of Higher Education, mourning, like Rachel, for their loved one, and refusing to be comforted with anything less than a State Endow- l62 THE IRISH FANAR ment in their heart-breaking destitution. I learned the secret of the Department of Wills. I learned the secret of that flagitious waste of the contribu- tions of the laity upon palatial architecture in villages and secluded villas in genteel suburbs ; that colossal and tasteless waste on all the gewgaw horrors of decorative imitation, and painted daubs, and pious statuary, that provoke to laughter or to shame. The millions sterling of the lay contributions never went for Higher Education. LAY MONEV AND ECCLESIASTICAL ART It is almost incredible how the contributions of the Laity have been lavished during the last quarter of a century upon all sorts of caricatures of art in connection with ecclesiastical architecture in Ireland. The mania for extravagant building was itself appalling in a poor country, without adequate education, and with a dwindling and ignorant popu- lation. Not satisfied with the erection of becoming churches and chapels for the wants of the people, with the repairing of ancient edifices or replacing of them, the Clergy launched out upon a reckless competition in church construction, of which big- ness, tawdriness, and expensiveness were the leading characteristics. When a bishop had built a cathedral fit for a town of 100,000 inhabitants m a village not containing 5000; when he could THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 163 see its huge spire ascending over the miserable hovels and squalid roofs of his unlettered flock, he felt that he had inscribed his name among the fore- most pastors of the country. Parish priests followed the lead of bishops. At this moment I know a de- caying town of 10,000 or 12,000 persons already provided with six large churches and some small ones for that diminishing number ; and yet, if the Bishop can only get from the Government an old barrack site in the centre of the perishing town a vast cathedral will be immediately under way, for which ;^25,ooo are already reserved in the Episcopal Treasury, and which will cost ^^60,000 or j^70,ooo to complete! Yet that town is in the most urgent need of efficient aid to popular education in every department, literary, scientific, technical, and agri- cultural. There is the most crying want of bursaries for poor students. Yet the local Clergy are ecstati- cally contemplating an expenditure of something near ^100,000 on superfluous stone and mortar, stained glass, and commercial-pietistic works of art. Every district, not only of Great Britain and Ireland, but of the United States, and Canada, and Australia, is being constantly traversed by collecting priests from Ireland, not to help Catholic Education, but to erect extravagant structures. " Why on earth did you build your new cathedral upon a high hill like that ? " I said once to the native of a little town rejoicing in a new and vast structure w lich will exceed ^150,000. •* How can delicate people climb up there ? " " Isn't the Protestant church on 1 64 THE IRISH FANAR a hill, too, and were we going to be looked down upon ? " That really seemed to be the only excuse for the thing ; and I suppose it was because the Protestant church had only a short tower that the new Catholic rival must have two very tall spires. As for the education of the 4000 or 5000 Catholics in the place, they are among the most ignorant, the most backward, and the most untidy little popula- tion in the island. Alas ! for the money that is flung away upon the decorations of these edifices ! I may quote from a popular Dublin paper, the Leader, of January 25 of the present year, for even popular papers, and popular priests, too, are beginning to cry out against the scandal of this dissipation of the money of the people. " All this time large sums of money are leaving Ireland to be gathered in by the foreign purveyors of ecclesiastical art furniture. We find Irish churches merely the vehicles for a sprawling display of Shoppy Classic. . . The system of architecture is quite out of place, * faked,' as it is usually, from one of the many pattern books from which commercial architects borrow a cloak for the poverty of their ideas." At the meeting of the Maynooth Union last year, a society of old students of the great Ecclesiastical College, the artistic horrors of the new church building were the theme of earnest protests by enlightened clergymen. A Rev. Father O' Donovan read a paper on " Priests as Nation Builders," to- day a remote reminiscence, in which he spoke some plain truths on the tasteless misuse of church THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 165 decorations, on which the contributions of the Laity- are worse than wasted. In the words of this courageous clergyman : " Every day throughout the country men were ordering what ought to be works of art, and were getting for their money, or rather for the money of their poor people, the refuse of foreign shops. Every year this unfortunate coufitry, which everything seemed to conspire against, was being flooded with bad sculpture, and bad paintings, and worse stained glass. There was scarcely a church in Ireland that had not one or more stained glass windows. In some of the large churches the cost of those windows ran up to j£sooo or ;^4ooo. His statement was upheld by every expert authority on art that generally, indeed, in almost all cases, this glass was, from an art standpoint, beneath contempt. Attempt were made at presenting religious pictures to excite their devotion The effect was usually a number of conventional dummies, with embroidered clothes and an expression drawn from milliners* show-cards. Another important branch of church decoration was sculpture. To judge by the Irish churches it was a lost art. Go into their churches and they would find that the more pretentious of the statues come from Italy and Munich. If they said they did not like the work, the good priest looked them all over with a smile of superior pity, and reduced them to their proper level by the clinching remark, " Why, this statue was made at Carrara." How many bursaries for poor students, how many educational foundations of all kinds, could be provided by the thousands and scores of thousands of pounds lavished on such repulsive vulgarities ! A distinguished Catholic connoisseur, Mr. Martyn, of Tillyra Castle, Galway, who is also a popular Nationalist, has been compelled to speak out against the same mindless and mischievous waste. i66 THE IRISH FANAR "For the most part," he writes, "those who have the sole authority for ordering stained glass have never seen good stained glass in their lives, yet with a light heart they lay out thousands oj poorfolks^ money in such a way that it would be preferable to have that 7noney cast into the sea than wasted on the daubs with which the whole of Catholic Ireland is now well-nigh plastered." Referring to one of those huge cathedrals in country villages, which have been the latest excuse for episcopal extravagance, Mr. Martyn continues : " If a reader should turn to the daily papers for an idea of the New Cathedral at Letterkenny, he might be led to think, from their eulogy upon it, that it is a perfect gem of art. Now, it is no such thing ; and, what is more, many of us know it is no such thing. At the same time, nobody will dare say so. It is with very great reluctance that I say so; I feel it a most disagreeable duty ; but a duty all the same, if our labours for the improvement of ecclesiastical art and the development of native talent are to bear fruit. I hope, therefore, that everything in this article will be taken in the spirit in which it is meant, namely, to show that the mania for foreign importations of an inferior kind has led to a decadence in ecclesiastical art more debased than at any previous epoch in our country's history." Up and down the suffering land it is everywhere the same story. The garish colours, the gewgaw decoration, the simpering statues and paintings, are an offence to Christianity, and represent nothing but the combined bad taste and financial