Being governed by the Church, as freemen, in the spirit of a republican government, and enjoying, as they do, the freedom of the children of God, Catholics feel nowhere more at home than under a republican form of government. If a great pope could say in truth that he was nowhere more pope than in America, every Catholic can, and does, also, say in truth, "Nowhere can I be a better Christian than in the United States." Hence it is that Catholics are very generally attached to the republican institutions of the country—no class of our citizens more so—and would defend them at the sacrifice of their lives. Catholics far more readily adjust themselves to our institutions than non-Catholics, and among Catholics it must be observed that they succeed best who best understand and best practise their religion. They who are least truly American, and yield most to demagogues, are those who have very little of Catholicity, except the accident of being born of Catholic parents, who had them baptized in infancy.

Practical Catholics are the best Republicans! If we consult history, we find that they were always foremost in establishing and maintaining the republican form of government. Who originated all the free principles which lie at the basis of our own noble Constitution? Who gave us trial by jury, habeas corpus, stationary courts, and the principle—for which we fought and conquered in our revolutionary struggle against Protestant England—that taxes are not to be levied without the free consent of those who pay them? All these cardinal elements of free government date back to the good old Catholic times, in the middle ages—some three hundred years before the dawn of the Reformation! Our Catholic forefathers gave them all to us.

Again, we are indebted to Catholics for all the republics which ever existed in Christian times, down to the year 1776: for those of Switzerland, Venice, Genoa, Andorra, San Marino, and a host of minor free Commonwealths, which sprang up in the "dark ages." Some of these republics still exist, proud monuments and unanswerable evidences of Catholic devotion to freedom. They are acknowledged by Protestants, no less than by Catholics. I subjoin the testimony of an able writer in the New York Tribune, believed to be Bayard Taylor. This distinguished traveller—a staunch Protestant—appeals to history, and speaks from personal observation. He writes:

"Truth compels us to add that the oldest republic now existing is that of San Marino, not only Catholic, but wholly surrounded by the especial dominion of the popes, who might have crushed it like an egg-shell at any time these last thousand years—but they didn't. The only republic we ever travelled in besides our own is Switzerland, half of its cantons or states entirely Catholic, yet never, that we have heard of, unfaithful to the cause of freedom. We never heard the Catholics of Hungary accused of backwardness in the late glorious struggle of their country for freedom, though its leaders were Protestants, fighting against a leading Catholic power avowedly in favor of religious as well as civil liberty. And chivalric, unhappy Poland, almost wholly Catholic, has made as gallant struggles for freedom as any other nation; while of the three despotisms that crushed her, but one was Catholic."

Let us bring the subject home to our own times and country. Who, I would ask, first reared in triumph the broad banner of universal freedom on this North American Continent? Who first proclaimed in this new world a truth too wide and expansive to enter into the head of, or to be comprehended by, a narrow-minded bigot—a truth that every man should be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience? Who first proclaimed, on this broad continent, the glorious principles of universal freedom? Read Bancroft, read Goodrich, read Frost, read every Protestant historian of our country, and you will see there inscribed, on the historic page, a fact which reflects immortal honor on our American Catholic ancestry—that Lord Baltimore and his Catholic colonists of Maryland were the first to proclaim universal liberty, civil and religious; the first to announce, as the basis of their legislation, the great and noble principle that no man's faith and conscience should be a bar to his holding any office, or enjoying any civil privilege of the community.

What American can forget the names of Rochambeau, De Grasse, De Kalb, Pulaski, La Fayette, Kosciusko? Without the aid of these noble Catholic heroes, and of the brave troops whom they led on to victory, would we have succeeded at all in our great revolutionary contest? Men of the clearest heads, and of the greatest political forecast, living at that time, thought not; at least they deemed the result exceedingly doubtful.

And during the whole war of the Revolution, who ever heard of a Catholic coward, or of a Catholic traitor? When the Protestant General, Gates, fled from the battle-field of Camden with the Protestant militia of North Carolina and Virginia, who but Catholics stood firm at their posts, and fought and died with the brave old Catholic hero, De Kalb? the veteran who, when others ingloriously fled, seized his good sword, and cried out to the brave old Maryland and Pennsylvania lines, "Stand firm, for I am too old to fly!" Who ever heard of a Catholic Arnold? And who has not heard of the brave Irish and German soldiers who, at a somewhat later period, mainly composed the invincible army of the impetuous "Mad Anthony" Wayne, and constituted the great bulwark of our defence against the savage invasions which threatened our whole northwestern frontier with devastation and ruin?

All these facts, and many more of a similar kind which might be alleged, cannot have passed away, as yet, from the memory of our American citizens. Americans cannot have forgotten, as yet, that the man who perilled most in signing the Declaration of Independence was a Roman Catholic, and that when Charles Carroll, of Carrolton, put his name to that instrument, Benjamin Franklin observed, "There goes a cool million in support of the cause!"

And when our energies were exhausted, and the stoutest hearts entertained the most gloomy forebodings as to the final issue, Catholic France stepped gallantly forth to the rescue of our infant freedom, almost crushed by an overwhelming English tyranny! Catholic Spain also subsequently lent us her aid against England. Many of our most sagacious statesmen have believed that, but for this timely aid, our Declaration of Independence could scarcely have been made good.

These facts, which are but a few of those which might be adduced, prove conclusively that Catholicity is still what she was in the middle ages—the steadfast friend and support of free institutions.

The great roots of all the evils that press upon society, and make man unhappy, are—

"THE IGNORANCE OF THE MIND, AND THE DEPRAVITY OF THE WILL."

Hence he who wishes to civilize the world, and thus assist in executing the plans of God's providence, must remove these two great roots of evil by imparting to the mind infallibly the light of truth, and by laying down for the will authoritatively the unchangeable principles of morality. It is the Catholic Church that has accomplished in society this twofold task, by means of education.

In the Pagan world, education was an edifice built up on the principles of slavery. The motto was, "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo." Education was the privilege of the aristocracy. The great mass of people was studiously kept in ignorance of the treasures of the mind. This state of things was done away with by the Roman Catholic Church, when she established the monastic institutions of the West. The whole of Europe was soon covered with schools, not only for the wealthy, but for the poorest even of the poor. Yes, education was systematized, and an emulation was created for learning, such as the world had never seen before. Italy, Germany, France, England, and Spain, had their universities; but side by side with these, their colleges, gymnasiums, parish and village schools, as numerous as the churches and monasteries, which the efforts of the Holy See had scattered with lavish hand over the length and breadth of the land.

And where was the source of all this light? I answer, at Rome. For when the barbarian hordes poured down upon Europe from the Caspian Mountains, it was the Popes who saved civilization. They collected, in the Vatican, the manuscripts of the ancient authors, gathered from all parts of the earth at enormous expense. The barbarians, who destroyed everything by fire and sword, had already advanced as far as Rome. Attila, who called himself the scourge of God, stood before its walls; there was no emperor, no praetorian guard, no legions present to save the ancient Capital of the world. But there was a Pope—Leo I. And Leo went forth, and by entreaties, and threats of God's displeasure, induced the dreaded king of the Huns to retire. Scarcely had Attila retired, before Genseric, king of the Vandals, made his appearance, invited by Eudoxia, the empress, to the plunder of Rome. Leo met him, and obtained from him the lives and the honor of the Romans, and the sparing of the public monuments which adorned the city in such numbers. Thus Leo the Great saved Europe from barbarism. To the name of Leo, I might add those of Gregory I., Sylvester II., Gregory XIII., Benedict XIV., Julius III., Paul III., Leo X., Clement VIII., John XX., and a host of others, who must be looked upon as the preservers of science and the arts, even amid the very fearful torrent of barbarism that was spreading itself, like an inundation, over the whole of Europe. The principle of the Catholic Church has ever been this: "By the knowledge of Divine things, and the guidance of an infallible teacher, the human mind must gain certainty in regard to the sublimest problems, the great questions of life: by them the origin, the end, the norm and limit of man's activity must be made known, for then alone can he venture fearlessly upon the sphere of human efforts, and human developments, and human science." And, truly, never has science gained the ascendancy outside of the Church that it has always held in the Church. And what I say of science I say also of the arts. I say it of architecture, of sculpture, and of painting. I need only point to the Basilica of Peter, to the museums and libraries of Rome. It is to Rome the youthful artist always turns his steps, in order to drink in, at the monuments of art and of science, the genius and inspiration he seeks for in vain in his own country. He feels, only too keenly, that railroads and telegraphs, steamships and power-looms, banking-houses and stock companies, though good and useful institutions, are not the mothers of genius, nor the schools of inspiration; and therefore he leaves his country, and goes to Rome, and there feasts on the fruits gathered by the hands of St. Peter's successors, and then returns home with a name which will live for ages in the memory of those who have learned to appreciate the true and the beautiful.

