THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS THE ENEMY OF EDUCATION!

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 207, 23 March 1877, Page 13

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS THE ENEMY OF EDUCATION!

She is specially noted for this work of education. She alone— the Cathohc Church alone—makes ignorance such a crime as to exclude W? t Q k^ dom of heaven Ignorance, alone, in Catholic theology, is such a sin as to exclude man, without any other sin, from the kingdom of heaven. Do you not all know, my friends, and have we not all been taught since our childhood that there can be no salvation without a knowledge of at least the principal mysteries of faith ? The Church of God is founded on this knowledge -she cannot exist without it, much less nourish and triumph, and°Dursua her apostolic career amongst the nations. Knowledge is her first principle, because Deus scwntiarum Dominus, God ia the Lord of knowledge, and, adds the apostle, » He that is ignorant shall be a A n ° r< £ nd nn^knowledged of God." Nay, more, the Catholic Church depends more than any other institutions, I will not B*t religion, for there is no religion outside the Cabholic Church thera are forms of opinions calling themselves religion, but religion means the cidtm Dei the worship of God, and that worship must W? 6 i b l £ U ?' lt musfc ab3orb the vhole intellect and heart, by faith and Divine grace, it must take the whole man and put him in the presence of God for the purposes of worship, or else it is no religion. The Catholic Church, I say, depends m?re than any institution in this world on education, whether we consider her dogmas, that is to say, her belief or her practice. Think mv dearly beloved, how finely inteUectual is the religion which is based and founded upon the mystery of the Incarnation, and fw^' 55 a y-- beloved > of ita children to -rasp the mighty thought that God became man, that God became mau-so that Jut of our two natures the Divine and the human only one person, and that person Divine, sprang forth. This mystery is so great in itself, in its intellectual power, and in the demand that it makes on our intelligence that the greatest philosopher of old, the masters of all ITT 11^* 0 g^P it ia its immensity; and yet the humblest Catholic child not only receives and believes ifc but promises it every time that he says, " Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us." "Mother of God," behold tL whole .mystery of the Incarnation. This mystery, the fundamental one, is followed up oy a series of the highest and most arduous intellectual truths They come to us, it is true, in the shape of Divine assertion; they come to us upon the authority of the Almighty God who utters them, and of the infallible Church which interprets them But tell me, is it no small act of intellectual power to grasp the idea of a God revealing unchangeable truth, that is to sly, manifesting His own nature— of a Church on earth unchanging, infallible bearin * witness to that one truth, and standing up for it against all th« powers of this earth and all the powers of hell ?— Father Burke