Религиозный вопрос в американской школе

I. The public education system in the United States. Its origin and internal character. Application of the principle of separation of church and state in the field of public education. Internal contradiction and inevitable outcome. Elimination of religious differences and adoption of “common Christianity” at school. Attitude to the adopted system from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The system and organization of public education in the United States differs significantly from the system practiced in the countries of the Old World. This difference lies not in the formulation of the matter alone, but in the very principle underlying it, and in the goals that it intends to achieve. In most European countries, the basis of public education is religious instruction in its confessional or dogmatic overtones. In the United States, on the contrary, school has as its main goal the achievement of a certain degree of mental development necessary for the conscious performance of the duties of a citizen in the spheres of his political, social and family life. The American school does not know religion, in its confessional sense. This peculiarity of the American school is determined by the peculiarities of the state, social and religious life of the country and can be understood from a brief outline of the history of the origin and development of the current school system. The origin of the present system of public education, in its general form, dates back to the early period of the settlement of the American continent by European settlers. The English settlers, the so-called “Pilgrim Fathers,” having settled on the new continent and breathing freely from persecution, considered their first duty to be the establishment of schools where their children could learn to honor God in such purity and severity that would be fully consistent with their Puritan worldview. At first the school business was of a private nature, but in 1647 it received an official definition in the state of Massachusetts, the birthplace of the entire present system of public education, which has since become a model for all other states. On the 11th of November of that year, a resolution was passed and approved by the legislature of the state of Massachusetts, which made public education a public matter, and defined its system in detail. According to this decree, every city whose population “the Lord increased to fifty households” was required to establish a school and appoint a teacher for it; and a city with a population of one hundred families or households was supposed to have, in addition, a “grammar school” in which children could prepare to enter a higher school or university 302. The effect of this resolution was mandatory for all Massachusetts colonies under penalty of monetary penalties 303. It contains in embryo all the features of the present system: local responsibility to the state for schools, free education and recognition of the three degrees of school, as they exist now. The school thus established was in essence a parish school, since what in the ordinance is called a township coincided with the parish. The parish, in its annual meeting, determined the amount of money to be raised for the maintenance of the school for the following year, and this was collected by means of certain taxes and distributed under the supervision of an elected committee. The internal character of the school founded in this way was completely dependent on the environment in which the school itself arose. The Puritans, or more precisely the Congregationalists, were a deeply religious people. They knew no other law except the law of their religious conscience. When, in 1620, “the Pilgrim Fathers first approached the American continent, before entering the shore they agreed among themselves to be governed by the laws of God, as they are written in the Bible, until time gave them the opportunity to develop more specific laws in relation to new circumstances 304. But time itself had little effect on changing their original “social contract.” Subsequently, of course, more detailed and precise rules of community life were developed, but they were and still are based on biblical law. To this day, social life in New England is of a strictly religious nature, which is especially preserved in the villages. The latter represent a remarkable example of religious communities, with almost theocratic government. Religiosity is the main driving motive of their social life 305 . In such an environment, the school must of necessity be religious. That's what she really was. The goal of the school was to provide religious and secular education in their organic unity and, moreover, with the subordination of the latter to the former, just as everything in the social life of the Puritans was subordinated to religious law. At school, the Bible was read first, the catechism was studied, the parish pastor visited the school whenever he found it necessary, and the law of God was taught. He, one might say, was the main head of the school, and his voice, whether he was a member of the school committee or not, was always important in the management of the school, in the appointment and dismissal of teachers 306. This arrangement was not only caused by the internal features of the environment, but was also facilitated by the simplicity of social and state life. In New England there lived only one people who had one religion, which was their common property and was recognized as a state religion. There were no differences in religions, and therefore there were no objections to religious instruction in the strictly confessional coloring of congregationalism. Little by little, the school system adopted in Massachusetts spread to other states, and at first it could easily be adapted to the particular peculiarities of their structure and life. But soon a revolution took place in the state, which gave a new direction to his whole life and had a huge impact on the school system. This is the declaration of independence and the introduction of a new constitution. One of the fundamental principles of the federal constitution of the United States is the separation of church and state. According to the meaning of this principle, the church and the state are recognized as completely separate areas in human life, developing according to their own special internal laws and pursuing their own special goals in meeting the special needs of human life. Before the declaration of independence, the colonies did not know such a principle. In almost all of them, church and state were united, the state recognized or supported one religion and persecuted others. In schools, too, preference was given to the dominant religion. Thus, the new constitution introduced a new principle that was hitherto alien to them. She proclaimed the principle of separation of church and state, and thereby refused to support any religion at the expense of others. Having separated from the church, the state had to avoid relations with it in all areas of its activity, but in some areas the goals of the church and the state converge so closely that such separation turns out to be difficult to implement. The state considers public education its responsibility, since it constitutes a necessary condition for its prosperity and successful development. But recognizing it as its business, it necessarily comes across religion here, since religion is an essential element in education and, according to the view of the majority, the latter is unthinkable and undesirable without religion and cannot achieve its goals. Thus, even at the first attempt at practical application, the theory of separation of church and state encounters a contradiction that is difficult to resolve. As a matter of principle, the state must ignore religions in the school, but in fact it cannot do this unless it wishes to deprive the school of a significant part of the educational value that is in the interest of the state itself. The natural result of this was that the State of the United States made a concession of principle and recognized religions as an element in the school system. But this, however, did not eliminate the whole difficulty. Religion is not just a general abstract idea. It is at the same time a practical force, deeply penetrating into the internal and external life of man and society and taking various forms in the form of various religions and sects, from which some do not recognize, and often even exclude others. According to the basic principle of the constitution, the state cannot give predominance to one of them over the others, and according to the general principle of education, it cannot completely eliminate them all from the school. Thus, the state was left with only one outcome - to develop a common basis on which all the various faiths could converge. The United States is a Christian state, and by the name of religion it means Christianity. But besides Christianity, there are other religions that are difficult to reconcile with Christianity, for example. Jewish religion, Mormonism and others. If there were only one Christian religion, although in various forms, then finding a common basis for them would be an easy matter: they all have the same common beliefs on which Christianity is based, and limiting religious instruction in school to these common beliefs would be the solution to the problem. In view of the difference not only of religions, but even of religions themselves, which exclude one another, the state was presented with a new dilemma, from which it can only be overcome not by resolving it, but by, so to speak, cutting the Gordian knot of this dilemma. And it really cut it down, taking as the general basis of religious education in school the general foundations of the Christian religion in the form of reading the Bible, studying common Christian prayers and singing common Christian sacred hymns. The program of religious education at school developed in this way gave it the character of a so-called “unsectarian school”. It does not give predominance to any one religion at the expense of others; all of them are essentially expelled from the school, and only that which is their common property is left from them, which is equally recognized by all religions and sects, with the exception, of course, of anti-Christian religions. A practically religious element in the school is manifested in the fact that every day before the opening of classes, a chapter from the Bible is read, general Christian prayers are sung, such as. “Our Father,” and then at the hours appointed for study and singing, sacred hymns are sung, used during church services 307. Different religions and sects often do not agree on the interpretation of St. Scriptures. To avoid this difficulty, the teacher is prohibited from making any explanations to the text read, so that in his interpretation he does not fall into any confessional understanding of the text and thereby offend the conscience of children of other religions. When choosing sacred hymns for singing, strict tact must also be observed, and only hymns should be chosen for general singing that do not contain religious overtones, but contain general Christian truths. This rule also extends to books, so that school libraries can only accept books that are completely alien to any religious sympathies or antipathies 308 . No matter how shaky this system in itself is, it seems to be the only way out of the difficulty in which the state was placed when introducing its theory into the school - the separation of church and state. And it turned out to be satisfactory to a large extent. All the Protestant denominations, which constitute the majority of the American population, have agreed on its general principle, since all recognize more or less the religious elements introduced into the schools. True, they consider these elements to be far from sufficient for the completeness of religious education, but they consider the latter to be more the responsibility of churches than of schools, and it is actually fulfilled in churches in Sunday schools that have a special religious character. Other objections of a confessional nature are also raised against such a setting of religious instruction in schools, such as, for example, in view of the possibility that teachers belonging to one or another religion can easily fall into one-sidedness when choosing further texts of the Holy Scriptures for reading in school and thereby can violate the non-sectarian character of the school by promoting their sect or religion, but these objections do not have sufficient strength and energy and the school is not threatened by them no danger. Protestant denominations in general, and small sects in particular, in the absence of strong traditional beliefs and with constant fermentation and variability, in essence