ROME AND EDUCATION—WHY DOES THE CHURCH OF ROME HATE THE COMMON SCHOOLS
OF THE UNITED STATES, AND WANTS TO DESTROY THEM? WHY DOES SHE OBJECT
TO THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL?
The word EDUCATION is a beautiful word. It comes from the Latin
_educare_, which means to raise up, to take from the lowest degrees to
the highest spheres of knowledge. The object of education is, then, to
feed, expand, raise, enlighten and strengthen the intelligence.
We hear the Roman Catholic priests making use of that beautiful word
education as often, if not oftener, than the Protestant. But that word
“education” has a very different meaning among the followers of the pope
than among the disciples of the Gospel. And that difference, which the
Protestants ignore, is the cause of the strange blunders they make every
time they try to legislate on that question, here, as well as in England
or in Canada.
The meaning of the word education among Protestants is as far from the
meaning of that same word among Roman Catholics as the southern pole is
from the northern pole. When a Protestant speaks of education, that word
is used and understood in its true sense. When he sends his little boy
to a Protestant school, he honestly desires that he should be reared up
in the spheres of knowledge as much as his intelligence will allow. When
that little boy is going to school, he soon feels that he has been
raised up to some extent, and he experiences a sincere joy, a noble
pride, for this new, though at first very modest raising; but he
naturally understands that this new and modest upheaval is only a stone
to step on and raise himself to a higher degree of knowledge, and he
quickly makes that second step with an unspeakable pleasure. When the
son of a Protestant has acquired a little knowledge, he wants to acquire
more. When he has learned what _this_ means, he wants to know what
_that_ means also. Like the young eagle, he trims his wings for a higher
flight, and turns his head upward to go farther up in the atmosphere of
knowledge. A noble and mysterious ambition has suddenly seized his young
soul. Then he begins to feel something of that unquenchable thirst for
knowledge which God Himself has put in the breast of every child of
Adam; a thirst of knowledge, however, which will never be perfectly
realized except in heaven.
When God created man in His own image, He endowed him with an
intelligence and moral faculties worthy of the high, I was going to say
the divine, dignity of His own beloved children. He Himself put in us
aspirations and instincts by which we were to be constantly longing
after the oceans of light, truth and knowledge, whose waves wash His
eternal throne. It is that thirst after more knowledge, that constant
longing after more light, which constitutes the difference between man
and brute. Man has received from God an intelligence which, though
clouded now by sin, is to him what the helm is to the noble ship which
crosses the boundless ocean; he has a conscience, an immortal soul which
binds him to God, and he feels it. His destinies are glorious, they are
incommensurable, they are infinite, and he knows it. Though a dethroned
king, he feels that he is still a king. The six thousand years which
have passed over him since his fall have not yet effaced the kingly
title which God Himself wrote on his forehead when He told him,
“Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. i: 28). With
that glorious, that divine mission of subduing the air and the light,
the wind and the waves, the seas and the earth, the roaring thunder and
the flashing lightning constantly before his eyes, man marches to the
conquest of the world with the calm certitude of his power and the
glorious aspirations of his royal dignity.
The object of education, then, is to enable man to fulfill that kingly
mission of ruling, subduing the world, under the eyes of his Creator.
Let us remember that it is not from himself, nor from any angel, but it
is from God himself that man has received that sublime mission. Yes, it
is God himself who has implanted in the bosom of humanity the knowledge
and aspirations of those splendid destinies which can be attained only
by “Education.”
What a glorious impulse is this that seizes hold of the newly awakened
mind, and leads the young intelligence to rise higher and pierce the
clouds that hide from his gaze the splendors of knowledge that lie
concealed beyond the gloom of this nether sphere! That impulse is a
noble ambition; it is that part of humanity that assimilates itself to
the likeness of the great Creator; that impulse which education has for
its mission to direct in its onward and upward march, is one of the most
precious gifts of God to man. Once more, the glorious mission of
education is to foster these thirstings after knowledge and lead man to
accomplish his high destiny.
It ought to be a duty with both Roman Catholics and Protestants to
assist the pupil in his flight toward the regions of science and
learning. But is it so? No. When you Protestants send your children to
school, you put no fetters to their intelligence; they rise with
fluttering wings day after day. Though their flight at first is slow and
timid, how happy they feel at every new aspect of their intellectual
horizon! How their hearts beat with an unspeakable joy when they begin
to hear voices of applause and encouragement from every side saying to
them, “Higher, higher, higher!” When they shake their young wings to
take a still higher flight, who can express their joy when they
distinctly hear again the voices of a beloved mother, of a dear father,
of a venerable pastor, cheering them and saying, “Well done! Higher yet,
my child, higher!”
Raising themselves with more confidence on their wings, they then soar
still higher, in the midst of the unanimous concert of the voices of
their whole country encouraging them to the highest flight. It is then
that the young man feel his intellectual strength tenfold multiplied. He
lifts himself on his eagle wings, with a renewed confidence and power,
and soars up still higher, with his heart beating with a noble and holy
joy. For from the south and north, from the east and the west, the
echoes bring to his ears the voices of the admiring multitudes—“Rise
higher, higher yet!”
