Читать книгу Fifty Years in the Church of Rome - Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy - Страница 14

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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.