It is thus that the Catholic Church has accomplished the great work of enlightening society. She has shed the light of Faith over the East and the West, over the North and the South, and with the faith she has established the principles of true science on their natural bases. She has imparted education to the masses, wherever she was left free to adopt her own, and untrammelled by civil interference. She has fostered and protected the arts and the sciences, and to-day, if all the libraries, and all the museums, and all the galleries of art in the world were destroyed, Rome alone would possess quite enough to supply the want, as it did in former ages, when others supplied themselves by plundering Rome.

The depravity of man shows itself in the constant endeavor to shake off the restraint placed by law and duty upon his will; and to this we must ascribe the licentiousness which has at all times afflicted society. Passion acknowledges no law, and spares neither rights nor conventions; where it has the power, it exercises it to the advantage of self, and to the detriment of social order. The Church is by its very constitution Catholic, and hence looks upon all men as brothers of the same family. She acknowledges not the natural right of one man over another, and hence her Catholicity lays a heavy restraint upon all the efforts of self-love, and curbs with a mighty hand the temerity of those who would destroy the harmony of life implied in the idea of Catholicity.

One of the first principles of all social happiness is, that before the law of nature, and before the face of God, all men are equal. This principle is based on the unity of the human race, the origin of all men from one common father. If we study the History of Paganism, we find that all heathen nations overturned this great principle, since we find among all heathen nations the evil of Slavery. Prior to the coming of Christ, the great majority of men were looked upon as a higher development of the animal, as animated instruments which might be bought and sold, given away and pawned; which might be tormented, maltreated, or murdered; as beings, in a word, for whom the idea of right, duty, pity, mercy, and law had no existence. Who can read, without a feeling of intense horror, the accounts left us of the treatment of their slaves by the Romans? There was no law that could restrain in the least the wantonness, the cruelty, the licentious excess of the master, who, as master, possessed the absolute right to do with his slaves whatsoever he pleased. To remove this stain of slavery has ever been the aim of the Catholic Church. "Since the Saviour and Creator of the world," says Pope Gregory I., in his celebrated decree, "wished to become man, in order, by grace and liberty, to break the chains of our slavery, it is right and good to bestow again upon man, whom nature has permitted to be born free, but whom the law of nations has brought under the yoke of slavery, the blessing of their original liberty." Through all the middle ages—called by Protestants the dark ages of the world—the echo of these words of Gregory I. is heard; and in the thirteenth century Pope Pius II. could say, "Thanks to God, and the Apostolic See, the yoke of slavery does no longer disgrace any European nation." Since then slavery was again introduced into Africa, and the newly-discovered regions of America, and again the Popes raised their voices in the interests of liberty,—from Pius II. to Pius VII., who, even at the time Napoleon had robbed him of his liberty, and held him captive in a foreign land, became the defender of the negro, to Gregory XVI., who, on the third of November, 1839, insisted in a special Bull on the abolition of the slave trade, and who spoke in a strain as if he had lived and sat side by side with Gregory I., thirteen hundred years before. But here let us observe, that not only the vindication of liberty for all, not only the abolition of slavery, but the very mode of action followed in this matter by the Popes, has gained for them immortal honor, and the esteem of all good men. When the Church abolished slavery in any country where it existed, the Popes did not compel masters, by harshness or threats, to manumit their slaves; they did not bring into action the base intrigues, the low chicanery, the canting hypocrisy of modern statesmen; they did not raise armies, and send them into the lands of their masters to burn and to pillage, to lay waste and to destroy; they did not slaughter, by their schemes, over a million of free men and another million of slaves; they did not make widows and orphans without numbers; they did not impoverish the land, and lay upon their subjects burdens which would crush them into very dust. Nothing of all this. That is not the way in which the Church abolished slavery. The Popes sent bishops and priests into those countries where slavery existed, to enlighten the minds of the masters, and convince them that slaves were men, and consequently had souls, like other people, too. The Popes, bishops and priests infused into the hearts of masters a deep love for Jesus Christ, and consequently a deep love for souls. The Popes, bishops and priests taught masters to look upon their slaves as created by the same God, redeemed by the same Jesus Christ, destined for the same glory. The consequence was, that the relations of slave and master became the relations of brother to brother; the master began to love his slave, and to ameliorate his condition, till at last, forced by his own acknowledged principles, he granted to him his liberty. Thus it was that slavery was abolished by the preaching of the Popes, bishops and priests. The great barrier to all the healthy, permanent, and free development of nations was thus broken down; the blessings, the privileges of society, were made equally attainable by the masses, and ceased to be the special monopoly of a few, who, for the most part, had nothing to recommend them except their wealth.

If any doubt remain as to the favorable influence of Catholicity on civil liberty, it would be dispelled by the express teaching of the theologians, writing in accordance with the principles and the spirit of the Church. Not to extend this point too much, I will confine myself to the authority of the great St. Thomas Aquinas, who, as a theologian, has perhaps had greater weight in the Catholic Church than any other man. His testimony may also show us what were the general sentiments of the school-men in the thirteenth century, when he wrote.

Speaking of the origin of civil power and the objects of law, he lays down these principles: "The law, strictly speaking, is directed primarily and principally to the common good; and to decree anything for the common benefit belongs either to the whole body of the people, or to some one acting in their place." (Summa Theologiae, i. 2, I. Quaest. Art. iii., Resp.) He pronounces the following opinion as to the best form of government: "Wherefore the choice of rulers in any state or kingdom is best, when one is chosen for his merit to preside over all, and under him are other rulers chosen for their merit; and the government belongs to all, because the rulers may be chosen from any class of society; and the choice is made by all." (Ibid, Quaest. cv. Art. 1.) One would think that he is hearing a Democrat of the modern stamp, and yet it is a monk of the dark ages! Many other testimonies of similar import might be cited, but these will suffice.

And what has Protestantism done for human freedom? The Reformation dawned on the world in the year 1517. What did it do for the cause of freedom from that date down to 1776—when our Republic arose? Did it strike one blow for liberty during these two centuries and a half? Did it originate one republican principle, or found one solitary republic? Not one. In Germany, where it had full sway, it ruthlessly trampled in the dust all the noble franchises of the Catholic middle ages; it established political despotism everywhere; it united church and state; in a word, it brought about that very state of things which continues to exist, with but slight amelioration, even down to the present day. In England, it did the same; it broke down the bulwarks of the British Constitution, derived from the Catholic Magna Charta; it set at naught popular rights, and gave to the king or queen unlimited power in church and state; and it required a bloody struggle and a revolution, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, to restore to something of their former integrity the old chartered rights of the British people.

Protestantism has always boasted much, but it has really done little for the cause of human freedom. As to the liberties which we enjoy in our country, we cheerfully award to our Protestant fellow-citizens the praise which is so justly due them for their share in the glorious struggle.

But as to the power of Protestantism to maintain the Republic by checking the great evils that have already sapped its foundations, it has not any at all. How could Protestantism check infidelity, since it leads to it? There are two causes of infidelity that have existed from the beginning of the world. But about three centuries ago Protestantism opened a very wide avenue to infidelity. Protestantism introduced the principle, "There is no divinely-commissioned authority to teach infallibly." Now infidelity exists in this principle of Protestantism, as the oak exists in the acorn, as the consequence is in the premise. On the claim of private judgment, Protestants reject the authority of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ. The Calvinists, going, as they do, by the same principle, reject the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Socinians, following the same principle, reject, to-day, the Divinity of Christ, and therefore abjure Christianity, and fall back into utter incredulity.

The German and French philosophers, rationalists, and pantheists, of all degrees, do not even stop at that; they go farther, and deny the existence of a God Creator, and all by the privilege of free and private judgment.

The individual reason taking, as it does, the place of faith, the Protestant, whether he believes it or not, is an infidel in germ, and the infidel is a Protestant in full bloom; in other words, infidelity is nothing but Protestantism in the highest degree. Hence it is that Edgar Quinet, a great herald of Protestantism, is right in styling the Protestant sects the thousand gates open to get out of Christianity. No wonder, then, that thousands of Protestants have ended, and continue to end, in framing their formula of faith thus: "I believe in nothing."

But let us bring this subject home to our country. The disastrous issue of the revolutionary movements which convulsed all Europe in 1848-9, has thrown upon our shores masses of foreign political refugees, most of whom are infidels in religion, and red republicans, or destructionists of all social order in politics. They are men of desperate character and fortune—outlaws from society, with the brand of infidelity upon their brow. It is by this fast-increasing class of men that "Young America" is attracted, and learn from them their anarchical principles. The greatest, and, in fact, the only real danger to the permanency of our republican institutions, is to be apprehended from this class of infidels in our community.

Now what has contributed most towards the enormous increase of these enemies of our republic? It is the godless education given in the Public Schools. And who established these schools, and who robbed the money from the people to support them—to make this source of infidelity flow so abundantly all over the land? You find the answer to this question in Chapter III.

Protestantism was a separation from the source and current of the Divine-human life which exists in the Catholic Church, and which redeems and saves the world; and Protestants are therefore thrown back upon nature, and able to live only the natural life of the race—saving the portion of Christian life they brought away with them at the time of separation, and which, as not renewed from its source, must, in time, be exhausted.

