96 PERILS. — RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



the educational policy which they have adopted, and 

 the impossibility of compromise. 



We must not forget that? there are many Roman Cath- 

 olic laymen who prefer, and who dare to patronize, the 

 public schools, but they have no share in the authority 

 of the Church. The hierarchy has thoroughly and irrev- 

 ocably committed the Church against the public school, 

 and infallibility cannot retreat ; to do so Avould be to 

 confess itself fallible. 



It has seemed worth while to show that the educa- 

 tional policy of the Roman Catholic Church must needs 

 remain fixed, because the recognition of this fact should 

 aid the public toward a fixed policy touching religious 

 instruction in the public schools. 



This cleavage of the population along religious lines is 

 greatly to be regretted. It is un-American. It carries 

 the shadow on the dial of progress back from the nine- 

 teenth to the seventeenth century. Intercourse tends to 

 eliminate differences and to make a population homoge- 

 neous. Non-intercourse nourishes suspicion, prejudice, 

 and religious bitterness, of which the Avorld has had 

 quite enough already. There are many reasons why 

 children of different religions and different races, of rich 

 and poor, of all classes of society, should mingle in the 

 public school. This segregation of the Catholic children, 

 though well intended, inflicts injury upon society and a 

 greater injurj^ upon the Catholic children themselves. 

 How can the evil results which must necessarily attend 

 the establishment of parochial schools be minimized? 

 Certainly not by secularizing the public schools. This 

 remedy was tried to a considerable extent, when the 

 question of the Bible in the public schools was so widely 

 discussed some twenty years ago. Instead of conciliat- 

 ing the Catholic priesthood, it only put into their mouth 

 the cry which they are using to-day, with the greatest 

 effect upon their own people, viz., that the public schools 

 are " godless." 



There are Roman Catholics who, as has been said, are 

 "more Catholic than Roman,"— men who have much of 