irresponsibility of the priests and bishops who apply their May- nooth obscurantism to the disfigurement of the country. After they have spent in a few years millions sterling of lay money, without authority and without account, they affect to be concerned from time to time about the state of education, and they THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 167 proceed to pass — with usual oratorical accompani- ments — some of the well-known Maynooth Resolu- tions on the indescribable privations of the Irish Catholics, unable to pay out of their poverty for the Catholic University which ought to be endowed for them by the Imperial Parliament. The Most Reverend Obscurantists of Maynooth have begun at the wrong end. If they had edu- cated their clergy first, they would have laid out better the money of the laity, and they might have to-day a clergy capable of discriminating between the Beautiful and the Sham. A CLERICAL NOVELIST ON QUEEN'S COLLEGE, GALWAY To illustrate the sort of tricks of underhand warfare which have been practised by the venerable Clergy, it is interesting to find the following narrative of what came of education in Queen's College, Galway, set forth in the edifying romance, " Geoffrey Austin, Student," by the clerical novelist, Rev. Father Sheehan. The chapter is entitled, " The Wail of a Lost Soul," and gives the horrifying life and death of Francis Costigan, once a pious serving-boy at Mass, and then, then, a Queen's Collegian : " Boys, you are young and inexperienced. Life lies before you, and your paths to choose. Take a lesson from what occurred last night. But for this, I would not mention it to you. " Fifteen years ago / knew Costigan well. He used to serve Mass here in our little chapel — a fine young lad, with infinite i68 THE IRISH FANAR promise before him. His r^arents were ambitious for him. They thought of nothing but the Woolsack. He was to be a barrister, then a judge, then Chancellor. And as the Queen's and Trinity were the reputed avenues to such advancement, he was sent, quite young, to the Queen's College, Galway. What happened there 1 know not ; but after four years he returned, remained at home, but never darkened the door of the village chapel. He had suffered shipwreck of his faith. All that zeal and prayer could do was done to reclaim him, but in vain. Father Aidan M'Kenna strove to bring him back, but failed. Then something occurred, and Father Aidan was obliged to refer publicly to it. From that day Costigan conceived the most bitter animosity against the priest. // is well known that it was Frank Costiga7i fired thesJwt from behind the sand-pits that nearly cost Father Aidan his life. His father and mother died of a broken heart. His two sisters, angels on earth, if there be such, have tortured Heaven to win his repentance. In vain. He has lived as a bad Catholic ; he has died impenitent. " You remember, Goff, a few evenings ago, Father Aldan's prayer for light in the little chapel. Well, he was called suddenly at ten o'clock last night to poor Costigan' s death-bed. A sudden heart attack, a relic of rheumatic fever, brought the poor patient to the doors of death. I believe there was infinite trouble in introducing Father Aidan to the sick man's room. He refused positively to see him or any other priest. The weeping sisters were distracted. At last Father Aidan entered the room and approached the bed. Costigan was propped up with pillows. His first salutation was — " * What do you want here ? ' " His second word was an angry cry to his sisters — " * Take that man away, and let me die in peace.' " Father Aidan was not discouraged. He appealed to Costigan, cotijured him by all that was holy, to save his soul. The sisters knelt at the bedside and added their tears to his prayers. He looked on sullenly and silently. His end was visibly approach- ing. " Father Aidan placed the Crucifix before the eyes of the dying man. He looked at it wonderingly for a moment, as if he did THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 169 not recognise the figure, then he drew back, spat contemptuously upon the sacred symbol, and turned to the wall, and died." So there we have it. The Queen's College destroys the good young man, makes him an infidel, a profligate, a murderer, and when the good priest, whom h'^e had tried to kill, comes to his death-bed in a last effort to save that Queen's Collegian's soul, there is the crowning act of sacrilege and despair 1 This ridiculous fiction reminds me that, among other excellent Catholic students at Queen's College, Galway, thus stupidly libelled, was the Hon. Colman P. MacAulay, Member of the Bengal Government, an orthodox scion of an orthodox family, cousin of the late Lord Russell of Killowen as well as of the Very Rev. Dr. Russell, President of Maynooth College itself. But our reverend romancer has omitted to mention such contradictions of his legend. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Rev. Father Sheehan, who 'describes a Clerical Grinding College, which is the scene of this very novel, as a genial hotbed of every abomination, cannot be said to have done much for the better reputation of clerical education in Ireland. From the Reverend Father Rector of " Mayfield College," who allowed a fraud to trade on his saintly character, to the Second Master, who is bigamist, bully, liar, and thief combined, and down to the brutal and hypocritical gang of school- boys, there is hardly a personage of note in "Geoffrey Austin, Smdent," who is not odious or contemptible, or both. The reverend romancer lyo THE IRISH FANAR was never at Queen's College, Galway, but he may possess personal knowledge of the sort of Clerical Colleges which flourish on the ruin cf intelligence and manhood in Ireland. A LAPSED RECREATION OF JESUIT SCHOOLS I should be sorry to convey that the Jesuit Society is utterly incapable of reform, or that it may not modify the practice of its Spanish founder. There is, for instance, the chapter of permissible recreations of the pupils of Jesuit Schools. For 300 years, though many entertainments were for- bidden by careful discipline to the Jesuit school-boy, one edifying amusement was permitted him under certain circumstances. He was allowed, along with his companions in edifying array, of course, and guided by his venerable masters — he was allowed, by express rule of the Ratio Studiorum^ to attend the Execution of Heretics ! By the Thirteenth Clause of the Rule regarding Extern Pupils of the Society, " Extern students shall not attend Public Spectacles, Comedies, nor other Plays, nor the Execution of Criminals, except, indeed, of Heretics." I quote from the German text of the Ratio Studiormn by the Rev. Father Bernhard Duhr, S.J., published by Herder: Frei- burg, 1896. Here are the German words: "Weder zu oeffentlichen Schauspielen, Komoedien, und andern Spielen, noch zur Hinrichtung von Verbr- - THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 171 chern, es set denn allenfalis von Haeretikern, soUen sie hino-ehen." I quote also from the Latin text of the Ratio Studiorum, as published in the Monumenta GermanicB Paedagogica : Regulae Externorum Audi- torum Societatis, 13. " Neque ad pubiica spectacula comsedias, ludos, neque ad supplicia reorum nisi forte hsereticorum, eant." The Reverend Father Bernhard Duhr, S.J., adds that this last provision has now been deleted by the good Fathers, who give the explanation : " Ex- punguntur haec verba, quia offenderent in variis regionibus ! " '* These words are expunged because they might give offence in various regions!" Apparently the edification of the exhibition is still cherished, but its inconvenience has been recognised. Is not that progress? Yet, from the most Catholic point of view, what are we to think of the tutorial genius of a Society of Professors and Schoolmasters who, century after century, maintained that youths of tender age might be, in the polluted name of religion, led out to witness the dying agonies of I do not care how heretical and desperate a sinner? Can we wonder that a Society, whose fundamental system itself has been so monstrous and silly, has come down to such an unbroken record of failure throughout all the countries, one after the other, of the Catholic world? 