It is therefore evident that Protestantism cannot fight infidelity. It is only the Catholic Church that can take open ground against these men so hostile to our country, and she feels honored by their bitter hostility. It could not be otherwise. Her principles are eminently conservative in all questions of religion and of civil policy; theirs are radical and destructive in both. Theirs is the old war of Satan against Christ; of the sons of Belial against the keepers of the law; of false and anti-social against true and rational liberty—"the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

Let these enemies of the country unfold their banners of "Infidelity," "Socialism," "Free Thought," "Scepticism," "Communism," "No God," "No Christ," "No Pope," "No Church," and a thousand others; let them grind their teeth, let them froth and foam at the mouth, let them tremble with rage, let them shake their heads with an air of majesty, as if they would say to the Church, "We bury you to-morrow, we write your epitaph and chant your De Profundis; our league is mighty, our forces are multitudinous, our weapons are powerful, our bravery is desperate."

The Catholic Church calmly answers, "I know you hate me because I am the palladium of truth and of public and private morality; I am the root and bond of charity and faith; I love justice and hate iniquity. But it is for this very reason that I will remain forever; for truth and justice being, in the end, always victorious, I will not cease to bless and to triumph. All the works of the earth have perished; time has obliterated them. But I remain, because Christ remains, and I will endure until I pass from my earthly exile to my country in heaven.

"Human theories and systems have flitted across my path like birds of night, but they have vanished; numberless sects have, like so many waves, dashed themselves to froth against me, this rock, or, recoiling, have been lost in the vast ocean of forgetfulness. Kingdoms and empires that once existed in inimitable worldly grandeur are no more; dynasties have died out, and have been replaced by others.

"Thrones and sceptres and crowns have withstood me; but, immutable, like God, who laid my foundation, I am the firm, unshaken centre round which the weal and woe of nations move—weal if they adhere to it—woe if they separate from it. If the world takes from me the cross of gold, I will bless the world with one of wood.

"Tear down my Banner of the Cross if you can! Touch a single fold of it if you dare! Sound your battle-cry; rally your hosts—marshal your ranks! Storm these lofty summits. They never yet have been surrendered. The flag that waves above them has never trailed in defeat, and the hearts that guard that flag have never flinched before the foe, and the bravery that shoots through every film of these hearts has never faltered. On with the conflict! Let it rage! Our line of battle reaches back to Calvary. That line has never been broken by wildest onset! These soldiers have never fled! We are the sons of veterans who have marched through a campaign of eighteen hundred years—marched and never halted—marched and always triumphed! We belong to the old Imperial Guard of Faith! We never yet have met a Waterloo!

"I am a queen—but a warrior-queen. You will never find me on a throne here below. Banner in hand, I am ever in the midst of battle. I have never granted a day of truce to my enemies. War against all who war against God—war against all who war against Christ—war against all who war against man—war against all who war against truth—this is my destiny.

"Peace here below, I have never known. Rest here below, I have never found. I am always on the march—my banner ever unfurled—my war-cry ever sounding!

"Therefore, in the storm and shock of my battle of to-day with my enemies, my soldier-children fear not. Around my old chieftain they rally. What though some may desert and leave the lines? The lines close up again—and the deserters are not missed. What though a Judas Iscariot may betray? A brave Matthias takes his place. What though a few of craven spirit may flee? The ranks they left are filled by brave men and true.

"From the hill of Calvary to the hill of the Vatican, from Peter before the Council to Pius before the Sardinian, my history has been one long, uninterrupted battle—and my battle one long and glorious victory."

We cannot but smile when we hear infidels talk of the downfall of the Church. What could hell and its agents do more than they have already done for her destruction? They have employed tortures for the body, but they could not reach the spirit; they have tried heresy, or the denial of revealed truth, to such an extent that we cannot see room for any new heresy; they have, by the hand of schism, torn whole countries from the unity of the Church; but what she lost on one side of the globe, she gained tenfold on the other. All these have ignominiously failed to verify the prophecies of hell, that "the Church shall fall."

Look, for instance, at the tremendous effort of the so-called glorious Reformation, together with its twin sister—the unbelief of the nineteenth century. Whole legions of church reformers, together with armies of philosophers armed with negation, and a thousand and one systems of Paganism, rushed on against the Chair of Peter, and swore that the Papacy would fall, and with it the whole Church. Three hundred years are over, and the Catholic Church is still alive, and, to all appearances, more vigorous than ever. The nations have proved that they can get along very well without reformers, but not without the Catholic Church. Men are foolish enough to dream of the destruction of the Papacy. Napoleon tried the game, and, from the summit of his empire, walked into exile, whilst his victim, Pius VII., leaving his prison, entered Rome in triumph. A great statesman of France said, not long ago, that those who tried to swallow the Papacy, and with it the whole Church, always died of indigestion. Let the enemies of the Catholic Church beware! If they dash their heads against this rock, they must not be astonished to find them broken.

And what power has Protestantism to check the National Crime—the murder of helpless innocents? Everybody knows, who knows anything about the subject, that among the Roman Catholic population this crime is hardly known. The reason for the rare occurrence of this crime among Catholics, is their religion. The doctrine of the Catholic Church, her canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without exception, teach, and always have taught, that even the intention of preventing or destroying human life, at any period from the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal at least in guilt to the crime of murder.

Now as to the power of Protestantism to check this crime, Dr. Storer, the distinguished Protestant physician of Boston, says: "We are compelled to admit that Protestantism has failed to check the increase of criminal abortion." (Criminal Abortion, p. 55.) "There can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked, on the one hand, by the confessional, and by denouncement and excommunications on the other, has saved to the world thousands of infant lives." (Ibid. p. 74.) "During the ten years which have passed since the preceding sentence was written, we have had ample verification of its truth. Several hundreds of Protestant women have personally acknowledged to us their guilt, against whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon further inquiry, that all but two were only nominally so, not going to the confession."—(Ibid.)

It is, then, not Protestantism, it is the Catholic Church alone that has the power to oppose herself to the propagation of so heinous a crime, and prevent her children from shedding the blood of helpless innocents.

The third great evil which has made the most fearful inroad among us, so as already to have extorted many a warning cry, is the contempt of the marriage tie.

The family, as I have said in a previous chapter, is the groundwork of civil society. If the family be Christian, the State will also be Christian; and if the family be corrupt, the State cannot remain long untarnished. It is the holy sacrament of marriage that gives sanctity to the family, and strength to civil society. To reject that sacrament is to sow the seeds of revolution. Revolution in the family begets revolution in the State. When a government, which, by its very nature, should restrain immorality, allows the separation of man and wife, it sanctions the right of revolution in the family, and sooner or later that government will feel the dire effects of its own corrupt doctrine. Now it is a matter of fact that the contempt of the marriage tie, so prevalent in our country, is owing to Protestantism. If any one wishes to learn how the Continental Reformers regarded the Sacrament of Matrimony, let him read Luther's sermon on Marriage (if he can do so without a blush), or, better still, the dogmatical judgment of Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and the rest, giving permission! to the innocent Landgrave of Hesse to commit bigamy, pure and simple.

It is the Catholic Church alone, again, that has always regarded the Christian marriage as the corner-stone of society; and at that corner-stone have the Popes stood guard for eighteen centuries, by insisting that Christian marriage is one, holy, and indissoluble. Woman, weak and unprotected, has, as the history of the Church abundantly proves, found at Rome that guaranty which was refused her by him who had sworn at the altar of God to love her and to cherish her till death. Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to the world the sad spectacle of divorces as numerous as marriages, of separations of husband from wife, and wife from husband, for the most trivial causes, thus granting to lust the widest margin of license, and legalizing concubinage and adultery; whilst the nineteenth century records in its annals the existence of a community of licentious polygamists within the borders of one of the most civilized countries of the earth, we must yet see the decree emanating from Rome that would permit even a beggar to repudiate his lawful wife, in order to give his affections to an adulteress.

The female portion of our race would always have sunk back into a new slavery, had not the Popes entered the breach for the protection of the Unity, the sanctity, the Indissolubility of matrimony. In the midst of the barbarous ages, during which the conqueror and warrior swayed the sceptre of empire, and kings and petty tyrants acknowledged no other right but that of force, it was the Popes that opposed their authority, like a wall of brass, to the sensuality and the passions of the mighty ones of the earth, and stood forth as the protectors of innocence and outraged virtue, as the champions of the rights of women, against the wanton excesses of tyrannical husbands, by enforcing, in their full severity, the laws of Christian marriage. If Christian Europe is not covered with harems, if polygamy has never gained a foothold in Europe, if, with the indissolubility and sanctity of matrimony, the palladium of European civilization has been saved from destruction, it is all owing to the Popes. "If the Popes"—says the Protestant Von Mueller—"if the Popes could hold up no other merit than that which they gained by protecting monogamy against the brutal lusts of those in power, notwithstanding bribes, threats, and persecutions, that alone would render them immortal for all future ages."