He has now reached what he thought, at first, to be the highest regions
of thought and knowledge; but he hears again the same stimulating cries
from below, encouraging him to a still higher flight toward the loftiest
dominion of knowledge and philosophy, till he enters the regions where
lies the source of all truth, and light and life. For he has also heard
the voice of his God, speaking through His Son Jesus Christ, crying,
“Come unto me! Fear not! Come unto me! I am the light, the way! Come to
this _higher_ region where the Father, with the Son and the Spirit,
reign in endless light!”
Thus does the Protestant scholar making use of his intelligence as the
eagle of his wing, go on from weakness unto strength, from the timid
flutter to the bold, confident flight, from one degree to another still
higher, from one region of knowledge to another still higher, till he
loses himself in that ocean of light and truth and life which is God.
In the Protestant schools no fetters are put on the young eagle’s wings;
there is nothing to stop him in his progress, or paralyze his movements
and upward flights. It is the contrary: he receives every kind of
encouragement in his flight.
Thus it is that the only truly _great_ nations in the world are
Protestants! Thus it is the truly _powerful_ nations in the world are
Protestants! Thus it is that the _only free_ nations in the world are
Protestants! The Protestant nations are the only ones that acquit
themselves like men in the arena of this world; Protestant nations only
march as giants at the head of the civilized world. Everywhere they are
the advance guard in the ranks of progress, science and liberty, leaving
far behind the unfortunate nations whose hands are tied by the
ignominious iron chains of Popery.
After we have seen the Protestant scholar raising himself, on his eagle
wings, to the highest spheres of intelligence, happiness and light, and
marching unimpaired toward his splendid destinies, let us turn our eyes
toward the Roman Catholic student, and let us consider and pity him in
the supreme degradation to which he is subjected.
That young Roman Catholic scholar is born with the same bright
intelligence as the Protestant one; he is endowed by his Creator with
the same powers of mind as his Protestant neighbor; he has the same
impulses, the same noble aspirations implanted by the hand of God in his
breast. He is sent to school apparently, like the Protestant boy, to
receive what is called “Education.” He at first understands that word in
its true sense; he goes to school in the hope of being _raised_,
elevated as high as his intelligence and his personal efforts will
allow. His heart beats with joy, when at once the first rays of light
and knowledge come to him; he feels a holy, a noble pride at every new
step he makes in his upward progress; he longs to learn more, he wants
to rise higher; he also takes up his wings, like the young eagle, and
soars up higher.
But here begin the disappointments and tribulations of the Roman
Catholic student; for he is allowed to raise himself—yes, but when he
has raised himself high enough to be on a level with the big toes of the
Pope, he hears piercing, angry, threatening angry cries coming from
every side—“Stop! stop! Do not raise yourself higher than the toes of
the Holy Pope!... Kiss those holy toes, ... and stop your upward flight!
Remember that the Pope is the only source of science, knowledge and
truth!... The knowledge of the Pope is the ultimate limit of learning
and light to which humanity can attain.... You are not allowed to know
and believe what his Holiness does not know and believe. Stop! stop! Do
not go an inch higher than the intellectual horizon the Supreme Pontiff
of Rome, in whom only is the plenitude of the true science which will
save the world.”
Some will perhaps answer me here: “Has not Rome produced great men in
every department of science?” I answer, Yes; as I have once done before.
Rome can show us a long list of names which shine among the brightest
lights of the firmament of science and philosophy. She can show us her
Copernices, her Galileos, her Pascals, her Bossuets, her Lamenais, etc.,
etc. But it is at their risk and peril that those giants of intelligence
have raised themselves into the highest regions of philosophy and
science. It is in spite of Rome that those eagles have soared up above
the damp and obscure horizon where the Pope offers his big toes to be
kissed and worshipped as the _ne plus ultra_ of human intelligence; and
they have invariably been punished for their boldness.
On the 22nd of June, 1663, Galileo was obliged to fall on his knees in
order to escape the cruel death to which he was to be condemned by the
order of the Pope; and he signed with his own hand the following
retractation: “I abjure, curse and detest the error and heresy of the
motion of the earth,” etc., etc.
That learned man had to degrade himself by swearing a most egregious
lie, namely, that the earth does not move around the sun. Thus it is
that the wings of that giant eagle of Rome were clipped by the scissors
of the Pope. That mighty intelligence was bruised, fettered, and, as
much as it was possible to the Church of Rome, degraded, silenced and
killed. But God would not allow that such a giant intellect should be
entirely strangled by the bloody hands of that implacable enemy of light
and truth—the Pope. Sufficient strength and life had remained in Galileo
to enable him to say, when rising up, “This will not prevent the earth
from moving!”
The infallible decree of the infallible Pope, Urban VIII., against the
motion of the earth, is signed by the Cardinals Felia, Guido, Desiderio,
Antonio, Bellingero, and Fabricicio. It says, “In the name and by the
authority of Jesus Christ, the plenitude of which resides in His vicar,
the Pope, that the proposition that the earth is not the center of the
world, and that it moves with a diurnal motion is absurd,
philosophically false, and erroneous in faith.”
