THE EVILS OF SECULARISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 9, 25 June 1886, Page 11

THE EVILS OF SECULARISM.

•The longer I live and the more I see, the more convinced I become that the main safeguard to public morals, in every sense, rests in the leligious training of children. The public schools are good enough in their way. They train the head but they don't train the heart and the moral conduct of the millions of our children who attend them. Moral training is wholly out of their scope. In fact it is not permitted. So, if there is no other possible issue, no means of public agreement among the various denominations as to the manner of conducting the public schools, I am decidedly in favor of denominational schools at any sacrifice. This purely secular scheme of education is all wrong, and much of the evil around us springs from it." This was said to the writer by a Police Justice of this city, a man who daily listens to the sad story of suffering, vice, and crime. His experience of life in this city is probably equal to that of any man. He does not speak carelessly and he is without any special prejudice. He spoke not simply of Catholic education, but of the necessity of religious education, of any kind, provided there was some religion, some love and fear of God and belief in God in it. That religious sense he held to be the chief restraining power over human nature : stronger than the police, stronger than armies, stronger than what we call Justice herself. It restrains, reforms, while they can only punish and pass sentence of judgment. In it lies the safety of the race. Does not every testimony tend to support this opinion ? How is it possible to count upon justice even, if the religious, the godly conscience is absent? Has no one ever heard of a corrupt judiciary, in ancient or in modern times ? Have we ourselves been wholly free of such charges 1 Such a question simply brings a smile of contempt to the face of one who knows anything at all of our public life. The official representatives of this Republic, almost from the Presidency down who have passed through their official career with stainless hands, are the few not the many. Here to-day are we hunting up our " City Fathers," wholesale, to punish thorn for corruption and bribery. Every honest citizen is shocked and astonished for the moment ; and of course the most shocked and astonished are the dishonest. It has been accepted by (he unwritten code of our debased moral sense that official thievery is the order of the day, here, there, everywhere— in a word, in any public trust. So much for the public life official. The world laughs when one speaks of honesty in office. The Republic is disgraced in many of its servants. In a true republic politics should never be permitted to become a profession ; and the constant crowds of hangers on around any State or municipal centre, around the National centre abave all, testify to the fact that public office has been made a grab and not a trust to worthy men. Sadder still is the condition of private morals. It needs no lantern of Diogenes to go around and find the honest. Our Press, while preaching virtue constantly, vigorously panders to vice. What advertising page of any leading secular newspaper ia clean 1 Look around at our walls and spaces placarded with vice that depraved art strives its utmost to make picturesque and inviting. People who deal in business of this kind should be prosecuted rather than paid in a virtuous community. But among us vice pays, and virtue must go to the wall. We are going back to paganism, as a Protestant clergyman like Dr. Dix bears witness, but without even the pagan virtues. The Justice, whom we quoted at the beginning of this article, sees this wretchedness and wrong, this want of humanity, brought before him day after day, as does every Justice, until the very air of the courts becomes infected with immoral taint. And looking at things and pondering over them, his judgment is that if the children get religious and secular education together, in the schools, they may go to the bad in any case, for human nature is weak, but the chances of their not going to the bad are vastly increased. Here is a free comment, worthy of consideration, on the earnest insistance by the late Council of Baltimore on the necessity of the multiplication of parochial schools. Our churches here are getting out of debt. If we would save our children let us give them schools, where they may have religious training ; and the common sense will soon come to recognize that in such schools alone is safety.— Brooklyn Catholic Review.