98 PERILS. — RELIGIOiq^ AIs^D THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



ciated, it will tend to create a general distrust of the 

 Church, and to alienate from it Catholics who have 

 become in any considerable degree Americanized. 

 • A few words concerning the Catholic claim for a 

 division of the school funds, and we will leave this 

 branch of our subject. If this claim were granted, a 

 similar claim from Lutherans or Episcopalians, or the 

 many parents who choose to send their chiMren to pri- 

 vate schools could not be denied. Such a concession 

 would be liable, perhaps likely, to result in the depletion 

 and final destruction of the public school. 



But the question is not simply one of policy. To 

 grant this claim would be to violate a principle in the 

 hearty support of which Americans are singularly 

 united, viz., the entire separation of Church and State. 

 At this point the Catholics meet us with the argument 

 that the public schools are Protestant. ' ' Why should 

 the State support Protestant schools and not Catholic? 

 The support of the latter would be no more in violation 

 of the aforesaid principle than the support of the 

 former, and equity demands it." The argument is spe- 

 cious. Its fallacy lies in the fact that the public schools 

 are not Protestant. What constitutes a school Protest- 

 ant? The fact that the teacher is a Protestant does not 

 make the school so any more than the fact that Presi- 

 dent Harrison is a Presbyterian constitutes the United 

 States government Presbyterian. Nor does the fact 

 that most of the pupils belong to Protestant families 

 make the school denominational. If the religious pref- 

 erence of teachers or scholars gave denominational 

 character to the school, the public schools, in many 

 quarters of our large cities, would be emphatically 

 Roman Catholic. But no Catholic would admit that any 

 public school in the United States was Catholic, even 

 though the teacher and evefy scholar were a Pomanist, 

 nor would it be, unless distinctively Roman Catholic 

 doctrine were taught. The public schools are not Prot- 

 estant, because distinctively Protestant doctrines are 

 not taught in them. 



