The Meaning of Education

New Zealand Tablet, 1 December 1921, Page 13

The Meaning of Education

Religion must be an essential part in the child's training if the child is to be really educated (says Truth, N.Y.) Education is defined as a preparation for "complete living." Now, man lives not merely as an intellectual, but as a moral being; and you cannot teach morality to the child without teaching religion—morality's source and sanction. And so, the child-training which neglects or Weakens religion is no education at all. Religion is a vital element in every civilised nation. Religion is the source of all our civilisation, and its altar has been the cradle of the arts. Weaken religion and you relax the bonds that knit a nation together. Uproot • it and you will have to encounter the wildest forces of human passion. Nothing can take the place of religion in education. The philosophies of -Plato, of Cicero, the Meditations of Marcus Au'relius, or the Discourses of Epictetus did not, and could not, purify the spirit of the inner man. So-called ethical culture, apart from religious dogma, is merely the rattling of dry bones. Religion alone supplies a reasonable basis for civilised morality. And so, the secular knowledge imparted to the child should have poured into it the vivifying spirit of a higher knowledge, so that the progress and elevation of the child's mind' may be a movement in the right directiontowards its last end, God. The second principle we Catholics hold in the question of education is that the religious education the child ought to receive should be the religious education desired for it by its parents. We claim this by natural right, not to speak of divine right. The education of the child is as. much a natural parental right and duty as is the feeding and clothing of it; and from the moment the State assumes the parents' right it is bound to administer it in all its integrity. We want our children educated as good, practical, well-instructed Catholics. We have a national right and duty of conscience that our religion shall be an essential element in, shall be the warp and woof of our child's training Undenominational Instruction What are we to say to this system? Well, it seems to please the majority of our Protestant fellow-citizens. It would appear to give them the kind of religious education they desire for their children. By all means, lot them have it. Our conscientious religious beliefs and the discipline of our Church forbid us to have part in it. Why? * Firstly: We recognise no such thing as "common" or "fundamental" Christianity. It is a concept based on one of the most fatal errors of Protestantism— distinction between essentials and non-essentials in religious doctrines. Secondly: We deny the right of any State to formulate this "Common-Christianity" religion as a foundation for subsequent specific denominational teaching. Can you build a house on water? As well may you try to build Catholicism on this "Common-Christianity" foundation. These two things are opposed on first principles; and we repudiate the notion that distinctive Catholic doctrines are a kind of. extra. Each one of them is fundamental. Thirdly: We deny that the State, as such, is competent to pronounce on the validiay of a creed. And in a community so mixed as ours, when the State discriminates in favor of this so-called "common" or "undogmatic" religious teaching, and makes it a State-endowed . religion to the exclusion of all others, it does a cruel injustice to, and oppresses the conscience of, those who do not hold, that form of teaching. With Catholic money the State builds and maintains schools which please the majority of nonCatholics, but which we cannot in conscience use without grave fears that our children will grow up alienated from the faith of their fathers. This money is lost to us. We are under a further obligation in conscience to provide and maintain schools of our own. We demand that you must not take our money to ruin the faith.and the souls of our children. \ Fourthly: A truly national system of primary education does not consist in beating flat to the ground all religious difference by an arbitrary device like "CommonChristian' teaching. It consists in recognising national facts; in respecting conscientious differences and the

honesty which persists in holding to them; in embracing fairly and reasonably .the main elements in the community; and in not penalising any one for religious convictions. Fifthly: And so, Catholic parents, equal in all things to their fellow-citizens, as rent and taxpayers, as sharers in all the privileges and burdens of the same Statepossess in justice the right to have their children educated in schools in conformity with their religious convictions. Otherwise Catholics are treated not as Christian freemen, but as political slaves, and by the material and financial benefits of the public school, system our children are bribed to apostasy. Educated "Pagan America " Some few months ago the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia made a statement to the effect that the United States of America.as a nation had turned definitely away from Christ. There is a marvellous agreement between Pope Leo XIII. and Bishop Rhinelander. The great Pontiff, with the unfailing instinct of Christ's Vica,r pointed out the inevitable consequences of the underlying principles of modern secular education; Bishop Rhinelander simply bore witness to these consequences which thrust themselves upon' his observation in this country. And he concludes his arraignment of American secular education with these words: "I know of no great university in this country where even among the elective courses the student can find any definite instruction in the-, historic Christian faith, as though it were to-day a living reality with a claim on modern intelligence and thought. It is probably a fact that at any of our leading colleges the student can get more definite instruction in Mohammedanism or Buddhism or almost any other of the ethnic religions than he can in Christianity." So much for the bishop's first test: Education in its ideals and results. His next gauge of tho nature and trend of American civilisation is one that, all will agree, is obvious and adequate: Literature, as popularly current. In- this connection he says : "In literature the highest place is, for the first timo ii. history, freely given to the novelists. Writers of fiction are hailed as prophets of the truth and the best guides of conscience. In the pages of these 'best sellers and high priests of public morals you will find the most sacred Christian institutions treated with scorn and ridicule. And in particular the ideals of purity and continence and holy marriage are frankly thrown in the dust heap." He admits that in current literature, howsoever salacious and subversive of Christian standards it may be, "there is a certain refinment of taste which shrinks from the brutal frankness characterised by earlier ages." "But" of those earlier ages he remarks with great justice, "along with that frankness there was present and was recognised a very definite idealism and an influencing recognition of Christian standards as being of unquestionable validity and requiring the homage of all right-minded men and women." While in modern literature, "most of the popular writers frankly lay the axe at the root of all Christian standards and advocate the right of each man to be a law unto himself and to be governed by his own unbridled passions."