What a glorious thing for the Pope of Rome to be infallible! He
infallibly knows that the earth does not move around the sun! And what a
blessed thing for the Roman Catholics to be governed and taught by such
an _infallible_ being. In consequence of that infallible decree, you
will admire the following act of humble submission of two celebrated
Jesuit astronomers, Lesueur and Jacquier: “Newton assumes in his third
book the hypothesis of the earth moving around the sun. The proposition
of that author could not be explained, except through the same
hypothesis: we have, therefore, been forced to act a character not our
own. _But we declare our entire submission to the decrees of the Supreme
Pontiffs of Rome against the motion of the earth._” (Newton’s
“Principia,” vol. iii., p. 450.)
Now, please tell me if the world has ever witnessed any degradation like
that of Roman Catholics? I do not speak of the ignorant and unlearned,
but I speak of the learned—the intelligent ones. There you see Galileo
condemned to gaol because he had proved that the earth moved around the
sun, and to avoid the cruel death on the rack of the holy Inquisition if
he does not retract, he falls on his knees and swears that he will never
believe it—in the very moment that he believes it! He promises, under a
solemn oath, that he will never say it any more, when he is determined
to proclaim it again the very first opportunity! And here you see two
other learned Jesuits, who have written a very able work to prove that
the earth moves around the sun; but, trembling at the thunders of the
Vatican, which are roaring on their heads and threaten to kill them,
they submit to the decrees of the Popes of Rome against the motion of
the earth. These two learned Jesuits tell a most contemptible and
ridiculous lie to save themselves from the implacable wrath of that
great light-extinguisher whose throne is in the city of the seven hills.
Lamenais, a Roman Catholic priest, who lived in this very century, was
one of the most profound philosophers and eloquent writers which France
has ever had. But Lamenais was publicly excommunicated for having raised
himself high enough in the regions of Gospel light to see that “liberty
of conscience” was one of the great privileges which Christ has brought
from heaven for all the nations, and which He has sealed with His blood!
No man has ever raised himself higher in the regions of thought and
philosophy than Pascal; but the wings of that giant eagle were clipped
by the Pope. Pascal was an outcast in the Church of Rome. He lived and
died an excommunicated man! Bossuet is one of the most eloquent orators
which Rome has given to the world. But Veuillot, the editor of the
_Univers_ (the official journal of the Roman Catholic clergy of France)
assures us that Bossuet was a disguised Protestant.
If, at any step made by the Protestant through the regions of science
and learning, he asks God or man to tell him how he can proceed any
further without any fear of falling into some unknown and unsuspected
abyss, both God and man tell him what Christ said to His apostles—that
he has eyes to see, ears to hear, and an intelligence to understand; he
is reminded that it is with his own eyes, and not with another’s eyes,
he must look; that it is with his own ears, and not with another’s ears,
he must hear; and that it is with his own intelligence, and not
another’s intelligence, he must understand. And when the Protestant has
made use of his own eyes to see, and his own ears to hear, and his own
intelligence to understand, he nevertheless feels again his feet
uncertain on the trembling waves of the mysterious and unexplored
regions of science and learning which spread before him as a boundless
ocean, all the echoes of heaven and earth bring to his ears the simple
but sublime words of the Son of God: “If a son shall ask bread of any of
you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish,
will he, for a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will
he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
Emboldened with this infallible promise of the Saviour, which has
ennobled and almost divinized him, the Protestant student ceases to
tremble and fear, a new strength has been given to his feet, a new power
to his mind. For he has gone to his Father for more light and strength.
Nay, he has boldly asked not only the assistance and the help of the
Spirit of God, but the very presence of His Spirit in his soul to guide
and strengthen him. The assurance that the great God who has created
heaven and earth is his Father, his loving Father, has absolutely raised
him above himself; it has given a new, I dare say a divine impulse, to
all his aspirations for truth and knowledge. It has put into his breast
the assurance that, sustained by the love, and the light, and the help
of that great infinite, eternal God, he feels himself as a giant able to
cope with any obstacle. He does not any more walk, on his way to
eternity, as a worm of the dust; a voice from heaven has told him that
he was the child of God! Eternity, and not time, then becomes the limits
of his existence; he is no more satisfied with touching with his hands
and studying with his eyes the few objects which are within the limited
horizon of the eyelid-vision. He stretches his giant hands to the
boundless limits of the infinite, he boldly raises his feet and eyes
from the dust of this earth, to launch himself into the boundless oceans
of the unknown worlds. He feels as if there was almost nothing beyond
the reach of his intelligence, nothing to resist the power of his arms,
nothing to stop his onward progress toward the infinite so long as the
infallible words of Christ shall be his compass, his light, and his
strength. He will then touch the mountains, and they will melt and bow
down before him to let his iron and fiery chariot pass over the Rocky
Mountains, 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. He will boldly ascend
to the regions where the lightning and the storms reign, and there he
will place his daring hands into the roaring clouds, and wrench the
sparkle of lightning which will carry his message from one end of the
world to the other. He will force the oceans to tremble and submit, as
humble slaves, before those marvelous steam-engines which, like giants,
carry “floating cities” over all the seas in spite of the winds and the
waves.
