THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 54, 25 April 1890, Page 7

THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS.

(Correspondence of the New York Freeman's Jturnal.)

Paris, France. At a meeting of the General Assembly of the Christian Brother's School representative?, held lately at Grenoble, France, under the presidency of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, the Due dc Broglie, delivered an address, from which extracts are translated for the Freeman's Journal. From the speech of the Duke it will be observed that difficulties of Christian education are not confined at this present moment to any particular country, but that in Catholic France those difficulties are offensively apparent. The Duke said, in commencing : " This precocity in crime is a moral phenomenon ; the sad privilege to witness which has been reserved for our generation." After quoting from indisputable authorities as showing to what degree of immorality and turpitude the system of education in vogue, evolved from materialism in high places, was tending, the Duke expressed the hope that under God the sorrowful state of affairs be had described could, and he hoped would, be counteracted and prevented from increasing by the Christian Brothers' system of training the youth of France. " Happily for our country," said he, " and thanks to the generous impulse given by the Blessed de La Salle, and the way opened by him through which so many others are following, we are still in a position to plant in the youthful mind the germs of moral life. In the Christian Brothers' schools do not present themselves those questions which embarrass the directors of moral instruction ia neutral places of education. The La Salle Institute never loses sight of the fact that moral instruction is inseparable from religious sentimeat — nay, this union is the principle upon which it is founded. This is not the place to inquire if moral instruction ought to proceed from precept or from example. Example and precept proceed from the same source and and act in concert. Precept is that which has been engraved on the heart of man by the hand of his Creator, promulgated afterwards at the foot of Mount Sinai, and then commented upon with incomparable sweetness on the mountains of Judea. Example, furnished at first by the most Divine of models, is renewed every day by the spectacle of devotion and of sacrifice. " How, in fact, is it possible not to recognise the importance of the work of La Salle in presence of the sorrowful revelations reported every day on the moral condition of a large portion of our French youth ? ' Twenty-three thousand children,' says the Bishop of Autun, in a sort of terror, ' were, during the year 1886, charged with offences before the tribunals.'

"In the criminal statistics of 1887 it is shown that more than 28,000 were before the tribunals, all undar the age of 21, of whom 580 were accused before the Court of Assize. Of this number 150 were found guilty."

The speaker next went into statistics showing that, notwithstanding the anti-religious education laws of 1882, the La Salle institutes had increased and were continuing to increase. In that year, although fifty-six ot the public schools in charge of the Brothers had been closed by the authorities, this loss was compensated for by the opening of 111 private schools, of which the Brothers had charge, with an increase of 4,577 pupils. In 1876-7, the number of La Salle teachers, male and female, was 51,731, which had increased in 1886-7 to 52,766.

The Duke referred to the fact that while the French Minister of Instruction waa issuing his proclamation against the Christian

Brothers, the Queen of England w<s appointing a royal commission to obtain information as to primary instruction in the United Kingdom, of which commission he would only say that when the report was s?nt in there was not a line of it that did not breathe the necessity of religions instruction. " Bu*," said the Duke, "it was only necessary for me to turn to the first page of the report to find, alas 1 that I was not in France. What name, in fact, did I see among the number of commissioners, and very near the head, but that of Cardinal Manning, the illustrious Archbishop of Westminster, and with it many of the ancient Catholic piers of England, including the Duke of Norfolk, that devoted sou of the Church ? And thia, too, while in our Franc 9, which has given to the Church some of her marvellous development, moral and intellectual, this old instructor of the world is banished from the councils of instruction. We are here, in this France of ours, treated as strangers and enemies, and your institute, which should ba a national glory, which sends teachers forth to all corners of the world, is proscribed in the parent country. Not only are you refused the modest rights allowed to others from the national budget, but it is a point disputed by our legislators whether you will be allowed to retain your private liberties. Against you only, of all Frenchmen, they close the doors of the public schools, and this odious rigour is exer* cised against you by the apostles of modern progress, in the name of liberty of conscience I " After the Dec de Broglie cam« the Archbishop of Grenoble and other eminent speakers in the same strain. The report mentions the cure, through the intercession of the Blessed De La Salle, of young Antoine Servant, a pupil of tha Christian Brothers at St. Laurent. Canada ; of Bvariste Deschatelets, Montreal ; of Claude Salle, of Haut Marne, France ; and of Lucien Oornuet, St. Dizier. It appears, also, from this exhaustive report, that in competitive examinations carried on in various parts of Europe, the Christian Brothers' students have taken more than their share of honour, and that, notwithstanding the opposition from powerful quarters, their institutes are increasing all over.