attach very little importance to particular religious differences, and therefore care only that the teaching is not completely irreligious, pagan or Roman Catholic. “As long as, says the Protestant writer, the inhabitants of a city or state were exclusively Protestants, there could be little or no objection to the use in school of the authorized translation of the Bible (the English translation, the so-called King James's version), the singing of hymns, the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, or other similar religious exercises, at the choice of the teacher. The weak objections that were sometimes raised against such a system did not take the form of organized opposition or develop into political agitation. In those communities and school districts where the Protestant element still predominates, objections to these simple Christian influences are only rarely, if ever, made. They are completely free from church authorities, usually alien to narrow confessionalism and free from proselytizing tendencies. As the school system spread throughout the country, the short and simple religious exercises discussed continued to be practiced. But when Catholic emigration began to arrive in myriads on our shores and gained weight in political affairs, the public school was attacked as a Protestant agency, hostile in spirit to the Catholic Church.”309 Thus, the public school, built on a shaky compromise between the state and religion and different faiths, had to eventually meet with an opponent who, coming with strong traditional principles, led a strong agitation against the very principle of the shaky school. The history of this agitation on the part of Roman Catholicism against the American school represents an interesting page in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in America and its relation to the American Republic. II. Roman Catholicism's opposition to the accepted system and its foundations. The fundamental difference between the systems of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Education according to the Catholic view. The concerns of the Roman Catholic Church about isolating the Catholic population from the influence of Protestantism. Confrontation with the state and struggle with it. The opposition of Roman Catholicism to the accepted system of public education is a natural and logical consequence of the general system of the Roman Catholic Church, which it persecutes in all spheres of life. In its attitude towards the various peoples that comprise it, there has long been a tendency to subordinate them to its authority not only in the field of religious, but also in political life. To this end, she constantly strived to seize public education into her own hands, in order to instill in the people from childhood the sanctity of her authority and educate them in the spirit of her principles. This tendency has recently emerged with particular clarity in Germany and France, where it has acquired such practical significance that the state has turned out to be powerless against it in the area of ​​principle and has resorted to crude violent measures to suppress the further influence of Roman Catholic education. The German cultural struggle and the French persecution of the Jesuits are two variations on the same theme - the state’s awareness of its powerlessness to resist the Roman Catholic principles introduced into the consciousness of the people through popular education captured by the Roman Catholic Church. On the soil of the New World, the Roman Catholic Church naturally continues the same tendency. In contrast to Protestantism, which, due to its basic principle - justification by faith alone - itself naturally and logically comes to the secularization of the school, the separation of church and state, practical life from religious principles, Roman Catholicism has an internal tendency to subordinate all practical life to its church principles. He not only does not allow secularization, but on the contrary tries to introduce his ecclesiastical principles even where extra-church or secular influences still continue to dominate; its ideal is the theocratic principle, strictly applied in all spheres of life - political, social and family. Therefore, the secularized school, that institution through which Roman Catholicism considers it most convenient to implement its principles, is an impossible thing for it, and its recognition would be tantamount to its self-denial. If in general, according to the Christian worldview, education must necessarily have religion as its basis, then Roman Catholicism pursues this theory with unwavering consistency. “We value education and upbringing,” says the Catholic body, but we do not recognize education separated from religion and religious culture. Religion is the supreme law, and everything in life, personal or social, civil or political, must be subject to it and considered only as a means to the eternal end for which man was created and exists. Religious education is the most important thing, and we desire that our children, from the first awakening of reason, should be accustomed to look upon everything as having a direct relation to their religious life or duty to God. We are convinced that the education of either the mind or the heart, or both together, in separation from faith and religious discipline, is dangerous both for the individual and for society. All education should be religious and have as its goal the development in the child of a consciousness of eternal goals 310. In carrying out its theory, Roman Catholicism goes further and not only has in mind to base education in its strict sense on religious principles, but to make education itself religious, to subordinate the mind to faith, to set science not as an end in itself, not as the achievement of independent scientific truths, but as a means for bringing into consciousness the same religious principles. “It is said that simple secular education, such as the study of geology, geometry, history, natural philosophy, botany, astronomy, etc., taught in our schools, does not present an opportunity for moral or religious edification. Nothing could be more deceitful, notes the same body. The properly directed anatomy of the most insignificant insect, along with the contemplation of the vast expanse with its countless planets and stars, can become a silent and involuntary prayer to the Creator of all things. There is no force, physical or artificial, open to the attention of the young mind, which could not contain within itself some indication of the invisible Power that rules the universe, and the teacher who neglects the opportunity to draw moral instruction from these symbols of the omnipotence of the Creator, does only half his work, and, moreover, the less exalted part. “The original rules of reading and writing, arithmetic and the elements of pure mathematics can still be taught regardless of religion; but when learning reaches the highest regions of knowledge, the religious question appears again. Let's take for example. geology, that most interesting science, the abuse of which has led to worse atheism than all the sophistries of Voltaire. In the form in which it is taught in our schools, without proper explanation or direction, it cannot but be destructive to the faith, and therefore to the morals, of the inquisitive and fragile young minds.”312 Roman Catholicism, therefore, is dissatisfied with the public school due to the secularization of education in it, due to the separation of scientific knowledge from religious influence. In this regard, he is undoubtedly right, to the extent that by religious influence he understands not the extreme ultramontane principle that excludes freedom of scientific research, but only the highest ideal of human purpose, towards the achievement of which all science should serve. The best Protestant thinkers also consider the complete separation of learning from religious influence 313 abnormal and even harmful, but they are reconciled with the “general Christianity” that has been introduced into the school. Catholicism cannot possibly tolerate this type of religious teaching. It represents a strict system in which long history has developed a complex organization, stable in all its parts and details, so that each part or detail has an organic connection with the whole system, and the removal of any one feature upsets the balance in the whole organism. Therefore, “general Christianity, which is an impersonal doctrine divorced from life, is unthinkable for Roman Catholicism, constitutes its negation and in no way can be accepted by it without significant harm to the entire system. “The difference between Protestantism and Catholicism,” says the Catholic organ, is not only a difference in details or particulars, but a difference in principle. Catholicism must be taught in its entirety, in its unity or integrity, or else it will not be taught at all. It must be everything everywhere, or it is nothing. It is not merely a theory of truth or a collection of doctrines; it is an organism, a living body, living and acting by virtue of its own central life, and therefore of necessity one and indivisible, and cannot have anything in common with any other body. To exclude from the schools everything that is distinctive or original in Catholicism simply means to exclude Catholicism itself and make the schools either purely Protestant, or purely secular and therefore hostile to our religion, such as our conscience forbids us to support” 314. As a result of this, Roman Catholicism can naturally be satisfied only with schools in which religious Catholic influence would dominate without limitation, namely parish schools, under the direct supervision of the clergy. Indeed, from the very beginning of the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States, we see the constant concern of the church authorities about the establishment of parochial schools. Even before the declaration of independence, Catholics had several schools of their own, and the first American Catholic bishop, John Carroll, in a pastoral letter to his flock, devoted a significant paragraph to the question of special Catholic education, 315 and then Catholic bishops at local and general councils constantly expressed concerns about the organization of parochial schools. The first local council in Baltimore, held in 1829, expressed the desire that schools should be established everywhere in which children could learn the principles of faith and morals along with the acquisition of human knowledge 316. The prelates of the second full council of Baltimore in 1866 made remarkable decisions in this regard, which clearly characterize the views of the representatives of the Catholic Church on the importance of the school issue for its success in the United States. The ninth section of these decrees is devoted to the issue of “educating youth and instilling piety.” They say, among other things: “Since it has become evident that the schools for public education in most of these provinces are so arranged as to serve heresies, and the souls of Catholic children in them are constantly and imperceptibly saturated with the false teachings of sects, we exhort pastors to endeavor with all their might to give Catholic children a Christian and Catholic education, and to carefully watch that they do not use the Protestant translation of the Bible or sing the prayers and hymns of these sects. They must see that books or exercises of this kind are not introduced into public schools with danger to faith and piety. We urge the bishops and, in view of the gravest evils that usually come from youth, incorrectly disposed and educated, we ask them with the cups of divine mercy to see that schools are founded under every church in their dioceses; and, if necessary and circumstances permitting, to employ, on the account of the church with which the school is connected, suitable teachers for it. But in view of the fact that, due to poverty, exclusively Catholic schools cannot yet be maintained in all parishes and there is no place for daily and necessary edification except public schools, it is necessary to take great precautions so that Catholic youth suffer from them as little harm as possible. For this purpose let schools of catechesis and Christian edification be founded. Let pastors assemble boys and girls in their own churches on Sundays and other holidays, and sometimes even more often, for the careful and diligent instruction of them in the elements of Christian knowledge. Let the pastor in every possible way encourage parents to take part in this matter. Let him encourage them with approval, frighten them with threats, encourage them with requests to send their children to church at the time appointed for catechesis. And let him lure the latter with small gifts and rewards - to make them more willing to attend school and study. For