Had the Newtons, the Franklins, the Fultons, the Morses been Romanists,
their names would have been lost in the obscurity which is the natural
heritage of the abject slaves of the Popes. Being told from their
infancy that no one had any right to make use of his “private judgment,”
intelligence and conscience in the research of truth, they would have
remained mute and motionless at the feet of the modern and terrible god
of Rome, the Pope. But they were Protestants! In that great and glorious
word “Protestant,” is the secret of the marvelous discoveries with which
they have changed the face of the world. They were Protestants! Yes,
they had passed their young years in Protestant schools, where they had
read a book which told them that they were created in the image of God,
and that that great God had sent His eternal Son, Jesus, to make them
free from the bondage of man. They had read in that Protestant book (for
the Bible is the most Protestant book in the world) that man had not
only a conscience, but an intelligence to guide him; they had learned
that that intelligence and conscience had no other master but God, no
other guide but God, no other light but God. On the walls of their
Protestant schools the Son of God had written the marvelous words: “Come
unto me; I am the Light, the Way, the Life.”
But when the Protestant nations are marching with such giant strides to
the conquest of the world, why is it that the Roman Catholic nations not
only remain stationary, but give evidence of a decadence which is, day
after day, more and more appalling and remediless? Go to their schools
and give a moment of attention to the principles which are sown in the
young intelligences of their unfortunate slaves, and you will have the
key to that sad mystery.
What is not only the first, but the daily school lesson taught to the
Roman Catholic? Is it not that one of the greatest crimes which a man
can commit is to follow his “private judgment?” which means that he has
eyes, but cannot see; ears, but he cannot hear; and intelligence, but he
cannot make use of it in the research of truth and light and knowledge,
without danger of being eternally damned. His superiors—which mean the
priest and the Pope—must see for him, hear for him, and think for him.
Yes, the Roman Catholic is constantly told in his school that the most
unpardonable and damnable crime is to make use of his own intelligence
and follow _his own private judgment_ in the research of truth. He is
constantly reminded that man’s own private judgment is his greatest
enemy. Hence all his intellectual and conscientious efforts must be
brought to fight down, silence, kill his “private judgment.” It is by
the judgment of his superiors—the priest, the bishop and the pope—that
he must be guided in everything.
Now, what is a man who cannot make use of his “private personal
judgment?” Is he not a slave, an idiot, an ass? And what is a nation
composed of men who do not make use of their private personal judgment
in the research of truth and happiness, if not a nation of brutes,
slaves and contemptible idiots?
But as this will look like an exaggeration on my part, allow me to force
the Church of Rome to come here and speak for herself. Please pay
attention to what she has to say about the intellectual faculties of
men. Here are the very words of the so-called Saint Ignatius Loyola, the
founder of the Jesuit Society:
“As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every point—in
execution, in will, in intellect, doing which is enjoined with all
celerity, spiritual joy and perseverance; persuading ourselves that
everything is just, suppressing every repugnant thought and judgment of
one’s own in a certain obedience; and let every one persuade himself,
that he who lives under obedience should be moved and directed, under
Divine Providence, by his superior, JUST AS IF HE WERE A CORPSE
(_perinde acsi cadaver esset_) which allows itself to be moved and led
in every direction.”
Yes! Protestants, when you send your child to school, it is that he may
more and more understand the dignity of man. Your object is to
enlighten, expand and raise his intelligence. You want to give more
light, more strength, more food, more life to that intelligence. But
know it well, not from my pen, but from the solemn declaration of Rome.
The young Roman Catholic goes to school, not only that his intelligence
may be fettered, clouded and paralyzed, but that it may be killed. (You
have read it.) It is only when he will be like a _corpse_ before his
_superior_ that the young Roman Catholic will have attained to the
highest degree of perfect manhood! Is not such a doctrine absolutely
anti-Christian and anti-social. Is it not diabolical? Would not mankind
become a flock of brute beasts if the Church of Rome could succeed in
persuading her hundred of millions of slaves to consider themselves as
_cadavers_—corpses in the presence of their superiors.
Some one will, perhaps, ask me what can be the object of the popes and
the priests of Rome in degrading the Roman Catholics in such a strange
way that they turn them into moral corpses? What can be the use of those
hundred of millions of corpses? Why not let them live? The answer is a
very easy one. The great, and the only object of the thoughts and
workings of the Pope and the priests is to raise themselves above the
rest of the world. They want to be high! high! high! above the head not
only of the common people, but of the kings and emperors of the world.
They want to be not only as high, but higher than God. It is when
speaking of the Pope that the Holy Ghost says: “He opposeth and exalteth
himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he,
as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2
Thess. ii. 4). To attain their object, the priests have persuaded their
millions and millions of slaves that they were mere corpses; that they
must have no will, no conscience, no intelligence of their own, just “as
corpses, which allow themselves to be moved and led in any way, without
any resistance.” When this has been once gained, they have made a
pyramid of all those motionless, inert corpses, which is so high, that
though its feet are on the earth, its top goes to the skies, in the very
abode of the old divinities of the Pagan world, and putting themselves
and their popes at the top of that marvelous pyramid, the priests say to
the rest of the world: “Who among you are as high as we are? Who has
ever been raised by God as a priest and a pope? Where are the kings and
the emperors whose thrones are as elevated as ours? Are we not at the
very top of humanity?” Yes! yes! I answer to the priests of Rome, you
are high, very high indeed! No throne on earth has ever been so sublime,
so exalted as yours. Since the days of the tower of Babel, the world has
not seen such a high fabric. Your throne is higher than anything we
know. But it is a throne of corpses!!!