And how had they to battle till they had gained this merit? What sufferings had they to endure, what trials to undergo? When King Lothair, in the ninth century, repudiated his lawful wife in order to live with a concubine, Pope Nicholas I. at once took upon himself the defence of the rights and of the honor of the unhappy wife. All the arts of an intriguing policy were plied, but Nicholas remained unshaken; threats were used, but Nicholas remained firm. At last the king's brother, Louis II., appears with an army before the walls of Rome, in order to compel the Pope to yield. It is useless—Nicholas swerves not from the line of duty. Rome is besieged; the priests and people are maltreated and plundered; sanctuaries are desecrated; the cross is torn down and trampled under foot, and, in the midst of these scenes of blood and sacrilege, Nicholas flies to the Church of St. Peter; there he is besieged by the army of the Emperor for two days and two nights; left without food or drink, he is willing to die of starvation on the tomb of St. Peter, rather than yield to a brutal tyrant, and sacrifice the sanctity of Christian marriage, the law of life of Christian society. And the perseverance of Nicholas I. was crowned with victory. He had to contend against a licentious king, who was tired of restraint; against an emperor, who, with an army at his heels, came to enforce his brother's unjust demands; against two councils of venal bishops, the one at Metz, the other at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had sanctioned the scandals of the adulterous monarch. Yet, with all this opposition, and the suffering it cost him, the Pope succeeded in procuring the acknowledgment of the rights of an injured woman. And during succeeding ages we find Gregory V. carrying on a similar combat against King Robert, and Urban II. against King Philip of France. In the thirteenth century, Philip Augustus, mightier than his predecessors, set to work all the levers of power, in order to move the Pope to divorce him from his wife Ingelburgis. Hear the noble answer of the great Innocent III.:

"Since, by the grace of God, we have the firm and unshaken will never to separate ourselves from Justice and Truth, neither moved by petitions, nor bribed by presents, neither induced by love, nor intimidated by hate, we will continue to go on in the royal path, turning neither to the right nor to the left; and we judge without any respect to persons, since God Himself does not respect persons."

After the death of his first wife, Isabella, Philip Augustus wished to gain the favor of Denmark by marrying Ingelburgis. The union had hardly been solemnized, when he wished to be divorced from her. A council of venal bishops assembled at Compiegne, and annulled his lawful marriage. The queen, poor woman, was summoned before her Judges, and the sentence was read and translated to her. She could not speak the language of France, so her only cry was "Rome!" And Rome heard her cry of distress, and came to her rescue. Innocent III. needed the alliance of France in the troubles in which he was engaged with Germany; Innocent III. needed the assistance of France for the Crusade; yet Innocent III. sent Peter of Capua as Legate to France; a Council is convoked by the Legate of the Pope; Philip refuses to appear, in spite of the summons, and the whole of the kingdom of Philip is placed under interdict. Philip's rage knows no bounds: bishops are banished, his lawful wife is imprisoned, and the king vents his rage on the clergy of France. The barons, at last, appeal against Philip to the sword. The king complains to the Pope of the harshness of the Legate, and when Innocent only confirms the sentence of the Legate, the king exclaims, "Happy Saladin; he had no Pope!" Yet the king was forced to obey. When he asked the barons assembled in council, "What must I do?" their answer was: "Obey the Pope; put away Agnes and restore Ingelburgis." And, thanks to the severity of Innocent III., Philip repudiated the concubine, and restored Ingelburgis to her rights, as wife and queen. Hear what the Protestant Hurter says, in his life of Innocent: "If Christianity has not been thrown aside, as a worthless creed, into some isolated corner of the world; if it has not, like the sects of India, been reduced to a mere theory; if its European vitality has outlived the voluptuous effeminacy of the East, it is due to the watchful severity of the Roman Pontiffs—to their increasing care to maintain the principles of authority in the Church."

As often as we look to England, that land of perfidy and deceit, we are reminded of the words of Innocent III. to Philip Augustus. We see Clement using them as his principles in his conduct towards the royal brute Henry VIII. Catherine of Aragon, the lawful wife of Henry, had been repudiated by her disgraceful husband, and it was again to Rome she appealed for protection. Clement remonstrates with Henry. The monarch calls the Pope hard names. Clement repeats, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Henry threatens to tear England from the Church; he does it; still Clement insists, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Fisher and More go to bleed out their life at Tyburn; still the Pope repeats, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!" Henry had two wives at the same time, and, after them, took a new wife, and killed off his old wife, whenever his beastly passion prompted. The enslavement of the people followed. Henry made himself head of the Church, and bade the English nation recognize him as such. The penalty of disobeying the tyrant was death. The mass of the English yielded. This adulterous beast—this ferocious monster—they accepted as their pope; and their children, following in their steps, accepted his bastard brood—of either sex—as their popes; while the only and true Pope, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, was rejected by them. To such depths of servility and degradation do apostate nations fall. The firmness of the Pope cost England's loss to the Church. It cost the Pope bitter tears, and he prayed to Heaven not to visit on the people of England the crimes of the despot; he prayed for the conversion of the nation; but sacrifice the sanctity, the indissolubility of matrimony, that he could never do—abandon helpless women to the brutality of men who were tired of the restraints of morality—no, that the Pope could never permit. If the Court, if the palace of the domestic hearth refused a shelter, Rome was always open, a refuge to injured and downtrodden innocence.

"One must obey God more than man." This has ever been the language of the Popes, whenever there was question of defending the laws of God against the powers of the earth; and in thus defending the laws of God, they protected against outrage the personal dignity, the moral liberty and the intellectual freedom of man. "Because there was a Pope," says a Protestant historian, "there could not any longer be a Tiberius in Europe, and the direction of the religious and spiritual welfare of man was withdrawn from the hands of royalty." Because there were Popes, the will of Caesar could not any longer be substituted for law; for the Popes made the Gospel the law-book of the nations. Now the Gospel teaches that all power comes from God; that from God the sovereign derives his power, to rule in justice and equity for the welfare of his subjects, and that the subjects are bound to obey their rules, for conscience sake. Hence, adopting the great principal of action, the Popes have at all times condemned the spirit of rebellion, and have anathematized those principles, those factions, those organizations whose aim is, and has always been, to overturn lawful authority and to substitute anarchy in the place of the harmony of legitimate government. In conformity with this rule of action the Popes Clement XII., Benedict XIV., Pius VII., Leo XII., Gregory XVI., and Pius IX. have condemned secret societies, whose object is the overthrow of civil and religious government. But at the same time that the Popes required from subjects obedience to their lawful governments, they have ever defended subjects against the abuse of power, or against the tyranny of unjust rulers. In Pagan times it had the appearance as if the people existed for the sovereign, and not the sovereign for the people; but in the days and in the countries where the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was acknowledged by rulers, the Pagan idea had necessarily to disappear, for the Popes gave the princes to understand that they existed for the people, and not the people for them.

Viewed in this light, what a magnificent spectacle does the Catholic Church present to our admiration, and how does the honest heart of downtrodden nationality yearn that these happy days may once more return! Taken mostly from the middle classes, sometimes even from the most humble ranks of society, the Popes ascended the Chair of Peter; and these men, who had been the sons of artisans and mechanics, but who had, by their virtue and talent, gained a merit which neither wealth nor a noble pedigree could bestow, became the arbiters between nation and nation, between prince and people, always prepared to weld together the chain of broken friendship, and to protect, by their power and authority, the rights of subjects oppressed by tyrannical rulers. It was indeed a blessing for Europe that Nicholas I. could curb, with an iron hand, the tyranny of kings and nobles. It was indeed a blessing, not for Europe alone, but for the world, that there lived a genius on earth in the person of Gregory VII., who knew how to protect the Saxons against the wanton lawlessness of Henry, King of Germany, a monster who ground his subjects remorselessly in the dust, and respected neither the sanctity of virginity nor the sacredness of marriage; neither the rights of the Church, nor those of the State; whose very existence seemed to have no other aim but that of the leech, to draw out the blood from the hearts of his unhappy subjects. What would have become of Germany had there not been a power superior to that of this godless prince? It was Gregory VII. who hurled him from his throne, and restored to the noble Saxons and Thuringians their independence, not by the power of the sword, but by the scathing power of his anathema. The same I may say of Boniface VIII., and of Innocent III. There was, happily for Europe, a Court of Appeal, to which even monarchs were forced to bow; and that court was Rome. It was to Rome that the nations appealed, when their independence was at stake or their rights were trampled upon. And Rome was never deaf to the cry of distress, whether it came from Germany or from France, from England or from Poland, from Spain or from the shores of the Bosphorus.