if this is what the teachers of heresy do daily to draw Catholic children into their own schools, to feed them with the poison of error, and to sacrifice them to eternal misery; then ought not the servant of God and His most sacred religion to do the same with care and diligence, in order to save those who belong to him, and not to lose even one of those whom the Father gave to His Christ? Let the shepherds of souls take careful care that parents under their spiritual direction bring their children, when they have reached the proper age, prepared to receive the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Confirmation; and to achieve this goal, let them more often throughout the year, especially when Easter approaches, publicly exhort the people in churches to this most important duty, by failure to fulfill which parents expose themselves to the greatest danger - deprivation of salvation, and therefore should be deprived of the sacraments until they come to their senses and give satisfaction for this duty" 317. The decrees of the second full Baltimore Council, legally binding on the Catholics of the country, were at the same time, in the words of a Catholic historian, “only an expression of the universal feeling of Catholics throughout the world that religious education is the very life and essence of the Church, a necessary condition for the preservation of the true faith and its development in the order of Providence, for the welfare of society and the salvation of souls. There is perhaps no country in which these considerations, the historian continues, are of greater importance than in the United States of America. The general mixture of Catholics in social and political life with erring people of all kinds, marriage connections with sectarians, the gigantic efforts made by the state to support schools in which religion is ignored and which, in the completeness of their external organization, represent a bait for the poorest classes of the people, are serious obstacles with which Catholicism has to fight. Consequently, nothing occupied the attention of the first Bishop of Baltimore more than the founding of a Catholic institution for the religious education of youth, and his successors, with their collaborators in the episcopal office, always showed the same solicitude.”318 Incentives for the founding of parish Catholic schools also came from the very head of the Catholic world - the Pope, and during, for example. Archbishopric Marechal's curia with particular insistence instilled in him the obligation to establish such schools in order to counteract the efforts and influence of churches of other faiths. Cardinal Somalia, in his circular dated August 5, 1820, pointing out the efforts of sects to lead the people astray, says: “You see, therefore, how diligent and active the shepherds of the church must be to protect their flocks from the attacks of wolves who come to them in sheep's clothing. If the shepherds sleep, the enemy will come, and soon the tares will grow among the wheat. Therefore, it is necessary to make every possible effort to remove children from these sectoral schools and to instill in parents their responsibilities in this regard. The most effective means for this purpose would be to establish schools in which the poorer class could receive proper instruction. Are there not enough necessary funds for this? A useful lesson in this regard may be learned from the heretics themselves; they, as we know, support their schools with a penny fee from all members. Why shouldn't Catholics do the same? We therefore exhort you and, by the benevolence of our Lord Jesus Christ, ask you to take the most effective measures possible to protect your flock from the attacks of those who would lead them onto the wrong path, and that, remembering the words of the Apostle: “and there will be false teachers who will bring heresies of destruction,” you will make every effort to prevent the false enthusiasm of Catholic youth” 319. “The only means for counteracting the evil influences mentioned above, and others leading to the same result, can be, as the historian observes, the more general establishment of parochial schools, in which Catholic youth will be educated in the knowledge and observance of their religion, and a more serious attention to the sacred sciences in our higher educational institutions, through which faith will acquire a stronger and more influential character.”320 Thus, both the general principle of Roman Catholicism and the conciliar decrees and public opinion expressing it clearly define the view of the Roman Catholic Church on school and education. She considers them the main instruments by means of which her members can be kept in her bosom and protected from the harmful influences of other faiths. As a result of this, she tries, first of all, to isolate her school from any contact with Protestantism, to make it exclusively Catholic, under the direct supervision of the Catholic clergy. But in achieving this goal she inevitably encounters important obstacles presented by the country's constitution and general government regulations regarding public education. The Constitution, by making religion free, thereby removes any support for any confession, and the state regulations regarding the exclusion from the school of all sectarian differences thereby do not allow the possibility of introducing Catholicism into the school of its entire system, the slightest reduction or depersonalization of which is tantamount to the negation of Catholicism itself. In view of this, he is left with only one outcome - to completely abandon the common public school supported by the state and organize an independent system of Catholic parish schools. This is what he strives for; but in achieving this goal he encounters a new difficulty. The public school is essentially a compulsory institution for citizens. Having become a completely state institution, it is supported by state funds collected from the entire population without distinction through the collection of certain duties and direct taxes. Of course, Catholics are not free from them either, and therefore they involuntarily have to use this school. Otherwise, in order to support their own schools, they must bear a double tax - on a school that they do not use, and on a school that they only consider useful. Here, obviously, the Catholic Church comes into conflict with the state, and this clash is caused not only by moral, but also by financial motives. The state, having taken upon itself the cause of public education, levies taxes from the entire population to support it; Catholics also bear this tax, but moral reasons forbid them to use the public school. An inevitable consequence of this order of things was the struggle between Catholicism and the state on the issue of public education, and it continuously makes itself felt in all outstanding events in school life. The struggle of Roman Catholicism against the established system of public education began almost from its very foundation; but it began to assert itself with particular force from the time when the state’s tendency to make the school a state institution became quite clear. The main goal of the Catholics has always been that from the fund collected by general taxes for the public school, a proportional share should be allocated to them in accordance with the number of students in their own parish schools. This trend manifested itself especially persistently in 1840. This year the trustees of several Roman Catholic schools in the city of New York, in connection with prominent and influential members of the Catholic Church, petitioned that they should be given an equal share in the distribution of the public money collected by the State for educational purposes with the "public school society," 321 which then served as the chief organ of the State in the matter of public education. The petitioners expressed dissatisfaction with the organization and management of the said society, which “monopolized public education and conducts it completely independently of the wishes and views of tax payers and without attention to the demands of conscience and religious beliefs of a large part of citizens; that although the society does not belong specially to any particular creed, and does not attempt openly and directly to teach the distinctive creed of any particular sect; nevertheless, its schools are practically sectarian, the books and the general tone of instruction are so strongly reminiscent of Protestantism that almost eight thousand children who are under the supervision of the petitioners and with whose secular education the latter would like to unite daily training in the principles of their own faith, cannot, due to the prohibition of conscience, participate in the benefits presented by society, although the petitioners, and all their associates, bear heavy taxes for its support. The society, for its part, responded that it was far from a monopoly of public education, gave free education to all who came, avoided any attachment to sectarianism, and that, on the contrary, by virtue of the constitution of the religious community to which the petitioners belonged and the special views of which they represented, the distinctive teaching of Roman Catholicism would inevitably enter into their educational system, becoming in conflict with the general educational system of the state 323. A fierce dispute ensued, spreading to the press and to the church pulpit. On the Catholic side, Bishop Yuis, who later became the Archbishop of New York, acted as a strong fighter. The case was transferred to the Community Council, which rejected the claims of the petitioners and referred to the decisions of 1824 and 1832, according to which “the state school fund is of a purely civil nature, assigned for civil purposes, and therefore entrusting it to religious or church societies would be a violation of an elementary principle” 324. Catholics naturally were not satisfied with this decision and took their case to the legislative assembly, repeating the same request. Here, at first, fortune seemed to favor them, and Secretary of State Spencer, in his annual report as Superintendent of the Public Schools, found it possible to state, among other things, the following: “At each of the seven Roman Catholic churches there are free schools, in which more than five thousand children are taught for six hours every day. Although founded by a separate denomination, they are open to all children without distinction, and in fact are attended by children of different faiths. They are supported by the voluntary contributions of the pious and charitable founders. They do not participate in the distribution of school funds." Meanwhile, “it would be fair that all those who directly or indirectly contribute to this fund, and especially those who pay their share of taxes, should use it.” In accordance with this situation, he proposes a bill according to which local authorities would have the right to distribute the fund between schools in accordance with the number of students attending them 325. In the session of 1841, the issue was transferred to the Senate. Both the petition and the responses were submitted for consideration to the same Secretary Spencer, who this time presented a detailed report on the state of the case, considering it from a national point of view. This report is so important in the sense of characterizing the state’s attitude towards the school and the religious issue in it that we consider it necessary to present here its essential features relating mainly to the subject we are considering. Having determined the general condition of public education, its needs and importance to the state, the author of the report says: “Some of the petitioners complain that the tendency of education in the public schools is unfavorable, if not hostile, to those principles of faith which they consider dearer than life itself; and they declare that, in view of their views of religious duty to children, they cannot send their children to these schools. On the other hand, those who are opposed to any change in the present system express their fear that, by allowing a free and equal share in the public money for all schools, the public money will be indirectly, if not directly, used for the inculcation of religious doctrines of every kind, and some especially fear the possibility of the spread of such doctrines as they consider false and harmful. Thus the question of sectarian influences is raised from two opposite sides, with its usual complications. According to the principles of our institutions, no one has the power to determine whether the religious doctrines or sentiments of any class of our citizens are true or false. The Constitution and public opinion are beyond the religious faith and profession of all our citizens. The only goal that our fellow