And if you want to know what other use is made of those millions and
millions of corpses, I will tell it to you. There is no manure so rich
as dead carcasses. Those millions of corpses serve to manure the gardens
of the priests, the bishops and the popes, and make their cabbages grow.
And what fine cabbages grow in the Pope’s garden!
Is it not a lucky thing for the world in general, and for the Roman
Catholics in particular, that though they are taught to become like
corpses, to have no will, no understanding, no judgment of their own in
the presence of their superiors, there are many who can never attain to
that perfection of intellectual degradation and death! Yes, in spite of
the efforts, in spite of the teachings of their Church, a few Roman
Catholics retain some life, some will, some intelligence, some judgment
of their own which prevents them from becoming complete brutes. Many now
and then refuse to descend to the damp, dark and putrid abode of the
corpses. They want to breathe the fresh and pure air of liberty which
God has given to man. They raise their humiliated forehead from the
ignominious tomb which their church has dug for them, and they give some
signs of life. But at every such signs of life given by an individual or
by a people in the Church of Rome, be sure that you will see the
flashing light and hear the roaring thunder of the Vatican directed
against the rebel who dares to refuse to become a _corpse_ before his
superiors. It is for having shown such signs of life and independence of
mind that Galileo was sent to gaol and threatened to be cruelly tortured
on the racks of the Inquisition in Italy, three hundred years ago. It is
for having shown those symptoms of life that not long ago the honest
Kenna, one of the most respected Roman Catholics of the day, was
excommunicated the day before his death, and had to be buried as a dog
in his own field, for having refused to take away his children from an
excellent grammar school to obey the priest. It is for having dared to
think for himself that a few days before his death the amiable and
learned Montalembert was considered as an outcast by the Pope, who
refused him the honor of public prayers in Rome after his death.
But that you may better understand the degrading tendencies of the
principles which are as the fundamental stone of the moral and
intellectual education of Rome, let me put before your eyes another
extract of the Jesuit teachings, which I take again from the “Spiritual
Exercises,” as laid down by their founder, Ignatius Loyola: “That we may
in all things attain the truth, that we may not err in anything, we
ought ever to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe
to be black, if the superior authorities of the Church define it to be
so.”
You all know that it is the avowed desire of Rome to have public
education in the hands of the Jesuits. She says everywhere that they are
the best, the model teachers. Why so? Because they more boldly and more
successfully than any other of her teachers aim at the destruction of
the intelligence and conscience of their pupils. Rome proclaims
everywhere that the Jesuits are the most devoted, the most reliable of
her teachers; and she is right, for when a man has been trained a
sufficient time by them, he most perfectly becomes a moral corpse. His
superiors can do what they please with him. When he knows that a thing
is white as snow, he is ready to swear that it is black as ink, if his
superior tells him so. But some may be tempted to think that these
degrading principles are exclusively taught by the Jesuits; that they
are not the teachings of the Church, and that I do an injustice to the
Roman Catholics when I give, as a general iniquity, what is the guilt of
the Jesuits only. Listen to the words of that infallible Pope Gregory
XVI., in his celebrated Encyclical of the 15th of August, 1832. “If the
holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own opinions, our
knowledge, _our intelligence_, the splendid dreams of our imagination,
and the most sublime attainments of the human understanding.”
It is when considering those anti-social principles of Rome that our
learned and profound thinker, Gladstone, wrote, not long ago: “No more
cunning plot was ever devised against the freedom, the happiness and the
virtues of mankind than Romanism.” (“Letter to Earl Aberdeen.”) Now,
Protestants, do you begin to see the difference of the object of
education between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic school? Do you begin
to understand that there is as great a distance between the word
“Education” among you, and the meaning of the same word in the Church of
Rome, than between the southern and the northern poles! By education you
mean to raise man to the highest sphere of manhood. Rome means to lower
him below the most stupid brutes. By education you mean to teach man
that he is a free agent; that liberty, within the limits of the laws of
God and of his country, is a gift secured to every one; you want to
impress man with the noble thought that it is better to die a free man
than to live a slave. Rome wants to teach that there is only one man who
is free, the Pope, and that all the rest are born to be his abject
slaves in thought, will and action.
