NOMINAL CATHOLICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 258, 12 April 1878, Page 17

NOMINAL CATHOLICS.

Whenever the Argus happens to light upon a nominal Catholic, who complains of the actioaof the clergy in the matter of education, it grows quite sympathetic. Quite recently such an opportunity for the diow of solicitude offered. As usual, the Argus made the wide distinction between the clergy and the Catholics— a distinction Avhich every Catholic must at once reject if he knows the fundamental principles of his faith. A , Catholic is a Catholic only as long as he listens to the voice of the Church. Authority derived from heaven, inerrancy guaranteed by Divine promise, and a corresponding obligation of submission to authority, and docility to the teaching of the Church, are the fundamental principles of Catholicity. To say, therefore, that a Catholic is led by the priests is to say that he acts consistently in accord with the principles of his religion. A Catholic who complains of the teaching of his Church virtually sets himself above her. We are -weary of hearing such cant as ' priestridden Catholics ' and ' independent Catholics/ The former are ruled and guided by the priests, in accordance with a faith common to priests and people ; the latter are not Catholics at all. The Argus informs its readers that the Catholic who sends his children to State schools " exposes himself to objurgation and abuse." We think the most severe objurgation must be that administered by his own conscience. No Catholic child is compelled by the ecclesiastical authorities to grow up in ignorance. The Catholic schools provide an education ■which we may fairly compare with that obtainable in the State schools, the assertion of a " Perplexed Parent' notwithstanding. We are sufficiently acquainted with the mode of action of Catholics of that class to place very little reliance on their mere statements. They are glad of an excuse to escape paying the little required of them for the support of the schools. Besides., a man who is false to the religion in which his forefathers lived, and for which, perhaps, some of them died, can expect little credence when he makes assertions derogatory to the reputation of the Catholic schools. But supposing, for argument's sake, that the instruction in the Catholic schools be slightly inferior, or very much inferior, to that provided in the State establishments, what then is the Catholic to do Is he justified in sending bis children to a State school ? We have no hesitation in replying in the negative. The Catholic must know that there is a question of personal advantage, and one of general good, involved in his actiou regarding his child. He has duties to his offspring and to his Church. Both the one and the other class of obligations are violated by the parent who, having in his neighbourhood a Catholic school, sends his child to a State school. He violates his duty to his child, inasmuch as he deprives him of the means of learning and practising his religion. He does his child an injury by instilling into his tender mind a spirit of defiance and opposition to the teachings of the Church. For the boy goes to Mass on Sunday, and hears parents who send their children to these truly godless schools upbraided with their infidelity to the teachings of the Church, and on Monday his father sends him, despite the warning of the priest, to the very schools the Clmrch condemns. Thus the child, from Ms earliest youth, is taught to disregard the behests of the Church, to grow up contemning her teachings, and the result naturally follows — the School boy becomes the liberal Catholic ; that is, not a Catholic at all. Can a Catholic parent be in the least " perplexed " as to his proper course when this dismal consequence comes up before him in all its melancholy truth and reality ? Will lie prefer to a sound Catholic faith, and pure Catholic morality, a trifle extra of arithmetic and geography ? If he do, his belief in the surpassing excellence of the soul, in the paramount importance of that soul's salvation, must be lamentably dimmed. Every Catholic who is " perplexed " and follows, as an escape from his perplexity, the councils of short-sighted love of earthly gain injures, as far as in him lies, not only his child, but the Catholic cause. While -we do not find fault with the few Catholics who, in the country districts, from the scattered nature and the poverty of Catholic population, have no Catholic school in their neighbourhood, we say emphatically that, if a Catholic must make a choice between a school, even of inferior efficiency, and a State school, he is bound to send his child to the Catholic school or cease to be a Catholic. He must make the choice in the same spirit as did the early Christians, when position and emolument were held out as the reward of apostacy, and the rack and the gibbet the punishment of fidelity; He must make it in the spirit of the Irish Catholics when ignorance or Protestantism were the alternatives presented to them. Let him consult for himself by ceasing to defy God through His Church, ami let him not lender hinisolt responsible for the spiritual murder of his child ; let him show tenderness to himself by saving himself from that "\voe pronounced by the Son of God aguinst him " through, whom scandal comcth."' — Melbourne Advocate.