citizens can have is the education of all the children of the republic in literature, morality and virtue. It is true that the state took upon itself only the mental education of children, and left their moral and religious education to the home, places of public prayer and such institutions as the piety of private individuals can establish for this purpose. But it is believed that in a country where the vast majority of the citizens acknowledge the fundamental truths of Christianity, public feeling would be indignant at the attempt to exclude all religious instruction from the public schools, and that any plan or system of instruction in which there was no reference to the moral principles founded on these truths would be abandoned by all. It is then believed that such an attempt would be completely impractical. It is impossible to find books, or to select lessons for reading, which do not contain, in a greater or lesser degree, some principles of religious faith, either directly preached or indirectly admitted. Religion and literature are inseparably intertwined, and to purify the works of orators, essayists and poets from religious feelings would make them extremely empty of content. Considering, therefore, the subject in practically all systems of education prescribed for the youth of this country, it can be considered a positive axiom that there must necessarily be a significant proportion of religious instruction in it. The trustees of the schools of the “public education society” allow it in their schools, perhaps no more than what is inevitable. While they declare, and undoubtedly sincerely, their readiness to omit everything that can be considered controversial, they at the same time assert, and quite rightly, that education cannot be perfect without the instillation of moral and religious principles; and therefore they allow the reading of St. The Scriptures, or parts of them, instill the basic principles of Christianity. But it is impossible to understand how it is possible to teach these principles usefully, without at the same time inculcating what is recognized by some religions and denied by others. Even reading the text of our generally accepted translation of St. The Scriptures are rejected by many, on the grounds of their supposed fallibility and imperfection; others, meanwhile, consider the use of it by children without explanation to be positively harmful. Even the moderate degree of religious instruction permitted by "society" is inevitably sectarian, that is, it favors one class of opinion and opposes another; and this will always be the case, with every method of learning that human wisdom can suggest. – If these views are correct, then the following dilemma arises: while a certain degree of religious instruction is necessary and in all circumstances will inevitably be included in the educational system, at the same time it cannot be introduced without adopting, to a certain extent, a sectarian character and causing offense to those whose opinions would be in conflict with this character. But fortunately, there is one way out of this predicament. This method will be found in an appeal to the fundamental principles laid down in our constitution, by which no law can be made "relating to an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and by which "the free exercise and enjoyment of religion shall for ever be permitted to all mankind." Those in whose hands our government has hitherto been found that practical importance could be given to these principles only by a careful abstinence from all legislation respecting those subjects which or have any connection with religious belief, practice or religious teaching; and in this course of action they found such a protection against oppression, such a guarantee against discord and hostile intolerance and fanaticism, and such a guarantee of peace and harmony that it constantly and under all circumstances found their unanimous approval. On the basis of this principle, which may be called absolute non-interference, all apparent difficulties surrounding the subject under consideration can be eliminated.”326 But in what sense is this “absolute non-interference” to be understood? Does it mean completely eliminating religious instruction from the school as a public institution, or giving all sects and denominations equal participation in religious instruction? The first half of the alternative, in the Secretary's opinion, would not eliminate the difficulty. “To suppose that the absence of all religious instruction, he says, even if it were practicable, could serve as a means of avoiding sectarianism, is completely erroneous. On the contrary, it would in itself be sectarian, since it would correspond to the views of one particular class and would contradict the opinions of other classes. Such a system would favor those who reject religious beliefs and resist all efforts to inculcate them in young minds before they have reached the maturity of judgment which would enable them to form their own opinions. But there are people who hold completely opposite views and insist on protecting youth against the influence of their own passions and infection by vice through planting in their souls and hearts; those elements of faith which, in the opinion of this class, serve as the necessary foundations of moral principles. This class of people considers neutrality and indifference the most dangerous form of hostility 327 . It is therefore a mistake to suppose, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, that sectarianism in schools can be avoided by eliminating all religious instruction. Therefore, the only way out of the difficulty remains the second half of the alternative - the complete and free granting to all sects and denominations of the right to teach their creeds in schools. This, in his opinion, can be achieved by granting complete self-government to individual school districts, so that the population can easily group themselves into them according to their religious differences and therefore can easily teach their religion in their separate schools 328. So, the Secretary of State, starting in his reasoning from the fundamental principles of the Constitution, came in principle, if not in form, to the very conclusion that the Catholics sought, that is, the establishment of such an order of school affairs in which there would be full opportunity for all religions to teach their creeds in their separate schools. For Catholics, such a decision meant a complete concession to their demands, and according to its meaning, they could subsume all their parish schools under the category of district schools and thus make them national schools in form, entitled to a proportional share of the school money fund. But the “public school society” noticed the disadvantage of this conclusion and, on the basis of the constitution, made the following answer: “By adopting the system of public education at the public expense, the state intended to give youth such an education that would make them capable of discharging civic duties in this life, leaving them to natural and ecclesiastical leadership to prepare them, through paternal and spiritual edification, for giving an account in the other world. It was necessary, and is, some common basis on which all children destined to act as citizens of the same republic could receive a common education. All children have the right to this general education; but the determination of its particulars and conditions belongs to society, and not to parents. The fact that the fund was collected by taxing everyone for universal education does not give the sectarian payer the right to demand that part of it be allocated for the spread of his particular sect. The tax was imposed on him as a citizen, not as a member of the church. Its purpose was exclusively for a civil purpose, and not to pave the way to a specific place of prayer. The founding of a church (parish) school shows a sectarian purpose. It has an exclusive system and special rules in government, is under the administration of trustees and teachers of a special faith, and religious consent is a necessary condition for participation in its government, which cannot be achieved through the civil qualifications acquired by the citizen. It is essentially a part of the ecclesiastical establishment, and a sectarian of another denomination may justly feel that his privileges are equally violated, whether a tax is levied on him for the maintenance of religious teachers alien to him in the school pulpit, or for the maintenance in the ecclesiastical pulpit. This state has never yet claimed the power to tax its people for ecclesiastical purposes; and if his supremacy constitutes such power, then the rights of conscience require that the religion of the taxpayers be listed on the tax list and his money used for the support of his own church.”329 The dispute was finally resolved by a law of April 11, 1842, in which the paragraph regarding the religious question itself was formulated as follows: “No school can have the right to receive a share from the school fund if religious doctrines or teachings of any particular Christian or other religious sect are taught, inculcated or practiced in it, or books are used containing writings favorable or hostile to particular doctrines or teachings of any particular Christian or other religious sect. Christian or other religious sect. But nothing contained in this resolution should authorize the “department of education” to exclude St. Scripture, without notes or interpretations, or selections from it, from any of the schools coming under this decree" 330. This law remains in full force to this day. But he obviously did not resolve the controversial issue, but only, so to speak, bypassed it, and naturally the main disputing party - the Roman Catholics - was not satisfied. The dispute has not ceased since then until the present time, weakening only occasionally, only to flare up again with renewed vigor. Catholics were constantly looking for reasons to start agitating against the school education system. So in 1853, the Roman Catholic pastor Keagley brought a complaint to the superintendent of the school, in which he said that in many public schools the religion and faith of Catholic children were insulted by forcing them to participate in prayers and read and memorize parts of the translation of the Bible that were not recognized by the Catholic Church; that one day the teacher ordered one of her students, a twelve-year-old boy, to read and study the “Protestant Testament,” and when he evaded such orders, on the basis of his unwillingness to violate the orders of his parents and the rules of his religion, she severely punished him and drove him out of school in disgrace 331 . This complaint naturally led to new debates and new discussions regarding the way out of the difficulty, but again without success. To show the state of the controversial issue at the present time, it is enough to quote a few excerpts from Catholic magazines, tirelessly agitating against the school system they hate. “All education, according to Catholics, must be religious and intended to educate a child for an eternal purpose” 332 ; therefore, “secular education, in order to achieve its goal, must be inseparable and, so to speak, mixed with religious instruction, so that the student, as his mental faculties develop over the years, can be gradually but steadily led to the knowledge of those divine truths that the church teaches its children, and so that his character is thus internally formed on a true Christian basis” 333. Having assumed that “religion is an essential element in education, we come to the question, who has the right to teach it? Of course, not to the state, because, according to our theory of government, the state does not know religion, and under no circumstances can it have a claim to the apostolic authority to preach and teach the gospel to the nations. This power is much higher than all existing governments. That the State is, or ought to be, religious in the manner and character of its actions cannot be denied; but this character it must borrow from the teaching of the church of its individual members, and does not give it the right to prescribe to the church what it should teach or allow to be taught, because the power of the church to teach comes from God, and the power of the state from man. “We consider education to be a function of the church, not the state, and therefore we do not and will not accept the state as an educator” 335. Meanwhile, according to the existing system, education is taken over by the state, as its own function, and in addition, the state invades an area that does not belong to it, prescribing a well-known system of religious education, in the form of reading the Bible, sacred hymns and religious exercises. If the very idea of ​​an educational state contradicts the views of Catholics, then the religion prescribed to them in school is, in their views, direct blasphemy and a violation of the rights of their conscience. “The Declaration of Independence clearly defines the inalienable rights of man as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A child is the highest happiness for me and I should have the freedom to raise him as my concept of happiness requires. What value does freedom have to me when I am forced to send my child to a public school, where he will listen to the reading of the Bible, which I, in the best sense, consider to be a damaged and incorrect copy of the Holy Bible? Scriptures, and will be obliged to repeat prayers and hymns, which - alas, are often nothing more than blasphemy against the name of Him who died on the cross for the redemption of mankind"? 