Now, that you may still more understand to what a bottomless abyss of
human degradation and moral depravity these anti-Christian and
anti-social principles of Rome lead her poor blind slaves, read what
Liguori says in his book, “The Nun Sanctified”: “The principal and most
efficacious means of practicing obedience due to superiors, and of
rendering it meritorious before God, is to consider that in obeying them
we obey God himself, and that by despising their commands, we despise
the authority of our Divine Master. When, thus, a religious receives a
precept from her prelate, superior or confessor, she should immediately
execute it, _not only to please them_ but principally to please God,
whose will is made known to her by their command. In obeying their
command, in obeying their directions, she is more certainly obeying the
will of God than if an angel came down from heaven to manifest his will
to her. Bear this always in your mind, that the obedience which you
practice to your superior is paid to God. If, then, you receive a
command from one who holds the place of God, you should observe it with
the same diligence as if it came from God himself. Blessed Egidus used
to say that it is more meritorious to obey man for the love of God than
God himself. It may be added that there is more certainty of doing the
will of God by obedience to your superior than by obedience to Jesus
Christ, should He appear in person and give His commands. St. Philip de
Neri used to say that religious shall be most certain of not having to
render an account of the actions performed through obedience; for these
the superiors only who commanded them shall be held accountable.” The
Lord said once to St. Catherine of Sienne, “Religious will not be
obliged to render an account to _me_ of what they do through obedience;
for that I will demand an account from the superior. This doctrine is
conformable to Sacred Scripture: Behold, says the Lord, as clay is in
the potter’s hands, so are you in my hand, O Israel! (Jeremiah xviii:
6.) A religious man must be in the hands of the superiors to be molded
as they will. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What art
thou making? The potter ought to answer, ‘Be silent; it is not your
business to inquire what I do, but to obey and to receive whatever form
I please to give you.’”
I ask of you, American Protestants, what would become of your fair
country if you were blind enough to allow the Church of Rome to teach
the children of the United States? What kind of men and women can come
out of such schools? What future of shame, degradation and slavery you
prepare for your country if Rome does succeed in forcing you to support
such schools. What kind of women would come out from the schools of
nuns, who would teach them that the highest pitch of perfection in a
woman is when she obeys her superior, the priest, _in everything he
commands_ her! that your daughter will never be called to give an
account to God for the actions she will have done to please and obey her
superior, the priest, the bishop or the Pope? That the affairs of her
conscience will be arranged between God and that superior, and that she
will never be asked why she had done this or that, when it will be to
gratify the pleasures of the superior and obey his command that she has
done it. Again, what kind of men and citizens will come out from the
schools of those Jesuits who believe and teach that a man has attained
the perfection of manhood only when he is a perfectly spiritual corpse
before his superior; when he obeys the priest with the perfection of a
_cadaver_, that has neither life nor will in itself.
But some will be tempted to think that this perfect blind obedience to
the priest, which is the corner-stone of the Roman Catholic education,
is required only in spiritual matters. Yes; but you must not forget that
in the Church of Rome every action of the public or private life belongs
to the spiritual sphere, which the superior only must rule. For
instance, a Roman Catholic has not the right to select the teacher of
his boy, nor the school where he will send him; he must consult his
priest, and if he dares to act in a different way from what his priest
has told him in the selection of that teacher or that school, he is
excommunicated and damned, as Mr. Kenna has been lately. If he votes
according to his own private judgment for Mr. Jones, instead of Mr.
Thompson, the selected member of the bishop and the priest, he is damned
and considered as a rebel against his holy Church, out of which there is
no salvation.
The Church of Rome’s only object in giving what she calls education is
to teach her slaves that they must obey their superiors in everything,
as God himself. All the rest of her teaching is only a mask to conceal
her plans. History is never taught in her schools; what she calls
history is a most shameful string of falsehoods. Of course she does not
dare to say a word of truth about her past struggles against the great
principles of light and liberty, when she covered the whole of Europe
with tears, blood and ruins. Writing, reading, arithmetic, geography and
grammar are taught to a certain degree in her schools, but all these
teachings are nothing else but covered roads through which the priest
wants to reach the citadel of the heart and intelligence of his poor
victim, and take an absolute possession of them. Those things are taught
every day only to have a daily opportunity to persuade the pupil that he
must never make any use of his private judgment in anything, and that he
must submit his intelligence, his conscience, his will to the
intelligence, conscience and will of his superior, if he wants to save
himself from the eternal fire of hell. He is constantly told, what I
have been told a thousand times myself, when studying in the college of
Nicolet, that those who obey their superiors in everything will not be
called to give an account of their actions to their Supreme Judge, even
if those actions were bad in themselves; for, as Liguori told you a
moment ago, “Whosoever obeys his superior for the love of God, obeys God
himself, and that there are more merits to obey one’s own superior than
God himself.”
