The Catholic Protest.

Since the year 1840, when the Roman Catholic Church, under the lead of Archbishop Hughes, began its attack on the public school system, there has been a persistent and determined protest against this system on the ground that it is unjust and oppressive to the Catholic conscience. Whatever the grounds of this complaint, its earnestness and sincerity are unquestionable in view of the fact that the Catholics of the country have voluntarily taxed themselves sufficiently to establish and sustain a great system of Catholic Parochial Schools for the education of their children under the sole control of the Catholic priest-hood, and that now about four hundred thousand children are receiving instruction in them, to the total neglect and disuse of the public schools. A protest manifestly so sincere, urged in the sacred name of conscience, deserves to receive the most respectful and dispassionate consideration of the majority. If the protest is a reasonable one, and if the public school system really infringes the undeniable rights even of a single citizen, reform and redress are the only right course to be adopted; and if not, the fact of even an unreasonable protest on the part of so large and so rapidly increasing a portion of the people is page 64 cause for grave disquietude in the minds of all intelligent patriots. The school question thus raised is complicated still further by the fact that the great body of non-Catholics who heartily support the public school system are themselves divided as to the relation it ought to bear to religion—one part holding that the schools should have a distinctively Protestant Christian character, the other part holding that they should be wholly colorless or neutral with respect to religious beliefs. The former maintain an intermediate position between the positions of the Catholic and the secular or liberal parties, and are in fact attempting to reconcile irreconcilable principles. But their consistency or inconsistency does not immediately affect the main question of the support or the abolition of the State school system. Protestants and liberals are nearly unanimous in supporting it, and differ only on the question whether the schools supported by the State shall be wholly or only partially secular. But the protest of the Catholic Church strikes at the very foundation of State schools; it denies the right of the State to educate at all, and claims the whole field of education as part of the domain of the Church itself. Let us, then, concentrate our attention for the present on the Catholic protest, and consider, without passion and without prejudice, how far this protest is grounded in justice and in truth.