172 THE IRISH FANAR JESUITS OF TO-DAY DE HERETICIS EDUCANDIS ET COMBURENDIS We have seen the amiable anxiety of the Jesuit Rector of Catholic University College to assure the Commissioners of the entire freedom of his Catholic and Denominational Education from everything either Catholic or Denominational ; of its impartial fitness for the requirements of Protestants, Presby- terians, Jews, and Buddhists indifferently ; and its consequent claims to State Endowment as an Undenominational Ideal, which v/as the main thing. " There is no Catholic trend about our Arts classes. We leave all that to outside work, to sodalities, and that sort of thing." The Jesuits have, in fact, been unappreciated precursors of Secularism and Unsectarianism. This is one of the unfortunate circumstances about the Society of Jesus. They are always being misunderstood. Even when they say one thing at Berlin and the opposite at Madrid, people fail to see that it is only the same thing all the while. Thus, on July 15, 1854, the late Father Beckx, then General of the Jesuits, having to make an impression upon the devout mind of the Austrian Government, wrote as follows to the Minister of Education : "Among the objects of school instruction Religion shall take not only the first place, but it shall dominate and permeate them all; and the teacher shall, in conformity with our Ratio Studiorum^ treat every matter so that religion shall be foreign to none and THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 173 that the scholars shall find again the truths of the Catechism in every branch of the school instruction." Which, of course, is just the same thing as saying that Religion is purely a matter for " outside work ! " The Loyolan Bat was only proving that he was a soaring bird to one authority, and a harm- less mouse to another. Looking at the desire of the good Fathers of St. Ignatius to educate heretics as the apple of their eye in Ireland, it seems somewhat disconcerting at the same time to find the most eminent living Pro- fessor of the Society, the canonist and theologian of the Gregorian University of the Vatican, the learned Father Marianus de Luca, S.J., in fact, eruditely establishing in the volumes of his histitutiones Juris Ecclesiastici Publici^ completed only two years ago, that, instead of being educated^ heretics ought to be slaughtered, and that the slaughtering of them is a mark of " the perfection " of the Catholic Church ! The learned Textus Decretalium Professor in Universitate Gregoriana displays in this elevating investigation all the powers of penetrative logic, which have formed a distinct reputation for the Jesuit Society. He proves from the very perfection of the Catholic Church that it must occasionally kill a heretic I Thus : A Perfect Society has the right of using the sword, y«j Gladii; The Catholic Church is not only perfect, but perfectissima ; Therefore, the Catholic Church has the right to kill Hereiics- Q.E.D. 174 THE IRISH FANAR Or again The greater contains the less ; Excommunication which punishes the Soul is greater than Death, which merely affects the Body ; Therefore, the Church which can excommunicate can, a fortiori kill per gladium aut ignem. Q.E.D. Or again . To use non-deterrent penalties would be to act as insipiens in poenis ; But heretics only laugh at spiritual penalties ; Therefore, the Church ought to kill Heretics. Q.E.D. Or again : Civil Society, Societas Civilise has the right of killing for self- preservation ; The CathoUc Church is far more important than any Civil Society ; Therefore, the Catholic Church has a. better right to kill than any Civil Society. Graviore etiam are valet pro Ecdesia, Q.E.D. Or again Both the Spiritual and Material Swords, duo giadii, belong to the Catholic Church ; Civil Society only holds the Material Sword in trust for the Catholic Church ; Therefore, Civil Society must put Heretics to the sword when required by the Catholic Church. Q.E.D. Or again : Outlaws may be lawfully killed by anybody who meets thenoi omnibus potestas eos impune occidendi ; The Catholic Church may declare Heretics to be Outlaws ; Therefore, Heretics may be lawfully killed by anybody who meets them. Q.E.D. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION I75 Or again : Civil Society exists to obey the very md of the Catholic Church, ad nuium et obediefitiatn sacerdotis. Civil Society is bound to kill Heretics when ordered by the Catholic Church ; Therefore, a Prince or Government, Dominus Temporalis refusing to kill Heretics when required by the Catholic Church ceases to possess the rights of a Civil Society. Q.E.D. Or again : A good shepherd, Pastor Bonus, kills the wolves who attack his Heretics corrupting Catholics are Wolves attacking Sheep ; Therefore, the Catholic Church, as a good shepherd, ought to kill Heretics. Q.E.D. In fact, the juridical demonstrations of the Jesuit Professor at Rome— at the right hand of his General and published with the Imprimatur of his Provincial are equally luminous and edifying. But I do not find that the Jesuit Rector at Dublin reproduced them for the benefit of the Irish University Com- mission. They are, in fact, simply abominable in theology and morals. Their immorality is only exceeded by their hideous absurdity. I dare say that the Reverend Father Marianus De Luca, S.J., Professor of the Text of the Decretals in the Gregorian University, is an erudite and harm- less pedant, who might not personally burn a wasp. But he incarnates the anachronistic spirit of his Order. Because spiritual and temporal powers were often inextricably mixed at a certain stage of European development, he argues as if the same stage exists to-day. It may, indeed, in the heads of 176 THE IRISH FANAR Society which cannot get out of its sixteenth century. Why not burn witches, as Cathohcs taught Protestants to do ? Why not continue to condemn Galileo ? In modern days we may, indeed, execute a heretic, or a Catholic either, in spite of his hetero- doxy or his orthodoxy — if he assails private security or public order. His profession of religious motives would not save the Protestant fanatic who murdered a priest or a Catholic fanatic who murdered a parson. The condemnation of a heresy and the condemnation of a crime may meet in the same individual. The Catholic Church excommunicates the Anarchist. The United States may not only electrocute his body, but punish his doctrines. What has that to do with the cruel insanity about homicide being es- sential to spiritual perfection, and the " nod of the priest " determining the obedience of civil society ? The Society of Jesus had better modernise its own education, before pretending to educate the modern world ? And, kind heavens, what a Society to place in command of a National University in Ireland in order to allay the bigotry and eradicate the factious- ness which separate the Catholic and Protestant children of the same country 1 THE PRIESTLY BOYCOTT OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE If Englishmen were asked what would be the consequence of the sudden disuse of the English THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 177 language in the pulpits of the English religious denominations, they might reasonably reply with a demand for explanation. "What do you mean? What other language could be used ? How could the congregations understand anything else?" If you proceeded to suggest that under a fashionable impulse, the heads of the English religious bodies had resolved that sermons and exhortations should henceforth be delivered in French or German, the geniality of the joke would be recognised by a forced smile, which indicated that, though ingenious, it was hard to understand. That difficult joke, however, more incredible than amusing, has been the ecclesias- tical practice of the Catholic teachers of religion in Ireland for the most part of a century, though down to a generation ago three-fourths of the Irish popu- lation understood English very badly or not at all. Down to two generations ago, the large majority of the Irish