THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11, 18 March 1909, Page 410

THE SECULAR PHASE OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

A DISCUSSION

(By the Editor of the New Zealand Tablet.) The following article on the above subject — the tenth of the series — appeared in the Otago Daily Times of March 13: — X.— THE CATHOLIC CLAIM. PART I.: WHAT IT IS NOT.

When Gulliver got to Laputa, the royal tailor was ordered to provide^him with a new suit of clothes. Instead, however, of measuring him. "at close quarters, in the usual way, the tailor stood afar off, took Gulliver's altitude" with a quadrant, worked out therefrom elaborate calculations, and, after six days, completed a suit that was hope--lessly shapeless and misfitting. The anonymous (but now well known) ' R.W. has adopted an analogous method of estimating ' the demand of the Roman Catholic Church ' in these lands in regard to education. Specific and practically uniform Catholic demands, in this connection, formulated a thousand times over, have been before the public of Australia and New Zealand for a generation past. " These - demands must, until the contrary is proved, be assumed to be in accord with — or, at least, not opposed to — Catholic teaching and practice. Moreover, systems embodying these demands, in measures wholly or partly satisfactory to Catholics, have long been in operation in Canada and in several European countries, as indicated in the eighth article of this series. ' The demands of the Roman Catholic Church ' in New Zealand are right here upon the spot, to be ' sized up,' measured, and criticised at close quarters. But the anonymous writer preferred the method oosf s Laputa/ with a variant. He stood afar off, applied his quadrant to the papal Syllabus of 1864, and evolved therefrom a 'Roman Catholic ' scheme which fits the facts as badly as the Laputa suit fitted Lemuel Gulliver. A few remarks on the Syllabus in .this connection will therefore be useful. 1. "What the Syllabus is. — ' Syllabus ' is a Latin word, derived from the Greek, meaning an index or table or list of contents, propositions, etc. In the connection here used, ' The Syllabus ' means a collection or list of eighty assertions or propositions condemned by Pope Pius IX., and appended to the Encyclical Letter, Quanta Cura, of December 8, 1864. This document and its covering Encyclical were addressed to the Catholic Bishops throughout the world. The eighty condemned propositions are sorted out under nine general (sometimes grouped) headings, tho chief of which are Pantheism, Naturalism, Rationalism, Indifferentism, Latitudinarianism ; Errors concerning- the Rights of the Church, Civil Society, Natural and Christian Ethics, Christian Marriage, the Pope's Temporal Power, and Contemporary Liberalism (in the Continental sense). Each of these eighty assertions (commonly called propositions) is accompanied by a reference Jbo the particular documents in which Pius IX. had previously -condemned it. - Tlie syllabus is thus at once "a resume, .a memorandum, and a list of errors. > , . 2. iNTEurxtETATioN of the Syllabus .—The Syllabus is • not (as its non-Catholic ' interpreters ' commonly imagine) a popular document, couched in ' popular language — such as, for instance, a newspaper article on municipal elections. It was not addressed to the people, but to the bishops, who (as Newman said) 'would be the interpreters of it, as the need arose, to their people.' It is a theological document, written in a medieval ecclesiastical language all its own, and largely couched in the highly technical modes of expression used in such cases by the Roman Curia. Its explanation, is a matter for the expert theologian and not for all expert theologians, but for those only who are well acquainted with the methods and principles on which -such documents are "drawn up and interpreted. In the seventh section of his historic Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Newman says: 'At Rome the rules of interpreting authoritative' documents are