And when the liberty of a nation was on the verge of destruction, and when emperors, and kings, and barons rode rough-shod over the rights, natural and vested, of their subjects, forgetting the sacred trust confided to them, became tyrants, when neither prosperity nor undivided liberty were secure from that rapacious grasp; when even the rights of conscience were set aside with impunity; it was the Popes of Rome who buckled on the armor of Justice, and humbled the pride of princes—even if, as a consequence, they had to say, with a Gregory VII., "Dilexi Justitiam et odivi iniquitatem; ideo morior in exilio"—"I die in exile because I have loved justice and hated iniquity."

The influence of Catholicity tends strongly to break down all barriers of separate nationalities, and to bring about a brotherhood of citizens, in which the love of our common country and of one another would absorb every sectional feeling. Catholicity is of no nation, of no language, of no people; she knows no geographical bounds; she breaks down all the walls of separation between race and race, and she looks alike upon every people, and tribe, and caste. Her views are as enlarged as the territory which she inhabits; and this is as wide as the world. Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Irish, German, French, English, and American, are all alike to her. The evident tendency of this principle is to level all sectional feelings and local prejudices, by enlarging the views of mankind, and thus to bring about harmony in society, based upon mutual forbearance and charity. And, in fact, so far as the influence of the Catholic Church could be brought to bear upon the anomalous condition of society in America, it has been exercised for securing the desirable result of causing all its heterogeneous elements to be merged in the one variegated but homogeneous nationality. Protestantism isolates and divides; Catholicity brings together and unites.

The Catholic Church is a grand fact in history—a fact so great that there would be no history without it—a fact permanent, repeating itself perpetually, entering into the concerns of all the nations on the face of the earth, appearing again and again on the records of time, and benefiting, perceived or unperceived, directly or indirectly, socially, morally, and supernaturally, every individual who forms part of the great organism of human society.

Around this Church human society moves like a wheel around its axle; it is on this Church that society depends for its support, its life, its energy, like the planetary system on the sun. Show me an age, a country, a nation deprived of the influence of Catholicity, and I will show you an age, a country, a nation without morals, without virtue. Yes, if "Religion and Science, Liberty and Justice, Principle and Right," are not empty sounds—if they have a meaning—they owe their energetic existence in the world to the Catholic Church.

Such is the power and such is the influence of Catholicity. Yet I do not pretend that our Catholic population is perfect, or that in them you will find no shortcomings, nothing to be censured or regretted. Certainly in our cities and large towns may be found, I am sorry to say, many so-called liberal or nominal Catholics, who are no credit to their religion, to the land of their birth, or to that of their adoption. Subjected at home, as they were, to the restraints imposed by Protestant or quasi-Protestant governments, they feel, on coming here, that they are loosed from all restraints, and forgetting the obedience they owe to their pastors, to the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over them, they become insubordinate, and live more as non-Catholics than as Catholics. The children of these are, to a great extent, shamefully neglected, and suffered to grow up without the simplest moral and religious instruction, and to become recruits to our vicious population, our rowdies and our criminals. This is certainly to be deplored, but can easily be explained without prejudice to the influence of Catholicity, by adverting to the condition to which those individuals were reduced before coming here; to their disappointments and discouragements in a strange land; to their exposure to new and unlooked-for temptations; to the fact that they were by no means the best of Catholics even in their native countries; to their poverty, destitution, ignorance, insufficient culture, and a certain natural shiftlessness and recklessness, and to our great lack of schools, churches, and priests. The proportion, however, that these bear to our whole Catholic population, is far less than is commonly supposed, and they are not so habitually depraved as they appear, for they seldom or never consult appearances, and have little skill in concealing their vices. As low and degraded as this class of our Catholic population may be, they never are so low or so vicious as the corresponding class of non-Catholics in every nation. A non-Catholic vicious class is always worse than it appears; a Catholic vicious class is less bad. In the worst there is always some germ that, with proper care, may be nursed into life, that may blossom and bear fruit. Yet, if we look at the Catholic population as it is, and is every year becoming, we cannot but be struck with its marvellous energy and progress. We will find that population more intellectual, more cultivated, more moral, more active, living, and energetic than any other.

The Catholic population of this country, taken as a body, have a personal freedom, an independence, a self-respect, a conscientiousness, a love of truth, and a devotion to principle, not to be found in any other class of American citizens. Their moral tone, as well as their moral standard, is far higher, and they act more uniformly under a sense of deep responsibility to God and their country. They are the most law-loving and law-abiding people. The men of that population are the most vigorous, and the hardiest; their virgins are the chastest; their matrons the most faithful. Catholics do, as to the great majority, act from honest principle, from sincere and earnest conviction, and are prepared to die sooner than in any grave matters swerve from what they regard as truth and justice. They have the principle and the firmness to stand by what they believe true and just, in good report and evil report, whether the world be with them or be against them. Among Catholics you will not find the flunkeyism which Carlyle so unmercifully ridicules in the middling classes of Great Britain, or that respect to mere wealth, that worship of the money-bag, or that base servility to the mob, or public opinion, so common and so ruinous to public and private virtue in the United States.

The mental activity of Catholics, all things considered, is far more remarkable than that of our non-Catholic countrymen; and, in proportion to their numbers and means, they contribute far more than any other class of American citizens to the purposes of education, both common and liberal, for they receive little or nothing from the public treasury; and in addition to supporting numerous schools of their own, they are forced to contribute their quota to the support of those of the State. Thus, to take a single illustration, the public school-tax in Cincinnati for last year amounted to $810,000. Of this the Catholics—such is their proportion in that community—contributed $230,000, or more than one-third of the whole rate. This large sum—L162,000—goes to the management and formation of schools which the Catholics of Cincinnati are debarred, by their consciences, from entering. They have therefore their own schools, which they have built, and support entirely at their own expense, without any assistance whatever from the State. The education which they give is known to be excellent; but it is based on religion, and is not controlled by the State and paid officials. The consequence is, that not only are they not encouraged, but they are actually taxed by the State.

Thus, for instance, the Cathedral School is obliged to pay to the State an annual tax of L120, and the schools of another parish L200. The Catholics of the Cathedral Parish have not only to pay the State school-tax, and the heavy tax laid on their school-buildings, but they have to find $3,500 annually to meet the current school expenses. All this has to be collected by the clergy as best they can.

The non-Catholic has no conception of the treasure the Union possesses in these thirteen millions of Catholics, humble in their outward circumstances as the majority of them may be. A true, high-toned, chivalric national character will be formed, and a true, generous, and lofty patriotism will be generated and sustained in proportion as the force of Catholicity is brought to bear upon our American people, and the life of practical Catholics falls into the current of American life. Catholics have their faults and shortcomings, yet they are the salt of the American community, and the really conservative element in the American population. In a few years they will be the Americans of the Americans, and on them will rest the performance of the glorious work of sustaining American civilization, and realizing the hopes of the founders of our great and growing Republic.

It must, then, be evident to every true lover of the Republic, that the State, were it at liberty to favor any particular portion of the community, should favor its conservative element—the Catholics—instead of robbing Catholics of millions of dollars, to continue, by godless education, the impious work for the increase of the number of enemies of the Republic; it should rather supply Catholics with the means to bring up their children in the spirit of true freedom—in the spirit of devotedness to republican institutions. But as the State is neither Catholic nor Protestant, it should at least act justly and impartially; it should not favor its own enemies; it should not make a lie or a farce of our glorious Constitution; it should no longer play the usurper and the robber; it should no longer continue digging its own grave; it should not tax Catholics any longer to support infidel institutions—nurseries of all kinds of crimes—and thus continue to violate most atrociously the very letter and spirit of the Constitution, and to commit a direct outrage on the most sacred convictions of Catholics.

It is the well-instructed practical Catholic that is alone capable of appreciating and realizing true freedom. Ever foremost to concede the rights of God, ever careful to trench on the rights of his fellow-creatures, he is, for all this (and precisely because of this), well aware of his own rights and dignity as a man, as a citizen, and as a baptized Christian—a regenerated son of God—and, knowing his rights and dignity, he dares maintain them! He protests against godless education as a volcano that is destined to bury law and authority, and bring about universal anarchy, and prepare and establish the reign of antichrist. We must, then, have separate schools to educate our rising generation in a religious atmosphere, and imbue them with the principles of Christianity. All those who oppose any longer the denominational system, in any manner whatsoever, are traitors to the Republic and the worst enemies of the country, and from henceforth the vengeance of God will not be slow to overtake them. On the contrary, he who will be first and foremost in promoting this noblest of objects—the establishment of denominational schools—may truly be called the saviour of the Republic,—the father of his country; he will be as great, nay, even greater, than Washington himself. Upon him the blessings of heaven will descend in superabundance, and his name will be blessed from generation to generation.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] By "An Act to restore to Roman Catholics in Upper Canada certain rights in respect to Separate Schools," passed May 5, 1863, they provided that "the Roman Catholic separate schools shall be entitled to a share in the fund annually granted by the legislature of the province for the support of common schools, and shall be entitled also to a share in all other public grants, investments, and allotments for common school purposes now made or hereafter to be made by the municipal authorities, according to the average number of pupils attending such school, as compared with the whole average number of pupils attending schools in the same city, town, village or township."—Cap. 5, sec. 20.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE CATHOLIC PRIEST ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.