population only spoke Irish ; but already, from the beginning of the century, if not earlier, increasing multitudes of the Irish priests addressed their Irish- speaking congregations in the finest Maynooth English. If the knowledge of religion, as well as the traditions of the race, suffered by the confusion of tongues, that appears to have been the least of the anxieties of a patriotic and electioneering clergy. The Dissenting Churches in Wales, the Presby- terian Kirks in the Highlands of Scotland, have employed the native speech to fashion and temper a type of Cymric and Gaelic Christians, whose virility and endurance are known beyond the Canadian If 178 THE IRISH FANAR pines ana the diggings of the Pacific slope. Out of the 15,000,000 or 20,000,000, on the contrary, who have sprung from the blood of the exiles of Ireland, more than two-thirds, descendants of sires who could not be grounded in their religion by priests who had discarded their language, have lost belief in the Church of their ancestors, and have seldom replaced it by the profession of any Protestant denomination. I read the other day in the Missionary Record of a Catholic Religious Order at Winnipeg, beyond the Great Lakes, an exclamation of priestly sorrow over the desolation which has followed the May- nooth boycott of the language of the race. "If the priests of Ireland had foreseen that the disuse of the old speech would not only denationalise but decatholicise the people, they would have strained every nerve against the destruction of the Irish language." How any priest, deliberately employing a language which he knew was unintelligible to his congregation, failed to perceive that he might almost as well have been preaching Buddhism or the Maxims of Confucius, is one of those enigmas dearer to casuists than pleasant to common sense or common feeling. In the Great Republic itself, the total of all the Catholics in the States — including millions of Ger- mans, Italians, French, Spaniards, Bohemians, Poles, and Hungarians — fell short of 10,000,000 according to the very latest census. To such an extent has the native religion dwindled and THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 179 disappeared among the American Irish. Almost the whole of that famishing multitude which poured upon the American coast after the black famine of the middle of the century, came from a Gaelic- speaking Ireland, from a Gaelic- speaking Ireland where the Levites from Maynooth had given up Gaelic. The '* strong farmers/' and the stronger retailers of whiskey and porter, who contributed the flower of their domestic hopes to be made ** gintle- men and clergymen," had accepted readily the superior respectability of the ruling tongue, and rolled pious eyes of pride and admiration at the ornate vocabulary — not unworthy of comparison with Babu English — which fell from the lips of the tonsured boast of the family. " Shure, Mr. Murphy, you are the proud man ! That was the grand sermon, entirely, and it would take a deep man to undherstand it." After a generation of such in- comprehensible profundity, half the countryside was lucky, if it still possessed much more than a sort of inherited remnant of the Christian religion, mixed with pagan reminiscences of rural spells and fetishes. While the faithful flocks were still struggling out of the fluent knowledge of Irish into the stage in which they knev/ neither English nor Irish well, the venerated pastors, prepared for the highest spheres by the foreign and domestic ignorance of Maynooth, were triumphantly advancing to the oratory of the hustings and the manufacture of Mimbers of Parliament. The stentorian blarney of i8o THE IRISH FANAR O'Connell, which the imagination of Bulwer Lytton heard entrancing " the hosts around," was really little more than dumb show to hundreds of thou- sands in his monster meetings ; but it rendered him the darling of a sympathetic clergy. Everywhere, outside of the towns, and often inside of them, the gospel of the day was expounded to devout audiences, who merely failed to understand the speech of the expositor. So long as the flock hated Protestantism or Protestants, performed with tradi- tional acceptance their religious obligations, and revered and obeyed the blessed magicians, " who could make turkey-cocks of them," so long was everything for the best in the best of all clerical worlds. Maynooth was satisfied, beatified. The bishops nominated the representatives of the people. A thousand public meetings, equally pious and parliamentarian, continued to proclaim that Ireland *' had been, was, and ever should be," the Island of Saints and Doctors — Doctors who knew the elements and Saints who sampled whiskey ! When those untaught myriads, uprooted from their native seats, were cast amid a new civilisation of strenuous competitors and audacious questioners, the Irish faith, in millions of cases, was blown aside like an exhalation and hardly left a wrack behind. To build edifices, to starve souls, and to ignore brains, was the motto of the new ascendency in Ireland. Clerical orators in Collection Sermons extolled the orthodoxy of a " pilgrim people who had carried the religion of Patrick beyond the Atlantic and THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION i8i the Pacific." This was their way of saying that for the 07ie Irishman who remained Catholic, two, or perhaps three, grew up of no religion at all. Like prudent advertisers, in claiming their victories, they omitted to mention the losses. This is not a question of English against Irish, or of English at all. It was the question of teaching Christianity so as to be understood by the Irish people of the time. However useful and necessary the knowledge of the English language, that is no excuse for the religious teachers of a nation aban- doning the only speech understanded of the people, before that people had time to acquire a substitute. There was a peculiar ingratitude on the part of Catholic ecclesiastics who flouted the speech which had kept Ireland Catholic. Dean Swift was neither the first nor the last of the Protestant clergymen in Ireland who bore witness that it was the language ** which prevented the Irish from being tamed." In truth, the non-English tongue had been an insuper- able barrier to the introduction of the Engrlish religion. The Irish kerne could not learn the New Creed which involved knowledge of the strange speech. In our day the descendants of those Irish kerne were to unlearn the Old Creed which had adopted a strange envelope, while the people still clung to the ancient language. Three-fourths of the island were still Gaelic speakers when May- nooth, slothful and parasitical, resolved to know no Gaelic. It had ceased to be fashionable in the best circles of the whiskey business; and the pimple- l82 THE IRISH FANAR nosed citizens, who were the most generous donors to ecclesiastical objects, had nothing but contempt for the vulgar dialect hiccoughed so horribly by their frieze-clad but profitable customers. The pint-pots set the canon of refinement to the pulpits. In 1825, the Commissioners of Education in Ireland, not disposed to minimise the diffusion of English, reported to Parliament that at least a million and a half of the population either used nothing but Irish or used it habitually. How many volumes of Irish sermons are extant from that date ? As late as 1842, a Scotch gospeller, discussing the chances of bringrino: the Irish to salvation, lamented that the number of Irish people, to whom the Gaelic was still their mother tongue, was over 3,000,000. At the same date, a German traveller, J. C. Kohl, narrates with disgust that, though Irish was spoken almost everywhere by the common folk, in the Irish speaking city of Cork there were only two Catholic churches where there might be heard a sermon capable of being understood by the inhabitants. Even the poor prisoners in Cork jail petitioned the Catholic chaplains "not to be preaching to them in English which they could not understand." In the thousands of national schools throughout the country, the priests were the managers, and the managers worked manfully at the extirpation