The Church of Rome shows her great wisdom in enforcing that dogma of the
entire and blind subjection of the will and intelligence of the inferior
to the superior. For the very moment that a Roman Catholic thinks that
it is his right and sacred duty to follow the dictates of his own
conscience and intelligence, he is lost to the church of Rome. It is
only when a man has entirely silenced and absolutely killed his
intelligence, it is only when he has become a perfect moral corpse, that
he can believe that his priest, even his drunken priest, has the power
to change a wafer, or any other piece of bread, into the great God, for
whom and by whom everything has been created. It is only when the
intelligence of man has become a dead carcass that he can believe that a
miserable sinner has the supreme power to force the Son of God to come,
in His divine and human person, into his vest or pant’s pockets to
follow him everywhere he wants to go, even to the bar of the low tavern,
that He may become his companion of debauch and drunkenness. Do you see,
now, why the Church of Rome cannot let her poor young slaves go to your
schools? In your schools, the first thing you inculcate to the pupil is
that his intelligence is the great gift of God, by which man is
distinguished from the brute; that he must enlighten, form, feed,
cultivate his intelligence, which is to him what the helm is to the
ship, Christ, with His holy Word, being the pilot. You see, now why the
Church of Rome abhors your schools. It is because you want to make
_men_, and she wants to make _brutes_. You want to raise men to the
highest sphere to which his intelligence can allow him to reach; she
wants to keep him in the dust, at the feet of the priests; you want to
form free citizens, she wants to form abject and obedient slaves of the
priests; you teach man to keep his sacred promises and stand by his
oath, she teaches him that the Pope has the right to dissolve the most
sacred promises and to annul all his oaths, even to the oath of
allegiance to his country. You tell your pupils that so long as they
will keep themselves within the limits of the laws of their country they
are responsible only to God for their consciences. They tell their
pupils that it is not to God, but to the priest that he must go to give
an account of his conscience. You teach your pupils that the laws of God
only bind the conscience of man; they tell him that it is the laws of
the Church, which means the _ipse dixit_ of the Pope, which binds their
consciences. You teach the student that every man has the right to
change his religion according to his conscience; she positively says
that no man has the right to change his religion according to his
conscience. It is evident that the Church of Rome would be dead
to-morrow, if, to-day, she would allow her children to attend schools
where they would learn to follow the dictates of their conscience and
listen to the voice of their intelligence. But she is too shrewd to avow
before the world the real reasons why she wants, at any cost, to prevent
her children from attending your schools. And it is here she shows her
profound and diabolical cunning. Though she is the most deadly enemy of
liberty of conscience, though she has, time after time, anathemized
liberty of conscience as one of Satan’s schemes, she suddenly steps on,
as the great friend and apostle of liberty of conscience, and under that
new mask she approaches your legislators with great airs of dignity, and
says, “We are happy to live in a country where liberty of conscience is
secured to every citizen. It is in its sacred name that we respectfully
approach your honorable legislature to ask: First, to be exempted from
sending our children to the Government schools. Second, to have the
money we want from the public treasury in order to support our own
schools. For two reasons: First, you read the Bible in your schools, and
it is against our conscience to let our children read the Bible. Second,
you have some prayers at the beginning and some religious hymns sung at
the end of the hours of school, and it is against our conscience to
allow the children of the Church of Rome to join you in those prayers
and hymns.” The legislators, who, for the greater part are too honorable
men to suspect the fraud, are won by the air of candor and honesty of
the Roman Catholic petitioners. Considering the great benefit which will
come to the country if all the children are taught in the same school,
they are soon ready to make any sacrifice in order to have the Roman
Catholic and the Protestant children under the same roof, to receive the
same light and the same moral food and same instruction. As true
patriots, the legislators understand that if they wish their beloved
country to be strong and happy, the first thing they must do is to make
the young generation one in mind, in heart. If the Protestant and Roman
Catholic children are taught in the same school, they will know each
other and love each other when young, and those sacred ties of
friendship which will bind them in the spring of life, will be
strengthened when their reason will be matured and enlightened by a good
education under the same respected and worthy teachers. As Christian
men, the legislators would perhaps like to keep the Bible, and have
short prayers in the schools; but as patriots, they feel that those
things, though good and sacred, are an insurmountable barrier to the
Roman Catholic. The delicate conscience of the bishops and priests
cannot allow such things in the school attended by their lambs! Through
respect for the sacred rights of the Roman Catholic conscience, the
legislators in many places throw the Bible overboard, and they say to
God: “Please get out from our schools, and do excuse us if we order our
teachers to ignore your existence!” They say to Jesus Christ: “We have
not forgotten your sublime and touching words, ‘Suffer little children
to come unto me.’ No doubt you would like to press our dear little ones
on your loving heart and bless them for a moment in the schools; but we
cannot allow them to go so near you in the school, we cannot even allow
them to speak to you a single word there. Please be not offended if we
turn you out from those very schools where you were so welcome formerly.
We are forced to that sad extremity through the respect we owe to the
tender consciences of our fellow-citizens of the Church of Rome. You
know that they cannot allow their children to speak to you together with
ours.” But when those awful, not to say sacrilegious, sacrifices have
been made by the Protestant legislators to appease the implacable god of
Rome—when, through respect for the scruples of the bishops and priests
of Rome, the great God of Heaven, with His Son, Jesus Christ, have been
unceremoniously turned out from the schools—when the Word of God has
been prohibited, and the Bible is thrown overboard, is the Moloch god
appeased? Will the Roman Catholic bishops and priests tell their
children that they may unite with yours to go and receive education from
the same teacher? No! But assuming, then, a sublime air of indignation,
they turn against you as mad dogs; they call your schools _godless
schools_! good only to form thieves, infidels and atheists!