So far I have spoken as an American citizen. I have shown to all my fellow-citizens the tree with its fruits—the Public School system in broad daylight. All who call themselves Christians, or who consider themselves men of common sense, and warm promoters of the happiness of their fellow-citizens, will agree with me in saying that the Public School system is a tree of which we must say what God said to Adam of the tree standing in the middle of paradise: "Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it thou shalt die the death."—(Gen ii. 17.) It is now time for me to speak as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the duty of the Catholic priest to teach the children of the Catholic Church the language of their spiritual Mother—the Church. This language is no other than that of the Supreme Head of the Church—the Pope. Now the language of the Vicar of Christ in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable.

Jesus Christ, our Divine Saviour, has said: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?"—(Matt. xvi. 26.) What will it profit you or your children to gain all knowledge, and to attain the greatest success in this world, if, through your fault, and through your exposing them to the danger of evil education, they suffer the loss of that faith, without which "it is impossible to please God"?—(Heb. xi.)

Teaching of the Syllabus.

Guided by this principle, our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot "approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic Faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life."[H] Catholic parents cannot approve of an education which fits their children only for this life, and ignores that life in which the soul is to live forever. As faith is the foundation of all our hopes for eternity, and as faith without good works is dead, we cannot choose for our children an education which would endanger their faith and morals, and consequently imperil their eternal welfare.

Teaching of Pope Pius VII.

This is no novel doctrine, as some assert. In the beginning of the century, the illustrious Pius VII., in an Encyclical letter addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic world, July 10th, 1800, thus writes:—

"It is your duty to take care of the whole flock over which the Holy Ghost has placed you as Bishops, but in particular to watch over children and young men. They ought to be the special object of your paternal love, of your vigilant solicitude, of your zeal, of all your care. They who have tried to subvert society and families, to destroy authority, divine and human, have spared no pains to infect and corrupt youth, hoping thus the more easily to execute their infamous projects. They know that the mind and heart of young persons, like soft wax, to which one may give what form he pleases, are very susceptible of every sort of impression; that they keep tenaciously, when age has now hardened them, those which they had early received, and reject others. Thence the well-known proverb taken from the Scripture, 'A young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.' Suffer not, then, venerable brethren, the children of this world to be more prudent in this respect than the children of light. Examine, therefore, with the greatest attention, to what manner of persons is confided the education of children, and of young men in the colleges and seminaries; of what sort are the instructions given them; what sort of schools exist among you; of what sort are the teachers in the lyceums. Examine into all this with the greatest care, sound everything, let nothing escape your vigilant eye; keep off, repulse the ravening wolves that seek to devour these innocent lambs; drive out of the sheepfold those which have gotten in; remove them as soon as can be, for such is the power which has been given to you by the Lord for the edification of your sheep."

Rescripts of His Present Holiness Condemning the Queen's Colleges of England.

Our Holy Father Pope Pius IX., consulting for the special wants of the Catholics of Ireland, has not ceased, almost from the very beginning of his glorious pontificate, to repeat similar instructions in his apostolic letters to the Irish Bishops. Hence, by his rescripts of October 1847, and October 1848, he condemned, from their first institution, the Queen's Colleges, on account of their "grievous and intrinsic dangers to faith and morals"; and since then he has frequently repeated his sacred admonitions, warning the bishops and the faithful people to beware of evil systems of public instruction; and to secure, by every means in their power, the blessings of Catholic education for the rising generation.

Resolutions of Irish Bishops in 1824 and 1826.

Nor have the Irish prelates been unmindful of their duty in this respect. In 1824, that is to say, five years before Catholic emancipation, and in the midst of the struggle for that recognition of the existence of their people as citizens, they presented to Parliament a petition, from which I make the following extract, which clearly shows their conviction of the necessity of religious education:

"That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated; that Roman Catholics have ever considered the reading of the Sacred Scriptures by children as an inadequate means of imparting to them religious instruction, as a usage whereby the Word of God is made liable to irreverence, youth exposed to misunderstand its meaning, and thereby not unfrequently to receive in early life impressions which may afterwards prove injurious to their own best interests, as well as to those of the society which they are destined to form. That schools whereof the master professes a religion different from that of his pupils, or from which such religious instruction as the Catholic Church prescribes for youth is excluded, or in which books and tracts not sanctioned by it are read or commented on, cannot be resorted to by the children of Roman Catholics; and that threats and rewards have been found equally unavailing as a means of inducing Catholic parents to procure education for their children from such persons or in such schools; that any system of education incompatible with the discipline of the Catholic Church, or superintended exclusively by persons professing a religion different from that of the vast majority of the poor of Ireland, cannot possibly be acceptable to the latter, and must, in its progress, be slow and embarrassed, generating often distrust and discord as well as a want of that mutual good faith and perfect confidence which should prevail between those who receive benefits and those who dispense them."

The Irish Bishops again expressed the like sentiments in 1826.

Address of the National Synod of Thurles.

A National Synod met in Thurles in August, 1860, and again the Prelates spoke words of instruction, of which recent sad events in France have furnished a new and most melancholy confirmation.

"As rulers of the Church of Christ, chief pastors of His flock, religiously responsible to the Prince of Pastors for every soul committed to our charge, it forms, as is obvious, our first and paramount duty to attend to the pastures in which they feed—the doctrines with which they are nourished. And surely if ever there was a period which called for the unsleeping vigilance, the prudent foresight, the intrepid and self-sacrificing zeal of our august ministry—that period is the present. The alarming spectacle which the Christian world exhibits at the present day, the novel but formidable forms in which error presents itself, and the manifold evils and perils by which the Church is encompassed, must be evident to the most superficial observer. It is no longer a single heresy or an eccentric fanaticism, the denial of some revealed truth, or the excesses of some extravagant error, but a comprehensive, all-pervading, well-digested system of unbelief, suited to every capacity and reaching every intellect, that corrupts and desolates the moral world. Is not such the calamitous spectacle which the continent of Europe offers to us at this moment? Education, the source of all intellectual life, by which the mind of man is nurtured and disciplined, his principles determined, his feelings regulated, his judgments fixed, his character formed, has been forcibly dissevered from every connection with religion, and made the vehicle of that cold scepticism and heartless indifferentism which have seduced and corrupted youth, and by a necessary consequence shaken to its centre the whole fabric of social life. Separated from her heavenly monitor, learning is no longer the organ of that wisdom which cometh from above, which, according to St. James, is 'chaste, peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, without judging, without dissimulation,' but rather of that wisdom which he describes as 'earthly, sensual, and devilish.'—(James iii. 15-17.)

"It is, we feel assured, unnecessary to observe to you, that of all modes of propagating error, education is the most subtle and dangerous, furnishing, as it does, the aliment by which the social body is sustained, which circulates through every vein, and reaches every member; and that if this aliment should prove to be corrupt or deleterious, it will not fail to carry moral disease and death to the entire system. Hence the awful obligations we are under, at the peril of our souls, of watching over the education of the people whom God has intrusted to our charge.

"Listen to the emphatic words in which the present illustrious Pontiff sets forth the dangers to which youth is exposed at the present time, and the duties which are placed upon the pastors of the people in this regard. 'It is incumbent upon you,' he says, 'and upon ourselves, to labor with all diligence and energy, and with great firmness of purpose, and to be vigilant in everything that regards schools, and the instruction and education of children and youths of both sexes. For you well know that the modern enemies of religion and human society, with a most diabolical spirit, direct all their artifices to pervert the minds and hearts of youth from their earliest years. Wherefore, they leave nothing untried; they shrink from no attempt to withdraw schools, and every institution destined for the education of youth, from the authority of the Church and the vigilance of her holy pastors.'—Encycl. Letter of Pius IX., eighth December, 1849.

"Such are the words of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, which show the responsibility under which we are placed, and point out our duty to protect from the insidious snares laid for their destruction the lambs of the fold—that most helpless but precious portion of the flock of Jesus Christ which the prophet represents as carried in His bosom."

Mixed System again Condemned.

Again, in 1859, 1862, 1863, 1867, and 1869, the Irish Bishops renewed their condemnation of the godless system, and demanded for their children the advantage of truly Catholic education.

Unanimity of Catholic Bishops throughout the World on this Point.

The Bishops of Prussia, of Austria, of Belgium, of Holland, of Canada, and of the United States, in their pastorals, their synodical addresses, and in their other publications, condemn with one accord the mixed system, and declare that education based upon our holy religion is alone suitable for Catholic children. Not to multiply quotations, it will suffice to cite the following extract from the address of the Plenary Synod of the Church of the United States, held at Baltimore, in the year 1866. That Council was one of the most numerous assemblies held after the Council of Trent, until the meeting of the General Council of the Vatican. Its decrees were signed by seven Archbishops, thirty-seven Bishops, two procurators of absent Bishops, and two Abbots.