of the tongue of the nation. As an adjunct to these patriotic exertions, they used to mount the platforms of O'Connell and the Brass Band, and declare, with ruddy aspect and raucous voices, that " the first THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 183 flower of the earth would defind her immortal nationality and bid defiance to the Saxon and guilt!" Englishmen may at least reflect that the clerical crusade against the spoken language of the country did not purport to make Ireland loyal. Never was so much verbose treason and denunciation in vogue in the island as since Irish discontent was brought up to brogue in bad English. Nor was the trouble confined to the political situation. The suppression of religious and moral instruction over wide areas, co-incident with the most inflammatory harangues, not the less sinister because imperfectly compre- hended, produced the most deplorable ideas upon the gravest questions of morals and society. The multiple murders at Maamtrasna, that still more horrid abomination the other day in a Tipperary parish, when a young wife, accused of complicity with demons or fairies, was burned alive by her own husband, assisted by the participation or sympathy of the entire townland, as a sort of exorcism against witchcraft and spells — such atro- cities, and a long trail of frightful assassinations, attested the contiguity of something like the customs of Congoland to all that illigant oratory and all those electioneering pastors. The destruc- tion of the national tongue is a serious moment ir the existence of any race. When that destruction ij. precipitated by the priests of the national worship itself, need we wonder that the results may be abidingly calamitous for the race and the religion ? i84 THE IRISH FANAR There are a few Irish priests in Ireland who are venturing to confess their sorrow — hundreds feel it in their souls — for the ruin of the Catholic religion among millions and millions of Irish Americans in consequence of the boycott of the Irish language by the clergy in Ireland. They wrap up the confession with little devices, which are intended to attenuate the treason to the Christian command to preach the Word. Preach the Word in an unknown tongue ! Among the number of repentant priests, repentant for the sins of their predecessors, may be counted a recent writer in a Dublin clerical magazine, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record. Rev. Father M. F. Shennors, O.M.I. — not one of the parochial clergy — writes as follows in an article entitled, " Ireland and America." First expressing his conviction, which may be a little exaggerated, that, if all the Irish emigrants to America had brought up their children as Catholics, there would now be 20,000,000 Catholics of Irish descent to-day in the United States, he is compelled to avow that present facts prove that the Irish apostatised in mass. Naturally, when their priests in Ireland never taught them their religion in an intelligible manner ! " There are reasons to fear," writes Father Shennors, "that the great majority of the apostates are of Irish extrac- tion, and not a few of Irish birth. For the Irish seem to be much more easily Americanised than other people, and to be Americanised is to be dechristianised. Other Catholic immigrants, such as Germans and Canadians, keep up their own Ian- THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 185 guage, and their ignorance of the language of their country is a protection to their faith." This is a curiously obscurantist way of conceiving a defence of Catholic religion. You may remain a Catholic if you do not understand the language of non- Catholics ! What an extraordinary idea of Christi- anity is cherished among Irish clericals ! Father Shennors continues in these words, which ought to be terrible to the most case-hardened conscience in Maynooth : " Would that this cry rang in the ear and the soul and conscience of every priest in Ireland!" But how many cries ought to ring in their souls, or what they are pleased to call their souls, for a hundred sins of omission and commis- sion, from the starving of the bright Irish brain to the wasting of the poor Irish purse? As I have intimated already, however glad Englishmen may be at the disappearance of Irish, is there an honest man of any race who will differ from me in holding that the language of a people should be used, at all events by their clergy, in order to teach them the fundamental truths of religion and morality, at least until they had mastered another vehicle of thought ? The consequences of broguing English to a Gaelic-speaking race must be equally deplored by moralists and statesmen of every creed. In the conscience-stricken words of this priestly writer : " The Irish immigrant in the United States is too often found to be Godless, faithless, hopeless, sunk into depths of social misery and spiritual debasement from which there is no arising." i86 THE IRISH FANAR Was it to facilitate that treason to God and Man and Fatherland that generous Parliaments of Pro- testants subsidised Maynooth College ? While May- nooth was ranting about suffering flocks and higher education, it was bringing up those suffering flocks without moral and religious protection against becoming " Godless, faithless, hopeless," a scandal to Ireland and a danger to America. Irish cleri- calism did not even expend on religious education the money it got from the Protestant Parliament for common purposes, and which it monopolised on the pretext of religious education. And now the same clericalism is arranging a ring- fence of Jesuitical evidence around the Irish Univer- sity Commission ! APPENDIX THE MIND OF THE JESUIT ORDER TO-DAY ON THE KILLING OF HERETICS AND THE LIBERTY OF PEOPLES The distinguished Professor, Canonist, and Theo- logian, Rev. Father Marianus de Luca, SJ., who holds the important Chair of the Text of the Decretals in the Gregorian University at Rome, is justly esteemed as one of the foremost minds of the Jesuit Society. His volumes on the Canon Law and on the Public Ecclesiastical Law have received the most authoritative approval from the heads of the Order of Jesus. The " Civilta Cattolica," the leading Jesuit Review, refers to the first volume of his ♦' Institutiones Juris Ecclesiastic! Publici" as combining the merits of style, learning, and doctrine. As it is precisely from this first volume that I am about to make the following quotations I lay s^ess and importance upon the approval of the "Civilta Cattolica" for "questo corso di Diritto publico ecclesiastico, pregevolissimo per chiarezza di stile, per profondita di dottrina, e per copiosa erudizione." The profundity of the learned Professor's " dot- i88 THE IRISH FANAR trina " concerning the denial of liberty and the extermination of heretics was cheerfully acknow- ledged in this handsome manner in the " Civilta Cattolica " of January 5, 1 89 1 , only eleven years ago ! Still more interesting is the approbation, affixed to Father de Luca's work by the Rev. Father Fran- cesco Carini, S.J., the Provincial of the Jesuits at Rome, based upon the examination and satisfactory report of the "Theologians of the Order," charged with the report upon its publication. Franciscus M. Carini Praepositus Provinciae Romanae S.I. Cum opus, cui titulus Institutiones iuris Ecclesiastici publici quas . . . habebat P. Marianus De Luca S. I. nunc Textus Decretalium Professor in Universitate Gregoriana, aliqui eiusdem Societatis Theologi, quibus id commisimus, recognoverint, et in lucem edi posse probaverint, facultatera damus, ul typis mandetur, si iis, ad quos pertinet, ita videbitur. In quorum fid em has literas manu nostra suscriptas et sygillo Societatis nostrae munitas dedimus. Romae die sacro SS. Apost. Petri et Pauli sub anno lubilaei 1900. Franciscus M. Carini, Fraep. Prov. Rom. S.I. The learned Father Marianus de Luca, S.J., is, indeed, to be congratulated upon the admiration which his doctrine has excited in the leading Review, the appointed Theologians, and the venerable Provincial of the Society. I have no temptation to contest his right to be taken as a genuine and authentic spokesman