336. But excluding a translation of the Bible that is not recognized by Catholics would not satisfy them at all. “Excluding the Bible would not help matters. This would only make the schools purely secular, which would be worse than making them Protestant, because in relation to the state, society, morality, all the interests of this world, we consider Protestantism better than the absence of any religion. The question lies deeper than reading or not reading the Bible in schools, in one translation or another. Of course, our church does not approve of the Protestant translation of the Bible as an incorrect translation of a corrupted text; but his exclusion from the public schools would in no way remove our objection to them.”337 “Although as a matter of principle we are strongly opposed to the reading of the Bible in our public schools, our chief objection is directed against the schools themselves 338 . Summing up its objections to the existing system of public schools, the leading Roman Catholic journal formulates them in the following provisions: “1 All education should be based and conducted on true religious principles; 2) the state does not have the right to teach religion in its schools; 3) state or public schools without religion would be godless; 4) as such, they are incapable of developing the character of our children, or teaching them morality according to Christian principles: 5) trying to avoid what is called sectarianism, they undermine the goals of even simple secular education" 339. So, it is clear that Catholics are rebelling not only against the system or program of public education as it is now set up, but they are rebelling against the very principle of public education, considering the latter to be the work of the church and not the state. They consider public education not only to not achieve the goal of education, but also directly hostile to this goal - in relation to Catholics, of course. Naturally, the question now arises, does this opposition of Catholics to the state school in its present form have real grounds, or is it only a manifestation of the usual policy of Roman Catholicism, according to which it always and everywhere fights with the state for predominance and dominance in various spheres of social and political life? In the subject we are considering, both of these motives are not mutually exclusive; but on the contrary, they converge so closely that their difference is rather determined by time than by essence. They serve one another; the former presents material more or less justifying the agitation, and the latter, using this material, acts in favor of the basic Roman Catholic principle - predominance in the state. III. The difficulty of applying the principle of religious equality in school practice. Protestant character of the public school. The inevitability of such a fact. The disadvantage of Catholics and their efforts to overcome it. The system of public education now adopted by the state is undoubtedly unprofitable or even harmful for Roman Catholicism. By founding it, the state had in mind the implementation in the matter of public education of the basic principle of the federal constitution - non-interference of the state in the affairs of religion, separation of the state and religion, and therefore, recognizing the school as a public or state institution, it intended to make it an instrument of simply state goals, without any relation to religion. But such a goal turned out to be unattainable in practice. First of all, due to the very essence of upbringing and education, it turned out to be impossible to completely isolate him from religion, since the latter, as the theoretical basis of all morality, necessarily constitutes one of the most important elements of education, which means the rooting and development of moral principles in a person. But even recognizing religion as a necessary element in the education system, the state encountered another difficulty, which presented itself in the form of a diversity of churches, confessions and sects. Preferring any one of them would be a violation of the rights of others and would again be contrary to the constitution. Therefore, the state decided to find a way out of this difficulty - in recognizing for the school an impersonal, general religion made up of an abstraction from. all confessions and churches of their particular characteristics, leaving the essence of Christianity common to all of them, in recognition of the so-called “Common Christianity”. This religion, in the confessional sense, does not constitute any one confession, it does not belong to any of the existing churches and sects; it constitutes an invention of the state itself and therefore can rightfully be called the state religion. As such, it is naturally calculated to satisfy equally all churches, denominations, and sects into which the population is divided. In introducing it, the state did not intend to give advantage to any one religion to the detriment of others, on the contrary, by doing so it itself tried to place all of them on the same level of rights and advantages, to avoid any shadow of privilege of one religion over another, to implement the basic principle of the constitution requiring equal and free confession for all churches and sects. The goal, however, turned out to be unachieved; the state religion could not satisfy everyone, did not provide a guarantee of complete freedom of religion for all citizens, and, on the contrary, turned out to be beneficial to some and harmful to others. This depended on the internal makeup of the state itself. If the state consisted of a variety of churches, sects and confessions that differed from each other only in the particulars of religious teachings, then the state religion in the form of “common Christianity” could not raise significant objections to itself. But this division is deeper and in relation to Catholicism and Protestantism it captures the innermost principle of their lives, to the point of their mutual exclusion from each other. Therefore, they could not agree on any common basis, no matter how abstract and free from particular differences. As a result of this, it was in no way possible to satisfy both of them by accepting one common basis for them, and the state, of necessity, with its religion, if it did not contradict both, had to be on the side of one of them, thereby becoming in conflict with the rights of the other. Which side did the state take? It became, and could not help but become, on the side of Protestantism. The republican state, as a product and expression of the people's will, necessarily reflects on itself, in all spheres of its life and activity, the dominant principle of the majority and is inevitably imbued with it. The majority in this case turns out to be Protestantism in its various forms, since the Protestant population makes up at least six-sevenths of the total population of the country. And indeed, the Protestant coloring makes itself felt throughout the entire system of public education, from its general principle to the smallest details. In general, Protestantism declares itself in the fact that a school adopted by the state is a secularized school, that is, a school in which education is removed from its organic connection with religion. This formulation of public education does not contradict Protestantism, but on the contrary constitutes a logical conclusion from its basic essence, as a religion of “faith”, separated from “deeds”. Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism adheres to precisely the opposite principle, according to which there must be an organic connection between religion and life, church and school, faith and deeds, and therefore a secularized school for Catholicism is an impossible thing, standing in contradiction with its main principle. The state, having adopted a system consistent with the principles of Protestantism and contrary to the views of Catholicism, thereby took the side of the first, to the detriment of the second. The school, therefore, turns out to be Protestant in principle and therefore hostile to Roman Catholicism. It is also Protestant in that portion of the religious element that is introduced into the secularized school. That “common Christianity” that the state has chosen as the state religion is undoubtedly possible only from a Protestant point of view and is in essence a Protestant religion, although abstracted from its various forms. For Roman Catholicism such a “common Christianity is inconceivable; he recognizes only a Christianity that is embodied in an unchanging, strict, historically developed and strengthened form, outside of which for him any form is a deviation from the one true form, is Protestantism and thereby the negation of Catholicism. Those particular forms in which this “general Christianity” is introduced into the school again, of necessity, have a Protestant tint. According to the Massachusetts statute of 1826, adopted in most of the states, the religious element is included in the school in the form of “Bibles, prayers, hymns and piety” 340. This is obviously a very vague definition and on this occasion the Roman Catholic body could rightly raise the following questions: “What does this mean? Will your children be taught religion according to the parliamentary doctrine of the Church of England, or be instructed in the utter madness of the followers of Calvin? Will they be obliged to deny the deity of Christ with the Unitarians, and the eternity of torment with the Universalists? Are children really given to us to be subjected to daily instruction in the wanderings of Methodism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Muggletonianism, Mormonism, or any other thousand isms born from that prolific mother of discord, the much-praised and notorious Reformation? Or should we teach them a share from each of them in turn, depending on which teachers the political cycle brings to the surface? This very idea is obviously absurd" 341. Meanwhile, in public schools this is the only order that can exist. The Bible in them is generally accepted only in such a way that Catholics consider corrupt and counterfeit 342, and hymns are sung that, in the opinion of Catholics, constitute only “blasphemy” against divine persons 343. At school, Catholic children are allowed to use the Douay translation of the Bible they accept; but the choice of one or another translation is determined mainly by the composition of the teachers, and the latter, being appointed to the position by the trustees and superintendents elected by vote, are naturally in the majority Protestants, and therefore most likely use the generally accepted Protestant translation. Moreover, using the Catholic translation of the Bible, given the predominant number of Protestant children, would be an injustice to the latter. Moreover, in order to save money, schools have adopted a Bible that, in the opinion of Catholics, is even worse than the unrecognized James translation, namely “a translation (as the Catholic author says) concocted by the biblical society. The Lord's Prayer itself in this so-called Bible is, according to all scholars, false; and if it is false, as all American translators admit, then it is blasphemous, and yet, in the sectarian spirit of proselytism, it is forcibly introduced into schools” 344. The proselytism of such an arrangement of school affairs is not only a product of the Catholic imagination; it is recognized by the Protestants themselves. “We cannot expect the conversion of our parents,” says the Protestant pastor; but between two millstones - the Bible and social laws - we will wipe Catholicism out of their children" 345. Protestantism makes itself felt not only in the accepted Bible and in the delivery of religious education at school, but also in the most secular textbooks. “Covered ridicule of Catholicism,” writes the historian-publicist, appears in some of them even now. A Catholic child would search in vain, even in the best of them, for one word of praise of the great ancient church of