“CLERICAL SWAY IN CANADA,” AND SECULAR EDUCATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11235, 5 April 1897, Page 6

“CLERICAL SWAY IN CANADA,” AND SECULAR EDUCATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —May! venture to suggest that in your loader of March 17, on Clerical Sway in Canada, you have either mistaken or io-nored the real point in question and placed a false issue before your readers; Obviously you took the Ottawa telegram which appeared in the cable news of that day as a basis for your article, and upon that telegram you built up uu argument fiom which you drew conclusions that were not applicable to the particular case in_ point. I have not the slightest intention of suggesting that you did this with any ulterior motive; you have simply fallen into the very common error of judging from a political standpoint the action of a Catholic ecclesiastic which, if properly understood, would be seen to be purely a question of morals. The telegram stated that Dr Langevin, the Homan Catholic Archbishop of Manitoba, threatened to exclude the opponents of the Catholic education policy from burial in consecrated ground. Tins seems • to me to be a matter between the Archbishop and his own flock, and does not immediately or remotely concern any man, woman, or child/in New Zealand. No Catholic, lay or clerical, regards the school question of the present day as one of politics, for when he views it in the clear light of all its possibilities he sees it charged with the eternal, as well as. the temporal, well-being of the individual, and it is only by accepting this view of it that Dr Laagevin’s action can be properly criticised. To the uon-Catholic the question of State education is one of politics merely, to the Catholic it has been and always will be one of religion; the education of his child, therefore, will always possess a deeper interest for the latter than it ever can for the former. This is why the Catholic clergy, all over the world, put forth all the energy of their souls to give to. the- children of their flocks a Christian education, wherever it is possible; this is why Catholic congregations, everywhere, deliberately tax themselves to build and support schools for themselves, even when such taxes are a heavy burden on their resources. And, finally, this is why the Irish of three hundred years ago preferred to bring up their children in ignorance of letters rather than send them to schools where they might lose their faith. I know very well that sordid motives are not infrequently imputed to the Catholic clergy in this matter; they know it themi selves, but, notwithstanding, they go on performing their duty, fulfilling their mission and saving souls in the face of all the misrepresentations and misunderstandings. If Dr Langevin looks across the borders of Canada and takes but even a cursory glance at the school system of the United States, what will he see there ? A sad picture indeed. He will see children of tender ages polluted beyond belief by the moral filth of their own lives, steeped in sin, reeking in impurity; he will see boys of fourteen accomplished roues, lie will see, in fact, concupiscence unbridled everywhere. Listen to the editor of the Boston Daily Herald on ting subject;—“ That the devil is in the public schools, raging and rampant there among the children, as well as among their teachers, no one can doubt who has sent a little child into one of them as guiltless of evil or unclean thoughts as a newly-fallen snowflake, and had him come back in a short time contaminated almost beyond belief by the vileness and the filth he has seen and heard and learned there.” And further on in the same article the writer says:—“ln many of the public schools the most obscene and soul-polluting books and .pictures circulate among tne children of both sexes; the natural results follow, and frequently the most debasing and revolting practices are indulged in.” Some few years ago the Boston Times called the attention of the authorities to a case of such shocking depravity in one of the State schools of the town as to almost stagger belief, and almost simultaneously the papers of Chicago and New York discovered that the public schools in their cities were little better than that of Boston. When the Archbishop of Manitoba, therefore, sees all this, and when he sees, moreover.

the outcrop of divorces, of suicides and of other crimes which arc clearly traceable to the secularisation of the schools, he is bound in charity, nay, he is practically compelled by the vows of his ordination to rise every legitimate means at bis disposal in order to prevent his people from supporting a nystem of education which is fraught with the most imminent danger to body and soul alike.—l am, &c..

M. NOLAN.