of the Order. The following extracts from this "pregevolissimo corso di Diritto THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 189 publico ecclesiastico " will show, however, that his "profound doctrine" would excite one universal outcry of protest from Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the civilised world. Following the quasi-scholastic and quasi-deductive method, the learned Jesuit Professor loves to evolve out of a definition, sometimes full of double mean- incrs, the conclusions which he purports to represent as the verdict of Catholic juridical science. Thus, he finds that, as a "perfect" Civil Society, or Indepen- dent State, implies the right of life and death, so the Catholic Church, being also a " perfect " Society, has the right to kill Heretics! "The Church of Christ has the right of inflicting the Pain of Death." COMPETIT ECCLESIAE ChRISTI IUS INFLIGENDI POENAS CORPORALES ETIAM MORTEM Cum autem alicuius societatis ius inviolabile impeti coepit eique denegari, tunc maxime adserendum ac strenue vindicandum ipsi est : iamvero si unquam factum, hac praesertim nostra aetate ius infligendi sontibus severissimas utut necessarias poenas, illud nominatim quod ius gladii vacant, denegatum societati perfectae atque mortis poenam iam inter mortua iura penitus sepultam vide- mus. Et ad Ecclesiam Christi quod spectat, quam Catholici perfectam esse imo perfectissimam admittere coguntur, Regalistae ei denegare solent ius inferendi poenas temporales : quod plane idem est ac contendere Ecclesiam oportere esse insipientem in poenis. Neque enim tantum priticipia iiiris socialis verum etiam principia generalia rationis indicant qualitatem et proportionem mediorum ex eo ipso quod sunt media, i.e., quod adhibentur non raiione sui, sed ratione alterius, quod per ea volumus obtinere, non posse determinari per se absolute : sed esse determinanda pro necessitate finis, i.e., pro necessitate eius rei obtinendae, propter I90 THE IRISH FANAR quam ilia adhibentur. Fac igitur ut illud fiat quod experientia quotidiana fieri videmus, esse aliquos qui poenas spirituales spernant, adeoque a turbando Ecclesiae ordine poenis spiritualibus contineri non possint, quid insipientius quaeso erit, quam eiusmodi poenas eisdem obiicere, a temporalibus vero, quae solae possent esse utiles, abstinere ? Recte ait Taparellius : id perinde esset ac si pticruin scJwlae ifjipaiientetn, scholae privatione pimias : qui si huic poenae non aliam poenam videat adiunctam laetus profecto erit atque hilaris, neque sane emendabitur, sed in pravitate sua obstinatior fiet. Pari insipientia notanda esset Ecclesia, si eos ; qui bona spiritualia spernunt, eoruindem priva- tione velit coercere. — " Institutiones," vol. i. p. 142. The reasoning of the learned Jesuit appears on a par with the clerical word-juggling in the Middle Ages, which deduced the right of the Church to the possession of a Spiritual Sword, and the command over a Material Sword, from the fact there were a couple of very material swords or choppers among the company of Apostles on one occasion. They were both common steel with nothing divine about them. But the learned Jesuit returns again and again to his grim pun on the "perfection " of Christianity. As SociETAS Perfecta the Church must Kill Nam ex ipsa origine, fundamento et fine poenarum desumenda est harum quantitas proportio et qualitas ; atqui origofundamentum et finis poenarum in societate perfecta exigit tit haec poUeat iure gladii: Ecclesia porro est Societas perfecta. Ergo. Ad mai. Poena nil aliud est nisi medium ad conservationem ordinis obtinendam : atqui materia, proportio et qualitas mediorum determinanda est a finis necessitate, h.e., talis esse debet quae finem certo pariat. Ergo.- -" Institutiones," vol. i. p. 142. THE RULN OF IRISH EDUCATION 191 Killing Heretics conducive to Faith Quod si res ita se habeant, quis non videt mortis poenam esse medium unice efficax ad societatis securitatem ? Quod quidem ius iuri vitae conservandae, quo delinquens gaudet, omnino praevalet. Diximiis hoc competere societati perfectae : si enim hoc medio unice hisce in casibus efficaci atque proin necessario careret, iam omnia media sufficientia et neccssaria ad finem in se non haberet, sen non esset societas perfecta Dixi Ecclesiam esse societatem perfectam, quod ut probalum supponimus : itts porro gladii est medium necessaritun et efficax ad finem simm ohtinendum, si coniu- maces et rebelles in Eccl. et perturbatores eccksiasticae pads et tinitatis et praesertim obstinati haeretici et haeresiarchae alia poena cocrceri non possunt, quominus pergant ecclesiasticum ordinem perturbare, atque aliis ad omnia scelera et praesertim ad crimina ecclesiastica proclivibus impulsum dare. Et re quidem vera Ecclesia primum lenius cum haereticis processit, excommunica- tione, confiscatione bonorum . . . donee coacta fuerit ad extre- mum infligendum supplicium " secundo experientia docet (ait Bellarm. de laicis I. 3 c. 21) non esse aliud remedium : nam Ecclesia paullatim progressa est, €t omnia remedia experta; pri^no solum excommimicabat ; dcinde addidit mulctampecuniarum, turn exilium; ultimo coacta est ad mortem venire: nam excommunicationem contemnunt haeretici, ac dicunt esse fulmina frigida : si mineris mulctam pecuniariam nee Deum timent, nee homines reverentur, scientes non defuturos stultos, qui illis credant, et a quibus alantur; si in carcerem concludas vel in exiUum mittas corrumpunt vicinos verbis, et longe positos Hbris, ERGO SOLUM REMEDIUM EST MITTERE ILLOS MATURE IN LOCUM suuM."— "Institutiones," vol. i. p. i43- The Church better entitled to kill than the State Et re quidem vera ut hoc ius gladii non competeret Ecclesiae id esset vel quia naturae seu fini Ecclesiae repugnaret, vel quia 192 THE IRISH FANAR contradicit iuri natural! et divino positive : atqui nihil ex iis. I. Non contradicit (a) finiEccl. quin imo id exigit ille : ad Ecclesiam enim spectat non unius sed omnium curare sanctificationem et salutem necessario ordine etiam externo ecclesiastico partim a Christo Dno., partim ab ipsa Eccl. determinate : ergo cum unius vel aliquorum pravitas posita sit in ruinam multorum filiorum, tenetur illam auferre efficacius ita ut si nullum aliud suppetat remedium, ut salvet populum suum, possit ac debeat eiusmodi pravis hominibus mortem infligere. Quod factum fuisse videmus ab Eccl. quoad obstinates haereticos . . . et eos a quibus nonnisi periculum perturbandi ordinem socialem ecclesiasticum et im- pulsum perversionis praebendi coeteris, merite timet Ecclesia. Hinc ad hominem responderi posset iis, qui autumant ius gladii seu extremum supplicium contradicere fini Ecclesiae, i.e., saluti animarum, — Scil. ergo neque status gaudebit iure gladii quando- quidem finis status est subordinatus fini Ecclesiae. (b) Non contradicit iuri naturali. Ratio enim conservationis et tranquillitatis societatis, quae ex iure naturali uuica ratio est, cur ea potestas in societate civili exerceri possit, graviore etiam iure valet pro Ecclesia ; cum multo magis intersit Ecclesiae conservatio quam societatis civilis. — " Institutiones," vol. i. pp. 143-44. The Request to the Civil Magistrate not TO KILL : A Comedy Hinc etiam 3. cum Eccl. delinquentem, puta clericum degradatum, tradit brachio saeculari, rogat magistratum civilem ne sanguinem effundat, ut habetur in Pontificali. {Tamen declaratum est magistratum civilem per hoc non obligari ad san- guinem non effundendum.) lamvero si Ecclesiae nomine sanguis funderetur, esset contradictoria haec petitio, et Eccl. in re tam gravi ludere, sine iniuria affirmari non potest. — " Institutiones," vol. L p. 145. Perhaps the learned Jesuit almost excels himself in his luminous demonstration that the duty of killing Heretics is necessary, "ad salutem fidelium " in a Christian State. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 193 The State Bound to Kill when ordered by the Church Non est enitn necesse ad immediatum exercitium ut Ecclesiae Ministri tamquara carnifices, Ecclesiae magistratus ius exerceant ; sed sufficit ut hie Magistratus Ecclesiasticus sit mandans mortis in casu particiilari, ita ut indeclinabile ministerium Princip. civili insit Eccksiae praestandi indices et executores saeculares : nam ad iudicii Eccl. effectum obtinendum perinde est quod penes ipsum Ecclesiae supremum magistratum reperiatur constitutes esse ministros iustitiae, vel penes Principem civilem manum militum, qui omnes ad hoc ius gladii exercendum parati esse debent : membra enim societatis immediate et directe subduntur, potestati societatis in iis, quae ad huius finem necessaria sunt. Sed societas civilis etiam cum suo principe et exercitu sunt membra Ecclesiae : ergo in iis quae ad Ecclesiam pertinent ceu necessario ad finem immediate subdi ac dirigi debent: sed praestare vim materialem usque ad mortem, e.g., haeretico in- fligendam, est medium necessarium ad salutem Christi fidelium qui est finis Eccl. Ergo. (Nam i) absque ulla distinctione mediati ab immediato exercitio negant DD. eiusmodi ius exercitum numquam fuisse Cf. Bellar ; (a) indeclinabile officium seu ministerium dictum praestare debent cum Eccl. approbaverit et suas fecerit leges civiles banc poenam decernentes ; (3) ex auctoritate Eccl. quis evadebat diffidafus, erga qiiem scil. dabatur omnibus potestas euin impune occidendi.— " Instituiiones," vol. i. p. i45- Not the Amendment of the Heretic, but his Death Necessary 3» Obiic. Ex eo quod non emendat haec poena ipsum delin- quenteni. Resp. N. suppositum quod in omni poena praesertim ecclesiastica debeat semper inveniri emendatio in delinquente : secus enim nulla alia poena infligi potest, quae certo ipsius delinquentis emendationem non pariat, quod fa/sum est. Emendatio porro delinquentis sicut reparatio personae laesae eatenus exiguntur, quatenus id postulet finis adeoque ordo ipse societatis, de qua agitur, non autem absolute. Et quamvis in fine Ecclesiae privata N 194 THE IRISH FANAR etiam uniuscuiusque institutio contineatur, unde frequens usus in ea poenarum medicinalium ; tamen in antecessum praestitum supponi semper debet, fundamentum praecipuum et finem poenarum in necessitate tutelae ordinis socialis consistere. Asseritur quidem ab adversariis tutissimum quidem esse medium defendendi societatem ecclesiasticam ita ut ponatur delinquens in impossibiiitate nocendi : at necessarium non esse, quia dicunt ad id sufficit career perpetuus : cui nos respondemus quod sicut hie non sufficit pro tutela ordinis civilis, ita non sufficit pro tutela ordinis ecclesiastici. Et re quidem vera bonum maxime necessarium Eccl. est unitas verae fidei : atqui haec servari nequit nisi haerethicus morti tradatur. cf. Bellarm. 1. cit. — " Institutiones," vol. i. p. 146. " By Fire as well as Sword " " Et suadet ipsa ratio, quia Respublica habet potestatem puniendi subditos poena condigna iuxta delicti gravitatem, sed nullum gravius delictum est haeresi propter nocumentum, quod afFert reipublicae christianae, et ideo igne etferro resecandum ut in cap. Resecanda 24^. 3. Innoc. ep. 25 — D. Tom. 2. 2. q. 11. art. 3 et 4 et ibi Bannes et Gregorius de Valentia— Suarez de Fide disp. 23. sect. I. n. 5. — DeLugo disp. XXIV. sect. 2. n. 36. — ex nostris Farinsc. q. 189. n. 4." — "Institutiones," vol. i. p. 147. Civil Governments refusing to kill Heretics to be Deposed and Confiscated Hinc per plura saecula constans praxis, quod brachio saeculari traditus absque uUa revisione causae, et mora sit comburendus. 2. Nam Condi. Lateranense IV. c. 3 decernit " Si Dominus temporalis requi situs vel monitus ab Ecclesia terram suam purgare neglexerit ab hac haeretica foeditate per Metropolitanum et ceteros comprovinciales Episcopos Excommunicationis vinculo innodetur, et si satisfacere contempserit intra annum, significetur hoc summo Pontifici ut ex tunc ipse vassallos ab eius fidelitate deniuntiet absolutos, et terram exponat Catholicis occupandam, qui earn THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 195 exterminatis haereticis sine ulla contradictione possideant" — " Institutiones," vol. i. p. 148. FROM FINING TO FLOGGING! Finally, it is to be counted to the credit of the learned Jesuit Professor and Theologian that his zealous and inventive genius is by no means exhausted with the infliction of the death penalty upon persons of heterodox views and sentiments. Though it might appear that his methods of fire and sword v/ould disdain lesser inflictions, he really has quite a wealth of finings, banishments, perpetual imprisonments, floggings, &c. &c., at the service of tlie victims of Loyolan ardours. Let no laymen believe himself secure from the ecclesiastical judge ! Unde manat ceu consectarium quod si poenam capitalem infligendi, etiam alias poenas corporales statuendi atque appli- candi ius habet Ecclesia. Trid. sess, XXV. C. 3 de R. ait " Liceat ek {iudicibus ecclesiasticis) si expedire videbitur, in causis civilibus ad forum ecclesiasticum quomodolibet obtinentibus, contra qiios- cumque etiam laicos per mulctas pecuniarias, quae locis piis ibi existentibus, eo ipso quod exactae fuerint adsignerxtur, sea per captionem pignorum personarumque districtionem per suos pro- prios aut alios executores faciendam, sive etian per privationem beneficiorumaliaqueiuris remediaprocedere. . . In causis quoque criminalibus ubi executio realis vel personalis, ut supra, fieri poterit, erit a censuris abstinenduin " — C. 6 De ludaeis et c. i ex- travcomm. eod. etc. 10 De Haeret. : et alibi apparet praxis Ecclesiae in infi gendis poena serviidis, rekgationis in aliquam regionem, exilii ab aliqua provincia, carceris pefpetui^ recliisionis in monasteriian., fustigationis. Ct. Pallavicino Storia del Concil. di Trento Lib, 22. C. 9. ?i. 8. — "Institutions," vol. i. p. 149. 196 THE IRISH FANAR It is not necessary to pursue further this deplor- able topic. Those who wish to quaff deeper draughts of this Jesuit fount of mercy can procure the work of Rev. Father Marianus de Luca, S.J., from the well-known Catholic Publishers, Pustet: Regensburg. LAW INDEPENDENT OF POPULAR CONSENT t It may be mentioned, however, that the learned Jesuit also leaves little doubt about his extremely low opinion of the merits of constitutional govern- ments and free institutions. I do not think there is anything accidental about the scorn he pours out upon the notion of submitting laws to the approba- tion of the governed. Those zealous Jesuits really do not find themselves at home in any century much later than the sixteenth or the seventeenth at the very utmost. Repugnare notioni legis ut acceptatio populi neces- saria habeatur, quo possit vim suam exserere. De acceptatione. Ex analysi facta notionis legis et signanter ex lis, quae de forma dicta sunt, aliud corollarium sequitur, quod so. falsum est quod aliqui dicunt, requiri acceptatlo?iein populi ut lex jaleat ; imo ita hoc esse falsum ut repugnet notioni legis. Etenim pertinent ad formam legis ut per modum obligationis sit proposita (14, 15, 16) : non asset autem si liceret illam reiicere. Ergo si |uando requiritur acceptatio populi id esse aliter nequit, inquit Suarez I. i. c. XI. ac leg. n. 6. nisi aut propter imperfectam potes- tatem Principis, quia ex peculiari suae societatis constitutione sub hac dependentia, suscepit potestatem, aut ex eiusdem benignitate, qui absoluta sua potestate uti nolit. Duplex distinguatur quaest. iuris etfacti. THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 197 Quaest Juris. Et re quidem vera : (a) si requireretur talis accep- tatio, id essetvel ex parte legis, vel ex parte legislatoris,in quo residet suprema potestas, vel ex parte populi, cui fertur lex : atqui ex nuUo horum capite Frob. min. Non ex parte ipsius legis ut patet ex modo dictis de repugnantia notioni legis, si id fieret : neque ex parte principis, seu auctoris legis in quo residet suprema potestas : quaelibet enim suprema potestas in societate est legifera, ex se sufficiens ad proponendum subditis determinatum aliquod medium necessarium fini assequendo, atque ius obligandi omnes ad illud idem medium adhibendum : atqui nulla esset huiusmodi potestas si requireretur concensus subditorum, qui propter in- genii varietatem, voluntatum inconstantiam, atque aestum pas- sionum, vel omnes vel plures repugnarent plus minusve. — Neque ex parte sociorum : hi enim ex definitione societatis tenentur conferre vires ut comparent media a societate imposita pro fine integre assequendo : atqui ius totum hoc exigendi ab omnibus nullum esset si possent potestati habenti tale ius atque medium proponenti repugnare subditi. Ad rem Aug. de lib. arb. 2. 