"ADDRESS OF THE PLENARY SYNOD OF BALTIMORE, UNITED STATES.

"The experience of every day shows more and more plainly what serious evils and great dangers are entailed upon Catholic youth by their frequentation of Public Schools in this country. Such is the nature of the system of teaching therein employed, that it is not possible to prevent young Catholics from incurring, through its influence, danger to their faith and morals; nor can we ascribe to any other cause that destructive spirit of indifferentism which has made, and is now making, such rapid strides in this country, and that corruption of morals which we have to deplore in those of tender years. Familiar intercourse with those of false religions, or of no religion; the daily use of authors who assail with calumny and sarcasm our holy religion, its practices, and even its saints—these gradually impair, in the minds of Catholic children, the vigor and influence of the true religion. Besides, the morals and examples of their fellow-scholars are generally so corrupt, and so great their license in word and deed, that through continual contact with them the modesty and piety of our children, even of those who have been best trained at home, disappear like wax before the fire. These evils and dangers did not escape the knowledge of our predecessors, as we learn from the following decrees:

"'(a) Whereas many Catholic children, especially those born of poor parents, have been, and are still, exposed in several places of this province, to great danger of losing their faith and morals, owing to the want of good masters to whom their education may safely be intrusted, we consider it absolutely necessary that schools should be established in which the young may be imbued with the principles of faith and morality, and at the same receive instruction in letters.'"—Council of Baltimore, No. 33.

Teachings of the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX.

In fine, to show the union of the Bishops throughout the world with the Apostolic See in their teaching respecting education, I add the words of the Supreme Pontiff Pope Pius IX., in which, replying to the Archbishop of Freiburg, in Germany, His Holiness clearly expounds, as the Infallible Teacher of the faithful, the truth I am now developing for the instruction of Catholics:

"It is not wonderful that these unhappy efforts (to spread irreligious and revolutionary principles) should be directed chiefly to corrupt the training and education of youth; and there is no doubt that the greatest injury is inflicted on society, when the directing authority and salutary power of the Church are withdrawn from public and private education, on which the happiness of the Church and of the Commonwealth depends so much. For thus society is, little by little, deprived of that truly Christian spirit which alone can permanently secure the foundation of peace and public order, and promote and direct the true and useful progress of civilization, and give man those helps which are necessary for him in order to attain, after this life, his last end hereafter—eternal happiness. And in truth a system of teaching, which not only is limited to the knowledge of natural things, and does not pass beyond the bounds of our life on earth, but also departs from the truth revealed by God, must necessarily be guided by the spirit of error and lies; and education, which, without the aid of the Christian doctrine and of its salutary moral precepts, instructs the minds and moulds the tender heart of youth, which is so prone to evil, must infallibly produce a generation which will have no guide but its own wicked passions and wild conceits, and which will be a source of the greatest misfortunes to the Commonwealth and their own families.

"But if this detestable system of education, so far removed from Catholic faith and ecclesiastical authority, becomes a source of evils, both to individuals and to society, when it is employed in the higher teaching, and in schools frequented by the better class, who does not see that the same system will give rise to still greater evils, if it be introduced into primary schools? For it is in these schools, above all, that the children of the people ought to be carefully taught from their tender years the mysteries and precepts of our holy religion, and to be trained with diligence to piety, good morals, religion and civilization. In such schools religious teaching ought to have so leading a place in all that concerns education and instruction, that whatever else the children may learn should appear subsidiary to it. The young, therefore, are exposed to the greatest perils whenever, in the schools, education is not closely united with religious teaching. Wherefore, since primary schools are established chiefly to give the people a religious education, and to lead them to piety and Christian morality, they have justly attracted to themselves, in a greater degree than other educational institutions, all the care, solicitude, and vigilance of the Church. The design of withdrawing primary schools from the control of the Church, and the exertions made to carry this design into effect, are therefore inspired by a spirit of hostility towards her, and by the desire of extinguishing among the people the divine light of our holy faith. The Church, which has founded these schools, has ever regarded them with the greatest care and interest, and looked upon them as the chief object of her ecclesiastical authority and government; and whatsoever removed them from her, inflicted serious injury both on her and on the schools. Those who pretend that the Church ought to abdicate or suspend her control and her salutary action upon the primary schools, in reality ask her to disobey the commands of her Divine Author, and to be false to the charge she has received from God, of guiding all men to salvation; and in whatever country this pernicious design of removing the schools from the ecclesiastical authority should be entertained and carried into execution, and the young thereby exposed to the danger of losing their faith, there the Church would be in duty bound not only to use her best efforts, and to employ every means to secure for them the necessary Christian education and instruction, but, moreover, would feel herself obliged to warn all the faithful, and to declare that no one can in conscience frequent such schools, as being adverse to the Catholic Church."

I exclaim with the great St. Augustine: "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The Bishops of the universal world, united to the Vicar of Christ, speak with authority; their judgment cannot be gainsaid. Peter has spoken through Pius; the question is settled; would that the error, too, were at an end!

Testimonies of Enemies of the Catholic Church.

However, it is not from the Bishops alone that we learn the dangers of bad education. Our opponents, too, the enemies of our holy religion, deem no other means more efficacious for alienating our children from our mother, the Catholic Church.

One of the greatest enemies of the Catholic faith in the first half of the last century, Primate Boulter, who took a chief part in founding the notorious "Charter Schools," writing to the Bishop of London on the fifteenth of May, 1730, said:

"I can assure you the Papists here are so numerous, that it highly concerns us in point of interest, as well as out of concern for the salvation of these poor creatures who are our fellow-subjects, to try all possible means to bring them and theirs to the true religion; and one of the most likely methods we can think of is, if possible, instructing and converting the young generation; for instead of converting these that are adults, we are daily losing many of our meaner people, who go off to Popery."

And with respect to mixed education in particular, we have the opinion of another Anglican prelate, who, in despite of his professions of liberality, may be fittingly classed with Primate Boulter in his contempt for our people, and desire to subvert our holy religion by the means of education—the late Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whately. We are informed by his daughter, that on one occasion he said: "The education supplied by the National Board is gradually undermining the vast fabric of the Irish Roman Catholic Church.". (Life of Dr. Whately, pp. 244, first edition.) Again: "I believe, as I said the other day, that mixed education is gradually enlightening the mass of the people, and that if we give it up, we give the only hope of weaning the Irish from the abuses of Popery. But I cannot venture openly to profess this opinion, I cannot openly support the Educational Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight its battles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me." (p. 246.)

The language of the Church, then, and even that of the enemies of our religion, is quite plain on the subject of godless education. The good Catholic understands this language of his spiritual mother; he listens to it; he repeats it to himself and others, and he goes by it. Not long ago the Catholics of Ireland presented a requisition to the English Government to show their unanimity, and their determination to secure a Catholic education for Catholic children. What a glorious array of signatures is attached to it! There we find the honored names of the only Catholic lords that the operation of penal laws has left in that land ever faithful to the Church. There we read the names of the Lord Mayor, and the aldermen and town councillors of the great City of Dublin, of many baronets and deputy lieutenants, of several members of Parliament, magistrates, high sheriffs, clergymen, wealthy merchants, and land-owners; of men distinguished in the various scientific and literary professions or pursuits; of country gentlemen, traders, artisans, and of all the classes that constitute the bone and sinew of the country. In a word, the requisition is signed by more than 30,000 Catholics of every degree. May it not be considered as a great plebiscite? Is it not a proof that the laity and clergy are all of one mind? Is it not a solid refutation of the foolish assertion of some Presbyterians, that the Catholic laity take no interest in the education question, and that, were it not for the priests, the laity would be perfectly satisfied to accept godless instruction for their children? Those who attribute this baneful indifference to the laity, misrepresent and calumniate them, and show their ignorance of their real feelings, and of the efforts which Catholics in Ireland, in Belgium, in Germany, and in other countries, have made to have and to preserve a good Christian education for their children. The principal Catholic gentlemen in Ireland some time ago published an important declaration, presented afterwards to Parliament, in which they proclaimed their adhesion to the principles held by the true Church in regard to education.

As for the Catholic laity of Ireland in general, feeling, as they do in a special manner, the signal blessing they enjoy in possessing the true faith, and knowing that it is a priceless treasure with which, far more precious than worldly substance, they can enrich their children, their love for Catholic education is proved to evidence by the multitudes of their sons and daughters who throng every Catholic school, and especially every school in which the presence of Christian Brothers or of Nuns gives a guarantee that religion shall have the first place, and shall impregnate the whole atmosphere which their little ones are to breathe for so many hours of the day. They have proved, also, their dislike and fear of mixed education, by turning their faces away from schools in which no expense had been spared, on which thousands of pounds of the public money had been squandered, but against which their Bishops deemed it their duty to warn them. Hence, in several Model Schools erected in populous cities and towns, where the great majority of the inhabitants are Catholics, sometimes not ten, sometimes not two of their children are found within the unhallowed precincts of those mixed institutions.