known with a perfection which at this time is scarcely to be found elsewhere. Some of these rules, indeed, are known to all priests; but even this general knowledge is not possessed by laymen-, much less by Protestants, however able and experienced in their several lines of study or profession.' Inexpert Catholic -writers, and all non-Cath-olic writers, in our tongue err in two chief ways in their efforts to ' interpret ' the Syllabus according to their lights : (a) They more or less seriously misunderstand the technical language and modes of expression in that document; and (b) they translate the erroneous meanings, thus put upon, technical language, into the popular "English speech of the street or the newspaper column. 3.. Authority of the Syllabus. — According to the now general opinion of Catholic theologians (based upon certain documents of Pius IX. and Leo XIII.) the Syllabus is a papal document ; its eighty propositions are condemned not alone in the Encyclicals, etc., referred to at the close of each, but also in themselves and in the precise form contained in the Syllabus (with, of course, in each case their proper interpretation). Catholic theologians do not hold that the eighty propositions are condemned by infallible authority; they hold, however, that these condemnations are an exercise of the teaching authority, as well as of the directive authority, of the Holy See. The eighty propositions are condemned in various degrees and for different reasons. Some are atheistic, or heretical, or schismatical, or subversive of civil government and social order; others are merely scandalous (in the theological sense), or erroneous, or rash, or evil-sounding, or captious, etc. Neither the Encyclical nor the Syllabus indicates what class of condemnation falls upon any particular proposition. That is a question which is left for the theologians to determine, or for official interpretation, wherever this may be given. The great bulk of the propositions condemned are of such a nature that no one could maintain them and at the same time maintain the Catholic, or even the Christian, position^ A number of propositions, relating chiefly to liberty of speech, print, conscience, etc., were grossly misrepresented by the French irreligious press and its English echoes; ye,t these are, in the Catholic sense, equally condemned by every civilised Government; and, if reduced to practice, they would make the preservation of social order impossible. The commentary of Bishop Dupanloup, of New Orleans, which was approved by Pius IX., makes clear what is well known to every Catholic theological expert, that the things generally aimed at in the Syllabus were the tin-Christian and antiChristian principles and the extreme religious indifferentism of the time, ' Liberalism ' in its evil Continental meaning, and the principles of the Revolution. As regards the propositions that are condemned as merely erroneous, rash, etc., Catholics give even to these condemnations what theologians term ' the religious assent,' which is wider than the strict assent of faith, and which is based upon a religious obedience to a divinely-constituted religious authority. The reader who may desire to pursue the subject of the Syllabus farther would advantageously consult Newman's 'Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,' Wilfrid Ward's William George Ward and the Catholic "Revival (pp. 234-274), Rinaldi's II Valore del Sillabo, Ruffoni's II Sillabo c la Regola di Fede, and also consult the second volume of Bonomelli's Questioni Religiose, Morali c Sociali del Giorno. 4. The Syllabus and the School. — ' The Syllabus ( f Pius IX.,' says ' R.W.,' (1) ' declares war against Statecontrolled education in Christian countries; (2) declares that the supreme control of all schools pertains to the Church (i.e., the Roman Church); (3) affirms that all schools not controlled by the Roman Church are hostile to the Church.' There are in the Syllabus four condemned propositions relating to education — they are numbered 45, 46, 47, and 48. Not one of 'R.W.'s.' three 'declarations,' quoted above, is to be found in these propositions or in any part of the Syllabus, by any stretch of legitimate and recognised Catholic interpretation. The reader will bear the following points in mind : (a) The Syllabus is a technical theological document addressed to Catholic bishops for the instruction of their Catholic flocks, (b) The coudemned propositions being, in theological language, ' unfavorable,' are ' of strict interpretation,' and must .therefore be taken as negatives, (c) Account must ' also be taken of the circumstances which gave rise to the condemnation of the four propositions mentioned above — namely, the Continental ' Liberal ' and anti-Catholic movement for the complete secularising of public instruction. Three out of the four condemned educational propositions demand, in fact, the entire exclusion, from the schools, of religion, and of the clergy as the representatives of the religious principle. Avoiding technical explanations as far as. is possible, I may sum up the position as follows : —

