'There's Nothing Else'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 15, 11 April 1907, Page 22

' There's Nothing Else'

. The; London ->' Gafcholic Weekly' of February 22 - quotes thte Mlcywing -,. splendid tribute for the Catholic schools ' pf Spain I*. from a public letter addressed by Senor Romero., to .Premier Maura : — . - - * I think — and" in proof of it I point to the evidence of my actions— that ( there ,is . small ' trace - of ■ the ."clerical" about 1 my* "private Wfe. But as, in judging of PUBXiIC . qoiqstions, one must "prescind from private . theories 4n- d'rdepc brightly to " estimate" Jthe needs o.f other people, I shall prove .a ..furious clerical" in ! all I am - going to,say»". .' .What, will seem .so bad to many

is that I v am going to jshow' how in Spain, ( in matters .of education and , instruction, the very athejsts and - ' dissentients have- PERFORCE to be clericals, aadlfience have to send their children- to the monks'- and nuns. .... This aneans, my * respected friend, that - there is ■ an infinite 'number' pr people who do no>t know that learning consists •-in. co'frecting 'errors', and "that there is an equally, large- number who are "not," or seem not to be awar§, that 95 'per cens. of "our national culture is "manifestly the work of --the-religious communities, without ' which our lack of social culture ■would be-" a hundred' times greater than it is ! . ... One day two French, friends ' of mine were dining with I me — one a Jew, the other a_ 'Freethinker. They started the toi*ic and invited, me to study it^-when, to my amazement, I learnt that their children were being educated in schools of the Escolapios (Fathers of the Pious Schools) and convents of the Sacfe Coeur. I expressed to them my astonishment, when both exclaimed together :' " But, my good friend ! There's nothing else!" . . . One of them said, unable to re-~ strain his tears, "I tried the Institute (lay school), with my eldest boy, atid he was ruined at the age ofsixteen. A neighboring den did the- work." ... .1 close this part of my study by remarking, that my anti-clerical and anti-CathoKc friends had ample reason 1 to defend the paradox of " sending their children -'to religious schools, in snite of - their own 'irrelignoiusness, with the argument, "My good friend! -There's nothing else!"' Spain cannot get .on without its- religious Orders ' in the schools, hospitals, and asylums. ' Small wonder, therefore,' says the ' Catholic Weekly,' * that the Associations Bill proved a destructive force for the late Ministries.' " T :