his fathers, or of his glorious faith. We know of one cultivated young Catholic, educated in the public schools, who for a long time was convinced that the Catholics never wrote anything that was worth including in school anthologies. And one could not expect him to have a better conviction" 346. All these facts are not beyond the realm of possibility, and constitute the inevitable result of the numerical superiority of the Protestants in both pupils and teachers. The clash between Protestantism and Catholicism, as between two opposing principles, is inevitable even in a purely scientific sphere, and with this clash, any reconciliation necessarily turns out to be in favor of Protestantism, unless it is impossible to eliminate the very subject of the dispute. And eliminating it is often completely unthinkable without harming science itself. Undoubtedly, the clash between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism can be strongest in the field of history, as a science, the latest facts which for the most part consist of the struggle between these two faiths. “As for history, the Roman Catholic body rightly declares, it is impossible, even with the most careful care, to reproduce it without constantly touching upon controversial events and characters, in the views of which Protestants and Catholics can never agree among themselves. Can one imagine a history of modern Europe from which would emerge the great facts of the civilizing mission of the Church in the Old World, the foundation of the temporal power of the popes, the "peace of God" and the crusades of the Middle Ages, the great revolt against spiritual authority, erroneously called the Reformation, the criminal prosecution of Irish Catholics, and the French Revolution? At best, such a book would be a miserable compilation of numbers and distorted facts, and yet any exposition of these great epochs in European history, with all possible accuracy, would inevitably be an insult to the opinions or prejudices of Protestants or Catholics. If history is “philosophy that teaches by example,” then we must look for it somewhere else, and not in our public schools.”347 These facts, of course, could not be avoided in history textbooks and they are accepted in them, and their presentation certainly could not appear in the form in which they are recognized by Catholics, and as a result they inevitably have a Protestant tint, but at least in the eyes of Catholics, for whom everything non-Catholic is thereby Protestant. Finally, there were cases when Catholic children even found themselves in conflict with school discipline, due to its Protestant character. Catholics have holidays that Protestants do not recognize and which are therefore not taken into account in the school curriculum, and in such cases Catholic children are put in a difficult position between two opposing demands - church and school. “An incident in Vermont,” says a Catholic writer, proves that in some places Catholic children can attend public schools and at the same time fulfill the requirements of their religion. Because they dared to go to mass on the feast of Corpus Christi, in 1875, they were expelled from the public schools in Brattleboro. The case was transferred to court. But the law (?) supported the side of the savage Department of Education. Hence it is clear that the child must cease to be a practical Catholic, otherwise he will be expelled from public schools" 348. In general, the entire system of public education is hostile to the spirit of Roman Catholicism. “It may be confidently affirmed, from the oldest and best Catholic evidence, that, with a few respectable exceptions, Catholics brought up in mixed schools may be honorable and honest men, according to the Protestant sense of the word; but they are not practical, religious, precise guardians of the rules of their church. They are Catholics in name, Protestants, or half-pagans in reality" 349. Thus, the opposition of Catholics to the current system of public education has real grounds. The school system, contrary to the constitution of the country, which provides for all religions the same, equal rights of religious conscience, turned out, by virtue of the inevitable laws of the rule of law, to be Protestant in all its parts, and as such it is undoubtedly harmful to Roman Catholicism. And yet it exists, and the state, while levying taxes for its maintenance, does not exclude Catholics, thus imposing on them an indirect obligation to use a school that they do not recognize. «Система общественных школ в Соединенных Штатах, говорит католический автор, в ее теперешней форме, исключает религию из школы; или если и допускает какую-нибудь, то влияние ее во всяком случае враждебно католической вере. Вследствие этого католики должны, с великими жертвами, строить и содержать свои собственные школы. But they are also forced to maintain public schools. Они поставлены среди двух зол: 1) если им посылать своих детей в общественные школы, то это значит подвергать опасности свою веру; что атмосфера общественной школы парализует любовь католического ребенка к религии его отцов, это никогда не было опровергнуто; 2) если же им строить свои католические школы, то это значит подвергать себя двойному налогу. In this respect the Catholic element suffers a glaring injustice. Он несет налог на содержание таких учреждений, пользоваться которыми ему запрещает совесть» 350 . It is clear that Catholics are trying to get out of this difficult situation, and their long-term agitation against the existing system is an expression of these efforts. The purpose of their agitation is to achieve such an order of things that it would be possible for them to use a public school without violating the demands of their conscience. They seek that "the fund of public schools should be distributed between Catholics and Protestants on such an equitable basis that each religious body may have its own school and conduct religious instruction according to its own method" 351 . “Allocate, says the Catholic newspaper, for the maintenance of Catholic schools a portion of public money in proportion to the number of children enrolled in them, and leave the election of teachers, instruction, discipline, all internal administration to the Catholic educational authorities, and then you can, in all other respects, in all reasonable things, leave them as they are, under public control and management, under the supervision of public committees, regents, trustees, if you so desire.”352 No matter how persistent such demands were, no matter how much the Catholic press campaigned for them, which did not omit a single case that could be used as a reason for agitation, the Catholics still have not achieved their goal and, as fifty years ago, it remains for them a pia desideria. All their attempts to achieve their desire on legal grounds invariably failed. In vain were their cries about the oppression of the Catholic conscience, their cruel reproaches to the free state, which, contrary to the constitution of the country, with its system supports one religion - Protestant and constrains another - Catholic. It was all in vain. The state was either deaf to all the demands of the Catholics, or outright refused to satisfy them. Then the Catholics began to look for another way out of the difficulty. Having no hope of achieving their goal by legal means, at least in the near future, they found roundabout ways to the same goal, and the latter turned out to be more accessible to them. The history of these roundabout attempts already represents another side in the policy of Roman Catholicism, its offensive movement against Protestantism and the Protestant state. In addition to the field of public education in the state, of necessity, there is another related field - charitable activities. But if education is already in close relation to religion and their separation is caused only by the necessary conditions of the social structure, then charitable activity, by its very essence, is completely inseparable from the church. And indeed the state in this regard abandoned all claims and left charitable activities to private societies, mainly religious ones. Considering, however, this activity to be of great public importance, the state could not refuse to assist them and therefore annually makes financial subsidies to charitable societies. Catholics hastened to take advantage of this order of things for their main goal. Between various charitable institutions, they founded orphanages, where homeless orphans gather for residence and education. By their very nature, these institutions are not only charitable, but also educational, that is, they represent something like charity schools. Taking advantage of their charitable nature, Catholics submitted a demand from the state for a subsidy for them - for the maintenance of these orphanages, and actually achieved that, by a decree of 1825, orphanages were recognized as having the right to a certain part of the public school fund 353. Since the teaching in these orphanages was carried out exclusively by Catholics and all these institutions were generally under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church and the leadership of the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, it is clear that the maneuver of the Catholics was completely successful; they achieved their goal, having received the right to a share of public funds for their special, exclusively Roman Catholic schools. This success encouraged the Catholics so much that in 1840 they submitted a petition demanding that they be allocated sums from the public fund for all their Catholic schools, even those not of any charitable nature. Although the petition, as we saw above, was rejected, this did not bother the Catholics. In 1853 they repeated the petition and with such persistence that they achieved the expansion of their claims to the public fund, especially in the city of New York itself. Since 1860, regular issuance of subsidies began for the maintenance of Roman Catholic orphanages, the name of which the Catholics managed to extend to some simple schools, and the number of these subsidies increased rapidly. In 1861, Catholics received $18,791; in 1863, $78,000; in 1868 $124,424 354 ; from 1869 to 1871 about $2,000,000, and from 1872 to 1876 $300,000 annually 355. The city tax bill presented to the 1869 Legislature included the following paragraph: “Annually a sum equal to 20 percent of the total revenue received in the city, under the authority of an officer specially appointed by the department of public education in said city, shall be appropriated for the maintenance of schools which provide gratuitous education to the children of said city.” Within the meaning of this paragraph, $250,000 was to be appropriated annually from the city treasury for the maintenance of parish schools; and since 4/5 of them belonged to Catholics, it is clear that this paragraph, with its somewhat vague form, legitimized what the Catholics were seeking. This paragraph passed into the said session of the Legislative Assembly, and the Catholics triumphed. But as soon as the true meaning of the paragraph was revealed, a terrible storm arose against it; In the next year's session, a petition was presented to repeal the paragraph signed by 100,000 voters, and indeed on April 24, 1870, the Catholic paragraph was repealed 356. In some states, due to the balance of power between Protestants and Catholics, the issue of religious instruction did not receive a categorical solution. The Catholics did not fail to take advantage of this for their own purpose. Connecticut statute does not require or prohibit the reading of the Bible, prayers, or other religious exercises in schools. All this is provided specifically to school visitors or the population of various cities and school sites. This order turned out to be favorable to the Catholics and they quickly managed to extract all possible benefits from it, taking control of several schools even in the capital of the state of New Haven. The seizure was carried out in a completely legal way - through elections, which gave them a majority in the “Council of Public Education”. With their members on this council, the Catholics were naturally free to dispose of public money for their schools, and now some schools maintained at the public expense are of a purely Catholic character. Thus, the public school, the so-called "Hamilton's", is entirely in the hands of Catholics: all the teachers in it are Roman Catholic sisters of mercy and are, together with all the students, under the spiritual direction and control of the Roman Catholic bishop, who acts through the pastor of the church within which the school is located, and, taking advantage of the opportunity to introduce religious instruction into the school outside the ordinary class hours, directs it in an exclusively Catholic spirit 357. In