Do you see now that all those dignified scruples of conscience about
reading the Bible, praying with you, etc., were only a mask to deceive
you, and make you fall into a snare? Do you not perceive now that they
did not care a straw for the Bible and the prayers in the schools? but
they wanted your legislators to compromise themselves before the
Christian world, lose their moral strength in the eyes of a great part
of the nation, divide your ranks, your means, your strength, and beat
you on that great question of education. They will take such airs of
martyrs when you will try to force their children to your schools that
many honest and unsuspecting Protestants will be completely deceived by
them. At first, they could not, they said, trust the children to your
hands, because you read the Word of God; you prayed and blessed God in
the school. But now that the Bible and God are turned out from the
schools, they baptize them by the most ignominious names which can be
given—they call them “godless schools!” Have you ever seen a more
profoundly ignominious and sacrilegious trick? Will not your legislators
open their eyes to that strange act of deception, of which they are the
victims? Will they not come out quickly from the traps laid before them
by the bishops and the priests of Rome? Yes! let us hope that your
patriots and Christian legislators will soon understand that they owe a
reparation to God and to their country; with unanimous voice they will
ask pardon from God for having expelled him from the very place where He
has most right to reign supremely—the school.
For what is a school without God in its midst to sit as a father, and to
form the young hearts and evoke the young intellect? What is a boy, what
is a girl, what is a woman or a man without God? what is a family, what
is a people without God? It is a monstrosity, it is a body without life,
it is a world without light, it is a cistern without water. Let us hope
that, before long, your patriotic and Christian legislators will
remember that the Bible is the foundation of the greatness of Protestant
nations. It is to the Bible the United States, as well as Great Britain,
owe their liberty, power, prestige and strength. It is the Bible that
has ennobled the hearts of your heroes, improved the minds of your poets
and orators, and strengthened the arms of your warriors. Yes! it is
because your soldiers have brought with them everywhere, the Bible,
pressed on their hearts, that they have conquered the enemies of
liberty. So long as the United States will be true to the Bible, their
glorious banners will fly respected and feared all over the seas, and
over all the continents of the world. Let the disciples of the Gospel,
the children of God, and the redeemed of Christ all over the fair and
noble country you inhabit, hasten to request their legislators to invite
the Saviour of the world to come back and bless their dear children in
the school. For it is not only in your homes and in your churches that
Jesus tells you “Suffer little children to come unto me.” It is
particularly in the school. Oh! give two or three minutes to those dear
little ones, that they may press themselves on His bosom, bless him for
having saved them on the cross, and proclaim his mercies by singing one
of those hymns which they like so much. By this noble act of national
reparation you will take away from the hands of the priests the only
weapon with which they can hurt you; you will destroy the only argument
they use with a true force against your schools when they call them
godless schools. Do not fear any more the priests and the prelates of
Rome. Do not yield any more and give up your privilege to please them
and reconcile them to your schools. You will never be able to reconcile
them to your schools; for there is light in your schools, and they want
the darkness. There is freedom and liberty in your schools; they want
slavery! There is life in your schools, and it is only on dead corpses
that their church can have a chance to live a few years more. You see,
by a sad experience, that their scruples of conscience against the Bible
and the prayer of the school are mere hypocrisy just thrown into the
eyes of the public. Do not say with some honest but deluded Protestants:
Is it not enough that that child should learn his religion at home? No,
it is not enough; for it is in our nature that we want two witnesses to
believe a thing. What comes to our mind only through one witness remains
uncertain; but let two good witnesses confirm a fact, and then we accept
it. Your child wants two witnesses to believe the necessity of the
sacredness of religion. His Christian home is surely a good witness to
your child, but it is not enough; what he has heard from you must be
confirmed by his school teacher. Without this second witness, nine times
out of ten your children will be skeptics and infidels. Besides that,
the very idea of God brings with it the obligation to bless, love and
adore Him everywhere. The moment you take your child to a place where
not only he cannot love, bless and adore God, but where the adoration
and the praise of God are forbidden, you entirely destroy the idea of
God from the mind and from the heart of your child. You make him believe
that what you have told him, when at home, of God is only a fable to
amuse and deceive him.
Do you see that noble ship in the midst of that splendid harbor, how she
is tossed by the foaming waves, how she is beaten by the furious winds?
What does prevent that ship from flying before the storm and running
ashore, a miserable wreck? What does prevent her from being dashed on
that rock? The anchor! Yes, the anchor is her safety. But let a single
link of the chain that binds the ship to her anchor break, will she not
soon be dashed on the rock and broken to pieces, and sink to the bottom
of the sea? It is so with your child! So long as his intelligence and
his heart are united to God by the anchor of faith, he will nobly stand
against the furious waves, he will nobly fight his battles; but let the
school teacher be silent about God, and here is a broken link, and the
child will be a wreck. Do not fear the priest, but fear God! Do not try
any more to please the priests, but do all in your power to please your
great and merciful God, not only in your homes, but also in your
schools, and those schools will become more than ever a focus of light,
an inexhaustible source of intellectual and moral strength—more than
ever your children will learn in the school to be your honor and your
glory and your joy. They will learn that they are not ignoble worms of
the dust, whose existence will end in the tomb, but that they are
immortal as God, whose beloved children they are. They will learn how to
serve their God and love their country. Be not ashamed, but be proud to
send your children to schools where they will learn how to be good
Christians and good citizens. When you will have finished your
pilgrimage they will be your worthy successors, and the God whom they
will have learned to fear, serve and love in the school will help them
to make your country great, happy and free.