Proposition 45 claims for ' the civil authority ' the ' entire control ' (totu'm . . . regimen) of the ' public schools ' for the edu-cation of ' Christian youth ' . (that is, Catholic youth) 'except, in some respects ' (aliqua ration?) , episcopal (Catholic) seminaries. Moreover, the State control here demanded £s of such a sweeping nature that ' no -' right shall be recognised in any other authority whatsoever (alii cuicumque auctoritati) to take part in the teaching of the schools, in the direction of studies, in the conferring of degrees in the choice or approval of teachers.' This amazing claim is, of course, condemned -in the Syllabus. The-Pope is thereby not asserting; but denying, a universal, which' is equally denied by practically every Christian Church. It "is one fching to deny the assertion that the Catholic Church has -no say whatsoever in the education of Catholic children; it is obviously quite a different thing to assert that the Caiholic Church ' demands ' absolute an d " complete control of all schools ' — not alone Catholic, but Protestant, Jewish, Mahome'dan, Btiddhist, SEintoisf, and the rest. The Catholic Church does not make, and never did make, such a preposterous '.demand.' The power claimed in that condemned proposition would take away from every Christian. Church the right of protest against .the placing of teaclieis of evil character in the schools^, the active propaganda of atheism therein (as in France), and the corruption and demoralisation of innocent children by the blatant and unclean blasphemies of degenerates like the creature Morizot, who, after being condemned on six counts by the Court of Appeal of Dijon. on December 29, 1908, was promptly rewarded by promotion and higher pay by the French Government. In his Education and Educationists in Otago (p. 48), the Rev. C. S. Ross (Presbyterian) laments as follows one alleged result of the passing of the secular Aci; of 1877 : ' The doors were thus flung wide open for the reception of men whose antecedents, t,v whose attitude towards Christian truth, would in earlier days, under the Provincial rule, have disqualified them for the important office of teachers of the young.' Tho Otago Presbyterian Assembly would have heartily joined with Pius IX. in condemning proposition 45 of the Syllabus. Proposition 46 of the Syllabus says: £ Nay, even in the ecclesiastical seminaries ' (Catholic seminaries are here intended) ' the course of studies to be followed is subject to the civil authority' (civili auctoritati subjicitur). How would our Anglican and Presbyterian friends like to see, for instance, the course of-studies of their aspirants to the ministry ' subject to ' the, lay control of (say) an agnostic or atheistic Minister of Education, such as at present controls education in France? Proposition 47 of the Syllabus emphasises still further the demand of proposition 45; it insists that public school education shall be freed from all Church authority, direction,' etc., and shall be 'placed under the complete control (pleno . . . arpitrio) of the civil and political authority ' to do witli it as the rulers please (ad imperantium placita) and to follow the prevalent opinion of the time. The Pope condemns this out-and-out secularising of public instruction. And here again he denies a universal, which is equally denied by the Bible-jn-Schools League and by almost every denomination of- Christians. Here, again, it is one thing to deny the asertion that -the Catholic Church has no right whatsoever of authority or direction in regard to the education of Catholic children ; it is quite a different thing to assert that the Catholic Church * demands ' absolute and ' supreme control of all schools.' The Catholic Church makes, of course, no such ' demand.' The 48th proposition claims for Catholics the right of approving of systems of education (for Catholic children — so it is interpreted) ' separated- from Catholic faith , and the Church's authority,' restricted ' altogether, or at least principally,' to ' natural knowledge,' and confined within ' the bounds of earthly social life.' This, like the preceding condemned propositions, is intended to refer directly and immediately to Catholics and Catholic children. But the condemned principle is equally reprobated. by the great majority of Protestairt Christians. There is nothing in all the condemnation of these propositions, in their usual and proper interpretation," (a) declaring ' war against State-controlled education,' but against the abuses of State control, or (b) claiming for the Catholic Churcli ' the supreme control of all schools,' or (c) affirming that ' all schools ' not so controlled are ' hostile to that Church.' No such claims are, as a matter of fact, advanced liy the Church. Moreover, (d) there is nothing in the condemnation of these propositions that claims exclusive control of even Catholic schools. The Catholic Church does claim, has ever claimed, and will ever claim, the "right to say what shall and what shall not be taught to Catholic cliildreh in all matters pertaining to faith and morals. She makes no such demand in regard to non-Catholic children- She does not claim, either in tho Syllabus or elsewhere, control of the schools in purely civil

matters — as, for instance, the financial administration of the schools, the pedagogical methods to be followed, the selection of text-books in matters of purely secular instruction having no relation to religion or morals (such as, for instance, arithmetic, etc.), nor in any other purely civil ' concern connected with education. In New Zealand- the Catholic Church authorities pressed for years, and at last successively everywhere, for State inspection, and control of the whole secular part of their school curriculum. And in doing so they violated no point of the faith or practice of their Church. ' Similar demands for State inspection and control have frequently been made in Australia and in the United States, '(c) Catholics do not (as is commonly supposed) demand any contribution whatsoever from non-Catholics for the maintenance of Catholic schools — they would be content (as in Canada) with a fair equivalent of what they contribute annually, in taxation to the cost of education in this Dominion.. And (f) finally, Catholics claim payment for secular results only, and have never demanded, and do not demand, State aid for the religious instruction and training imparted in their schools.