PERILS. — ROMANISM. 83 



was to be taken, more than a hundred bishops and arch- 

 bishops, members of the opposition, left the council and 

 departed from Rome rather than face defeat. But these 

 moderate and liberal Romanists, including the several 

 American prelates avIio had belonged to the opposition, all 

 submitted, and published to their respective flocks the 

 obnoxious decree which some of them had shown to be 

 contrary to history and to reason. It must be remem- 

 bered that these men were the most liberal and among 

 tlie most able in the church. In view of the fact that 

 their opposition thus utterly collapsed, what reason have 

 we to expect that liberal Romanists in this country, who 

 have already assented to the infallibility of the Pope, 

 will ever violate their oath of obedience to him? If 

 the liberality of avowed opponents of ultramontanism 

 yielded to papal authority, what reason is there to think 

 the liberality of avowed ultramontanists will ever resist 

 it? 



Moreover it shoidd be borne in mind that the more 

 moderate Roman Catholics in the United States are gen- 

 erally those who in childhood had the benefit of our 

 public schools, and their intelligence and liberality are 

 due chiefly to the training there received. In the public 

 schools they learned to think and were largely Amer- 

 icanized by associating with American children. But 

 their children are being subjected to very different in- 

 fluences in the parochial schools. They are there given 

 a training calculated to make them narrow and bigoted ; 

 and, being separated as mu(?h as possible from all Prot- 

 estant children, they grow up suspicious of Protestants, 

 and so thoroughly sectarianized and Romanized as to 

 be well protected against the broadening and American- 

 izing influences of our civilization in after life.^ 



1 It is shown in the follo\vin<? chapter that the parochial school has come 

 to stay. It is the avowed purpose of the liierarchy to bring all Roman 

 Catholic children under its instruction. That instruction is thoroughly 

 ultramontane and is well calculated to destroy all tendencies toward moil 

 erate or liberal Romanism in the rising generation. Familiar Explanation 

 of Catholic Doctrine, by Rev. M. Miiller (Benziger Brothers, 1888), is a 