like manner public sums are attached to Roman Catholic schools and in many other places. In the town of New Britain, of the same state, a Roman Catholic school was adopted by the whole town in 1862, and has since been known as the "town school." It is supported by the city, which spends more than $3,000 annually on it, and yet remains an exclusively Catholic school. There is one teacher and six female teachers - all Roman Catholics, elected by the Roman Catholic authorities 358. Thus, little by little, Catholics not only managed to circumvent in many places the private law prohibiting the use of public funds for the maintenance of religious schools, but also the general provision of the country's constitution, according to which religion with its organs was placed outside the jurisdiction of the state. They not only arrogated to themselves the right to public funds for the maintenance of their schools, but also managed to turn their exclusively Catholic schools into public schools, thus placing their religion, as it were, as the dominant and state religion, in the place of that “general Christianity” through which the state intended to avoid religious difficulties. The ways in which Catholics achieve their goals appear to be quite legal. They consist in the fact that, as can be seen from the examples given, the Catholics are trying, first of all, to fill with their members public positions in charge of schools, and through these officials they can easily gain control over the schools. This has emerged with particular clarity recently in New York. The Roman Catholic element in this city is very strong. Politically, the city belongs to the Democratic party, and the latter consists predominantly of Irish, faithful Catholics. The leader of the strongest faction of the Democratic Party in the city (Tammany Hall) is John Kelly, a devout Catholic (nephew by nature of Cardinal McClossky), and administratively until recently he was a real dictator, controlling the entire administration of the city. Already through his medium, Roman Catholicism could make its strength felt in the city, but this force could only manifest itself in an unofficial way; it was a social, not a governmental force. And society, which had long been looking with horror at the developing omnipotence of Roman Catholicism, could console itself and reassure itself with the fact that the official head of the city - the mayor - was not a Catholic, and was vigilantly watching to ensure that Catholicism did not seize into its hands this supreme position in the national metropolis. At the slightest movement of Catholics towards taking over the mayorship, the press usually sounded a terrible alarm, threatening the city with all sorts of horrors prepared for it by the Catholics. In November 1880, elections for a new city mayor were coming up and the democratic leader appointed Grace, an avowed and devoted Catholic, as a candidate for this position. As soon as the news of such an appointment spread, the press sounded a desperate alarm and from Protestant church pulpits, preachers unanimously thundered philippics against Catholicism, which was allegedly looking for the “head of the republic” to be beheaded in order to hand over the country to the power of the pope. In vain did Grace assert that he would never bring religion into politics and would religiously implement republican laws; his assurances were in vain, and at huge rallies, speakers one before another predicted the death of republican institutions as soon as the mayorship was in the hands of Catholics. The main concerns were expressed for the existing system of public education, which politicians consider the best guarantee of the preservation and prosperity of the republic and against which Catholics are most agitating. To calm public opinion, the candidate addressed the public with a special letter regarding his future school policy, which stated among other things: “If elected, it will be my object to preserve in all integrity the public school system which has been so long established and looked upon with such pride by the American people. In any appointments which I may have to make in connection with the management of schools, I will not fail to give full and due recognition to the prevailing American feeling in this respect. I think that the public schools, founded by the people and revered by them as their richest heritage, should be preserved without any violation, and I will advocate generous appropriations for their maintenance. This letter was designed to calm the excited public opinion, but given the heat of passions, it could not achieve its goal. At a large anti-Catholic meeting, one of the speakers spoke of this letter: “Grace says in his letter that he will maintain the public education system in New York in its integrity. But delve into the letter, with what art it is written. Does it not show a creation worthy of Talleyrand or a Jesuit? Is there anything in it that can be understood in the sense of opposing the use of public funds for sectarian purposes? - Not at all. In this case, the matter is determined by the general position: Grace is a Roman Catholic. He's either a good Catholic or he's not. If he is a good Roman Catholic, then he is subject to the commands of his spiritual and ecclesiastical ruler - the pope, whose commands are expressed through cardinals, bishops, priests - even the confessor. This supreme pontiff is the sworn enemy of all governments and systems of education which are not under the control of the Roman Church. He said that any educational system outside the control of the church is godless - I quote his own words in his district message. Thus, if Grace is a good Catholic, he must, as far as it depends on him, agree the school system of the city with the dictates of the pope. If he is a good Catholic, he will be obliged to do so, because the Catholic Church requires obedience from a person first of all to the church, and then to his state. And if he is not a good Catholic, then he is not worthy to be the mayor of New York" 360. Despite all its passion, the anti-Catholic party could not stand it, and Grace was elected mayor of New York. How justified the fears were regarding the bad consequences of this election for the existing school system cannot now be said positively. We can only say with certainty that Catholics will not fail to extract all possible benefits in favor of the implementation of their views on education from their temporary position as the dominant party in the metropolitan state 361. IV. System of special Catholic schools. Elementary schools and colleges. Activities of male and female monastic orders. Catholic school as an anti-Protestant agency. Women's academies and the Protestant element in them. General dissatisfaction with secularized schools and preference for private schools. Features of the latter. Women's education. While fighting against the prevailing system of public schools, Catholics at the same time diligently support their specially Catholic schools, and the latter represent a coherent system of Catholic education, from parochial elementary schools to higher colleges. This system, contrary to the established system of public education, represents the full realization of those principles for the dominance of which Catholics are fighting, and therefore its presentation can serve as the best indicator of the kind of school Catholics desire. The establishment of parish Catholic schools, as we said above, was already taken care of by the first bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. But due to the lack of funds or teachers, this business could not soon be taken up on a new basis. Only when the great emigration of various monastic orders to America began could the matter of school education be successfully carried out. The first to appear in the field of elementary education were female orders - the Ursulines, the Sisters of Charity and the Visiting Nuns. They were followed by new workers - sisters of mercy, brothers of Christian schools and other orders, and all zealously devoted themselves to school work. At present, in addition to secular teachers, seven monastic orders for men and thirty-six for women are engaged in teaching in Catholic schools. Under their supervision and leadership there are 2,389 schools with 423,383 students 362. By its internal character, the Catholic parochial school naturally fully corresponds to the strict Catholic view of education. All of them are under the direct supervision of some monastic order, and the teachers themselves are mostly members of various orders. The education consists of the usual course of elementary sciences, with this essential difference from ordinary public schools, that in them an indispensable element every day is religious instruction - in the form of a catechism or the law of God. Before the opening of teaching, the teacher reads a prayer, and all the students kneel and listen to it. The teaching also ends with prayer. The walls of the school are usually decorated with icons, a crucifix and various moral maxims like: “We must write without wasting time”; “we should not come late or stay at home without permission”; “we must listen carefully to the catechism”; “we must pray to God with reverence in church and school,” etc. Every time the clock strikes, a short prayer is read, and the students calmly remain in their places. Every half hour, one of the disciples, by prior appointment, says in a loud voice: “Let us remember that we are in the sacred presence of God.” The teaching stops for a moment and then begins again 363. Thus the religious element is intertwined with the whole course of teaching and constitutes its most essential part. “Children,” says the Catholic author, learn to contain God in their souls all the days of their lives. This is what the Catholic Church calls true education. Religion and science live together in heavenly harmony; and the young mind does not see the clash between them, because it cannot exist. The child honors one and loves the other. He knows that they are both from God" 364. Parochial schools provide only initial instruction; the children in them are just entering the field of knowledge, and if the Catholic school system were limited to them only, it could not achieve its goal. By going to other non-Catholic schools for higher education, children would necessarily subordinate their original Catholic impressions to higher non-Catholic principles. Therefore, for the full implementation of the principles of Catholic education, higher schools of a purely Catholic character were also necessary, where the initial Catholic education would be completed and strengthened by higher Catholic education. Indeed, Catholics have long been concerned about the establishment of higher Catholic colleges, which could become on par with non-Catholic colleges. There are currently seventy-nine (79) Catholic colleges and 28 degree-granting seminaries in the United States 365 . This is where the main strength of Catholicism lies. They make the most zealous Catholics, fighters for the supremacy of their church. A description of the external and internal organization of these higher schools gives the concept of higher Catholic education. Both parish schools and colleges are administered by various monastic orders. But if the first, with the simplicity of its organization, could be entrusted to the leadership of predominantly female orders, then the latter, due to the very importance of their tasks, required stronger and more experienced hands for their leadership. They were taken up by the male orders and especially the Jesuits, to whom most of the current Catholic colleges owe their existence. The Order of Loyola, both in Europe and America, devoted itself to the cause of higher Catholic education, and its members founded Catholic colleges everywhere. They, upon arriving in Quebec, founded the first college there on New World soil in 1635, two years before the founding of the oldest Protestant college in the country, the so-called Harvard College 366 . This was in French possessions. In the English colonies, at first there were strict regulations against the Jesuits, and therefore there was no way for them to establish colleges among the English colonists. But at the first opportunity they did not fail to carry out their plan. In 1685, three Jesuits came to New York and founded a college. The Catholic element, however, was too weak in the city to support the college, and it soon closed. However, even during its short-term existence, signs of the possibility of success in the future were revealed; the College was the best educational institution in the city, and even representatives of the administration sent their children to it 367. The oldest collegium currently existing, in the mountains. Georgetown, founded in 1789 by the first Catholic bishop in the United