3, c. 24. Praeceptum non est ab illo, cui praecipiiur, sed qui praecipit. (b) Quae enim eiusmodi potestas esset, legifera, quae nihil statuere posset, nisi quae placeret plebi acceptare ? — " Institutiones,' vol. i. pp. 38-9. It is the characteristic proceeding ot the learned Jesuit to minimise or ignore the fact that in the Middle Agres three-fourths of the action of Cathohc dignitaries, including the highest, were often political and social, and not religious at all ; that much of what we punish to-day as crime was then punished as heresy ; that the ecclesiastical termin- ology, like the ecclesiastical predominance, invaded all departments of lay society, which was as yet hardly conscious, as well as hardly capable, of its separate rights or its independent existence. Even the late Cardinal Hergenroether, no enemy of Papal 198 THE IRISH FANAR authority, has declared that the tremendous powers of interference in Civil Government exercised by the Church in those days were derived, above all, from the social and political constitution of a period of European development which has ended and passed away centuries ago. " From the standpoint of Ecclesiastical History a sufficient explanation of the power exercised by the Church, even in pohtical affairs, is afforded by the circumstances and legal con- ditions of the Middle Ages. . . Without the support of recognised laws such a predominance would never have been admitted by the mightiest princes, and would not have been exercised during centuries." — Kirchengeschicte, ii. 338. Furthermore, the same historical authority ex- pressly adds, that the mediaeval power of the Papacy necessarily vanished with social and legal conditions which had produced it. " As the States educated by the Church herself freed them- selves from her, and public law underwent a complete transforma- tion it followed necessarily that that portion of Papal authority disappeared which was only founded on the legal conditions and conceptions of the Middle Ages." — Kirchengeschicte, ii. 338. Out of that notorious Bull, Unam Sanctam, launched in just wrath by Pope Boniface VIII, against the French tyrant of his time, there only remains, even supposing it to have reached us un- falsified, little but the sound Christian doctrine that kincrs have no more licence to sin than the meanest of their vassals. The Jesuit Professor lovingly resuscitates from its angry exaggerations the base- THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 199 less rhetoric about the Two Swords, and the irrita- ting hyperbole that Civil Government must stand at the beck and sufferance of the priest. " Ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis ! " * The Jesuit Profes- sor's attempted revival of Papal prerogatives, which were based on the public law of a period that has passed away since hundreds of years, may well sound to modern ears like that glorification of despotism which Seneca set in the mouth of Nero: " Haec tot millia gladiorum quae pax mea comprornit, ad nutum meum stringentur. Quas nationes funditus exscindi . . . quibus libertatem dari, quibus eripi, quos reges mancipia fieri, quorumque capiti regium circumdari decus oporteat. . . mea jurisdictio est ! " That the political predominance of the Church was necessary to the society of the Middle Ages, and even to the development of European Christendom, is no excuse for this indecent disinterment of the long deceased. Neither have we to compare the * As a further illustration, both of the danger to a University from clerical interference with learning far beyond the bounds of Physical Science, and of the rising protest of learned Catholics against the Party of Intolerance, I must mention the Jesuit denunciations quite recently against another University Professor* The Professor of Canon Law in the University of Innspruck, Ludwig Wahrmund, himself a devoted Catholic, has just protested in out- spoken terms against the application to modern society of the intolerant claims to universal political dominion for the Popes, based on the Bull " Unam Sanctam," The Jesuits have raised a storm of agitation to force the Austrian Government to dismiss the Professor; but the Minister of Education, also a Catholic, has ri^used. 200 THE IRISH FANAR past with the present. It would be as idle to discuss whether the seizure of the Philippines showed more delicate regard for human rights than the seizure of Poland, or whether certain troops of the Allies in China might have served as reformers of the soldiers of Wallenstein. The Jesuit Professor's juridical casuistry only misdescribes actual Catholicism ; and his pious anxiety to claim the Block and the Faggot for the permanent perfections of Christianity can only revolt the intelligence of contemporary mankind. In a similar strain, his yearnings for Absolutism can only confirm the delusion of a coterie, blinder than Bourbons, who made the Temporal Power of the Popes the last refuge of paternal autocracy amid constitutic nalist continents. The freedom of the Religious Chief of hundreds of millions from all subjection to secular rulers may be even more to the advantage of international security than of the Church's mission. What has that to do with govern- ing the Rome of the twentieth century according to the methods of the Rome of the Saint of Loyola ? The temporal sovereignty of Edward VII. of England is fairly independent ; but it can apparently co-exist with a measure of popular representation, with large liberty of the press, and, in spite of the occasional interludes of human nature, with the right of public meeting. The capital seat of Ponti- fical Authority, boasting not only the tombs of the Apostles but the college of the Gesu, might have been expected to provide, as guide and exemplar to Catholic Civilisation, some happier medium between THE RUIN OF IRISH EDUCATION 201 the domestic mobs of Ciceruacchio and the crusad- ing zouaves of Antonelli. I have delayed at some length over this matter, both on account of its illustration of that Jesuit spirit which has been entrusted by a strange abdication with the supreme direction of Irish Catholic in- struction, and also in order to make perfectly clear my own position, which all the resources of masters of the art will hasten to misinterpret. In immediate connection with the demand to subordinate the professoriate of an Irish University to the tribunal of a pair of bishops, or even a quartet of archbishops, the University Commission may now observe: (i) That the most authorised exponent of Jesuit ecclesiastical science can teach, as vital truths, the most horrible anachronisms ; (2) That such a teacher may influence, it is true, a couple or even a dozen bishops, but there are chances against his monopoly of the entire episcopal conviction of a nation ; (3) That, therefore, the unanimous decision of the Irish Catholic Bishops upon the position of a University Professor is the very least that can be admitted with safety ; and that, at all events, it may be accepted with inde- finitely more confidence than the individual views of three or four prelates, however distinguished by rank or reputation. It is finally to be remembered that, as ecclesias- o 202 THE IRISH FANAR tical history often informs us, an individual bishop, having once formulated a judgment, can often acquire the concurrence of many episcopal brethren ; but that a Plenary National Synod unites differences of temperament, policy, and responsibility, frequently sufficient to prevent inopportune or precipitate resolutions. Therefore, there are good grounds for my suggestion that nothing less than the unanimous protest of the Irish Catholic Bishops, especially in the actual preponderance of Ignatian Schools of Theologians, should be allowed to affect the position of a professor in an Irish University Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson S' Co. 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