In fine, the opinion of all the Irish Catholics on this subject of education is so well known, that nearly all of the Liberal candidates who sought their votes at the last elections for the House of Commons, declared in their electioneering addresses their adhesion to the principle of denominational education, and their determination to uphold it, and push it forward in Parliament.

And with good reason are they steadfast in those principles, for they know the necessary connection between good education and the maintenance of religion in their country. And they are determined to struggle for the establishment, in Ireland, of a sound Catholic system of public education, and never to relax their efforts till they obtain the recognition of this, their own and their children's right, even as they wrung Catholic emancipation from a hostile Parliament.

Thus the Catholic laity practise what their pastors teach; and in Ireland and other countries, both pastors and people are united in holding that nothing so effectually destroys religion in a country as a godless system of instruction, whilst they believe, at the same time, that a good Christian education contributes to preserve true religion, and to spread the practice of every virtue and of good works through the land.

Though the Catholic Church and her children are so anxious for the progress of knowledge, and have made such sacrifices for the civilization and enlightenment of the world, yet they do not indiscriminately approve of every system of education. Every one knows how much is done in our days, by the enemies of religion, to poison the sources of knowledge, and to undermine religion, under the pretext of promoting the liberal arts and sciences. In order to give a proper impulse to study, by securing protection for it, some insist that the full control of public instruction should be given to the government of each country, to be carried on by Ministers of State, or public boards; others attach so much importance to the development of the intellectual faculties, that they call for compulsory and gratuitous education, in order to give a great degree of culture to all classes; and others, in fine, demand an unsectarian education, pretending that God should be banished from the school, and children brought up without being subjected to any religious influences. The Catholic Church and her pastors, being charged to feed the flock of Christ with the food of truth and life, and to preserve the lambs of the fold from the contagion of error, cannot approve such systems, which seem to have been invented by the fashion of the day, a desire of innovation, or a spirit of hostility to religion.

It was to His Church, and not to the State, that Jesus Christ gave the command, "Go and teach all nations."—(Matt. xxviii.) "As the Father hath sent Me, so do I send you also."—(John xx.) "Feed My lambs, feed My sheep."—(John xxi.)

The office of the Church is to teach and sanctify all men. She receives the child on its first entrance into the world, and, by means of holy baptism, makes it a child of God. Like her Divine Bridegroom, she says: "Suffer the little children to come to me."

Now the Christian school is the place and the provision made for the training of those who are baptized into the Christian faith. They have been made children of God, and as such they have a right to four things belonging to them by a right of inheritance, to which all other rights are secondary. They have a right to the knowledge of their faith; to the training of their conscience by the knowledge of God's commandments; to the Sacraments of grace; and to a moral formation, founded on the precepts and example of our Divine Saviour. These four things belong, by a Divine right, to the child of the poorest working man; by a right more sacred than that which guards the inheritance of lands and titles to the child of the rich. A child of God, and an heir to the kingdom of heaven, holds these four things by a higher title; and his claim is under the jurisdiction of a Divine Judge. But the school is the place and the provision for the insuring of these four vital parts of his right to the Christian child. They cannot be taught or learned elsewhere; there is no other place of systematic and sufficient formation. And if so, then the school becomes the depository of the rights of parents, and of the inheritance of their children. The school is strictly a court of the Temple, a porch outside the Sanctuary. It cannot be separated from the Church. It was created by the Church, and the Church created it for its own mission to its children. As the Church cannot surrender to any power on earth the formation of its own children, so it cannot surrender to any the direction of its own schools.

It was the Church, as I have shown in the second chapter, that gave life and being to Christian education; and education must remain under the guardianship of the Church, if it will not cease to be Christian. History shows us that it is the Church that has civilized the nations, and it is the Church that keeps them from falling back into their former degradation. Learning was not diffused among mankind until the Church removed the veil of sin and ignorance, made man really free, and widened the narrow limits of human thought by showing to man the infinite, the eternal destiny that awaited him. This supernatural light—this "freedom of the children of God"—is the very foundation, the very lifespring of civilization. The Catholic Church, then, far from being opposed to education, is its great and most zealous promoter. But she cannot help being opposed to the Pagan system of education adopted in the Public Schools of this country.

It is clear that this plan takes away the right of parents, whom God has charged with the care of their children, and it must necessarily interfere with the proper management of families. In the second place, it ignores the rights of the Church, to whom Christ gave the commission to teach all nations. In the third place, since governments, as constituted at present, have no religion, the teaching they give must tend to infidelity. In the fourth place, if governments take into their hands the management of things which do not appertain to them, the probability is that they will neglect, or carry on badly, the great temporal affairs which it is their duty to attend to. In the last place, experience shows that education carried on by the State is most expensive, and that it opens the way to intrigues and frauds. To confirm all these observations, it is sufficient to refer to France, where State influence has been supreme for the last seventy years in university education, and where the Government has exercised an exorbitant control over every branch of public instruction. What has been the result? Literature has fallen away, the number of schools has decreased, the French language has decayed, whilst moral corruption has penetrated the heart of the country, and infidelity of the worst kind has been patronized and encouraged among the teachers of youth, and the highest honors have been decreed to Littres and Renans, and other decided enemies of Jesus Christ. May we not read the condemnation of all such proceedings in the lurid flames of the burning Capital of modern civilization? Now, is it not clear that the primary object of education must be frustrated in the mixed system which proposes to unite children of all religions in the same school, and to treat of nothing in the class hours that could offend any of these discordant elements? If there be a Jew in the school, you cannot speak of the Gospel; if there be a Mahometan, nothing could be said against polygamy, and other degrading doctrines of the Koran; due respect must also be paid to the teaching of Arians and Socinians, who deny the Trinity of persons in God, and the Divinity of Christ; and to the opinions of Calvinists and Lutherans, of Methodists and other sectaries, who assail almost every point of revealed religion. In this case, how can the atmosphere of the school be religious; and must not children living in it grow up in ignorance both of the dogmas and practices of religion?

This result may not be unacceptable to those who are outside the Catholic Church, because, not acknowledging any Divine authority to guide or rule them, they have no certainty in doctrinal matters, and they do not attach any importance to external discipline. But how different is the case with Catholics! We have many distinctive doctrines, such as the Real Presence in the Blessed Eucharist, the power of remitting sin, the Divine origin of the Church, and the primacy and infallibity of the Pope, all which it is our duty to learn and to believe. We are also bound to observe many precepts, to hear Mass, to pray and make the sign of the Cross, to go to confession, to fast and abstain, and to obey other commandments of the Church. If these doctrines, so sublime, and so far above the intelligence of man, be not continually inculcated on the mind of a child, how can he know them, or believe them as he ought? And if the practices referred to be not frequently urged on his attention, will he not ignore or neglect them because they are hard to flesh and blood? And what will be the case where the Protestant pupils in a school are in a considerable majority, and the teacher of the same religion? Will not the Protestant children turn the doctrines and practices of the Catholics into ridicule? And will not the example, and the words, and the gestures of the heterodox master, especially if he be kind and friendly, produce impressions dangerous to belief on the youthful Catholic mind? Is it not probable that a Catholic boy, observing how his master, to whom he looks up with respect, is accustomed to act, will easily persuade himself that there is no necessity of going to confession, or fasting, or making the sign of the cross, or performing works of mortification? Indeed, the probability is that Catholics educated in such circumstances, if they do not abandon their religion altogether, will be only lukewarm, indifferent, or dangerous members of the Church.

And here let me direct your attention to another dangerous tendency of godless education. In this system all religions, true or false, are treated with equal respect; not only Anglicans and Presbyterians, but Wesleyans and Plymouth Brothers, and the followers of every other small and miserable sect that has started into existence in modern times, are put on a footing of equality with the true Catholic Church, which traces its origin back to its Divine Founder, has existed in every age, defied the fury of persecution and the ravages of time, and numbers under its sceptre two hundred millions of faithful children spread over the world. And is not this to proclaim that there is no difference between light and darkness, no preference to be given to Christ over Belial, to truth over heresy, and error and infidelity? In a word, is not this to teach indifference to religion, or, what is equivalent, that no religion is necessary? What shall I now say of books so compiled as to meet the exigencies of godless education? Have they not the same tendency to promote ignorance of, or indifference to, religion? No religious dogmatical teaching, no inculcation of pious practices, no mention of the great and sublime mysteries of Catholicity can be admitted in them, lest some things should be said offensive to any sect that sends children to the school. This suppression of Catholic truth is most detrimental to our poor Catholic children, many of whom never read any books except those which they use in school, and learn nothing except what they meet with in those books, or hear from their master. Is not this a serious loss? Is it not a great evil for Catholics to be brought up in ignorance, not only of the doctrines, but also of the history of the Church to which they belong, and of the life and deeds of so many Christian heroes whose virtues illustrated the world?