States, the Jesuit Carroll 368 . In 1809, the Jesuits attempted to reopen the college in New York, this time with great success. This college soon acquired such fame “even among Protestants that Governor Tompkins, later Vice-President of the United States, considered it the best for the education of his own children, and afterward always had the greatest respect for its rector” 369. This was followed by a number of other colleges and seminaries - until the present time. Now the Jesuits have fourteen colleges under their leadership 370. In terms of their internal organization, Catholic colleges represent secular educational institutions; something between a high school and a university. They are divided into faculties in which special groups of sciences are studied. So, the board in the city. Georgetown has literary, medical and legal departments. It has various scientific facilities for this: an astronomical observatory, a botanical greenhouse, rich mineralogical and geological rooms and a library of 30,000 volumes. Students have a monthly College Journal. The professors and rector are all members of the Jesuit order 371 . Other Catholic colleges are distinguished by the same character, for example. New York College St. John. Education in them, up to the highest course, is imbued with a strictly Catholic spirit, almost with monastic discipline 372. Despite the prevailing secular nature in the circle of sciences, education is directed in a strictly religious spirit and many students of these colleges subsequently take holy orders 373. Colleges are very popular among Protestants, and the most prominent representatives of the highest government spheres often send their children to them. By educating the male generation in its spirit, Roman Catholicism achieves only one half of its goal. Men's colleges provide him with devoted fighters and defenders, literary and religious figures. But he also needs a conservative force, that more general and constant element from which these figures could naturally emerge. The female generation can serve as such an element. The entire mental, moral and religious worldview of future generations depends on one direction or another of a woman as a mother. Therefore, Catholicism makes the most serious efforts to educate the younger generation of women in its spirit, and in this regard it achieves very important results. Catholics began to show concern for the establishment of women's educational institutions since the last century, and the most zealous figures in this field were women's monastic orders. At the end of the last century, the clarists, during their short stay in America, opened a girls' school in Georgetown, which, after passing into the hands of the "visitation nuns", soon reached a flourishing state and began to be called an academy (1799). Even earlier, the Ursulines founded a female academy in New Orleans, in Louisiana, then still part of France. When this territory was purchased by the United States in 1803, the Ursuline Academy had 170 students. But the real era of female Catholic education begins with the present century, when female teaching orders began to arrive one after another to the shores of the New World and, at the first settlement, opened girls' schools. In 1809 a female academy was opened in Emmitsburg by “Mother Seton” who converted to Catholicism; three years later, the nuns of Loretto appeared in the field of female education; in 1818 the Ursulines penetrated into the heart of Puritanism and founded a convent and school in Boston; in the same year, the “ladies of the sacred heart” began efforts to educate the female generation in the south, mainly in the states of Missouri and Louisiana. In 1836, the “sisters of St. Joseph" and under their leadership women's academies blossomed in various places. In 1840, the Sisters of Our Lady founded a women's educational institution in Ohio. The following year, the “Sisters of St. Cross" and the "Sisters of Providence" began to work in the field of Catholic education in Indiana; in 1847, the Teaching Sisters of Our Lady founded their first academy in Milwaukee. Between 1840 and 1850 The “Ladies of the Sacred Heart” and the “Sisters of Charity” opened several establishments in New York and other cities, and they were soon followed by the “Sisters of Charity” 374. There are now five hundred and eleven (511) Catholic female academies, or secondary schools, numbered 375 in the United States. “We can point with pride and full self-confidence to our academies for the higher education of women, which abound in all parts of the United States,” Bishop Becker exclaims smugly 376 . In their internal character, all these so-called “academies” are ordinary monastery schools, representing something like boarding houses maintained by Catholic sisters. The education they provide can be called secondary, although many of them also have preparatory classes for girls starting to study. The course of education covers both classical and real sciences, with special attention paid to applied sciences - in the field of everyday women's economy. Many of the academies have natural science museums and astronomical apparatus 377. The entire course of study naturally has a strictly religious character and the entire discipline bears the spirit of the monastic regime. Announcements for the admission of female students to the academy invariably state the Christian nature of their education. “Parents and guardians,” says the Mother Superior of Mount St. Agnes, can be sure that the sisters under whose management this institute is located consider themselves obliged to justify the trust placed in them by the commission of students, by the fact that they will be given a Christian and virtuous education, strict attention will be paid to their mental development, the development of refined manners necessary for society, and will be surrounded by the same physical care that only they could have under the parental roof. “The discipline of the school,” says the abbess of the Academy of St. Peter's in Rome (New York State), meek but firm, is based on those Christian principles of divine beneficence, which constitute the sources of all true refinement and which alone ensure the happiness of the disciples later. Pupils of all faiths are accepted, and any interference with their religious beliefs is carefully avoided.”379 “Parents can be sure,” declares the abbess of the Academy of the Immaculate Conception, that the pupils will be surrounded by all the attention compatible with meek but firm management, and every possible effort will be made to instill in their souls those principles of virtue and religion that alone can make education useful. Young girls of every religious denomination are equally admitted; however, in order to maintain good order, everyone will be required to observe the external discipline of the institution” 380. Pupils are accepted for ready support with a fee of 200 to 300 dollars per year 381. All these monastic schools undoubtedly form a strong stronghold of Roman Catholicism in America, serve as the main source of its strength and provide a guarantee of success in the future. They educate the entire Catholic female generation of a more or less wealthy class, who have the opportunity to bear the above-mentioned expenses of paying for the monastic education of their children. In addition, they are very popular even among the Protestant population, and this is another side of their significance for Roman Catholicism. “Who can calculate the amount of good done by these institutions, the greatness of the work accomplished by them? exclaims the Catholic author. Prudent Protestants know their worth and send their daughters to be educated by these virtuous and learned ladies who have devoted themselves to God. In many of our monastic boarding schools, one third, and in some even half, of the students are Protestant girls. Parents who care about the purity and dignity of their daughters know that they are completely safe with the brides of Christ." 382 The fact that Protestants sent their daughters to Catholic convent schools for education is beyond doubt; it is recognized by the Protestant leaders themselves and is a matter of concern and indignation for them. Various Protestant writers published many different pamphlets about this, in which the harm from these schools for Protestantism is depicted in bright colors, and stories often appear intended to show the proselytizing significance of monastic education 383 . The sharply hostile and indignant tone of these pamphlets only shows even more clearly the importance of Catholic monastic schools. “Much has been said, writes the Protestant author, that Romanism resorts mainly to its educational institutions to influence the Protestant population. This is especially true in relation to their girls' schools. While they claim that they do not teach Romance, Catholics at the same time calculate that seven out of every ten Protestant girls who enter these institutions become Roman Catholics. While thousands of their own children grow up unable to read or write, they will not fail to take in a young girl from a noble Protestant family for almost nothing, just to seduce her into the Roman faith. Their various female academies serve as the best agency for this work in our country; and all Protestant parents who do not wish their children to perish should protect them from Roman Catholic schools, as they would protect them from the gates of death.”384 A lady educated at a convent school in Montreol states that of the forty girls from Protestant families in the United States who were brought up with her, thirty-eight became Catholics. Another lady, also educated in a convent school, concluded her public speech on Romanism by saying: “Warn people everywhere against the danger of sending their children to Roman Catholic schools. For actual education they are the worst schools in the country, but they serve as the chief agency of Romanism for seducing the children of respectable families into the Roman Church. I went through a terrible test, and I know what it is” 386. “And yet, as the Protestant author exclaims with sorrow and indignation, some Protestants, and then Methodists, send their children to Papist schools to save a few dollars, or under the false pretense that these schools are better than the Protestant ones. We have often heard of wealthy Methodist families who, living near their denominational seminaries, sent their children to remote Catholic schools! In some cases, this is done to ensure trade with Catholics, and more often for political reasons, thus bringing their sons and daughters to Moloch to secure Catholic votes.”387 In some parts of the country, and especially in the Far West, where Protestantism has not yet developed a more or less stable organization, Roman Catholicism asserts itself with a special force that horrifies the Protestants. “The papists,” says one of the latter, are quickly conquering the great West. Their agency is a school. The property of the Roman church in the new Kansas city of Leavenworth rises, by published estimate, to $475,000, while the property of all other Christian denominations in the same city; less than $100,000. Supported by all this wealth, the great agency of the Roman Church in the work of proselytism is the school, and especially the school for girls. Such schools are founded in all large settlements, and they are filled with students mainly by the grace of Protestants" 388. Pointing to the special efforts of Catholics to attract the young female generation of Protestants to their schools, the author says: “A papist will go further to provide for one girl, the future mother of the family, and perhaps an obedient and submissive “sister” or nun, than to provide for half a dozen boys. If girls are now provided for, then the families of the next generation will be at the mercy of the Catholic Church. O you who have daughters to educate, remember this!” exclaims the Protestant pamphlet author. Despite such warnings, Protestants fill Catholic convent schools with their daughters, and the latter are very popular among them. The reason for this must be seen primarily in the actual scientific and educational merits of these schools. They provide a complete education for young girls and most of them are eligible to issue collegiate diplomas, which provide significant rights and advantages. Then the strict discipline of these schools, which are usually located at a distance from large populated centers, in the eyes of Americans, who mostly look at the education of girls from a strict Puritan point of view, has great advantages over public schools, surrounded by the entertaining bustle of noisy city life. Finally, Protestants are attracted to these schools by the strictly religious nature of the education provided there. Quite a number of Protestants are dissatisfied with the existing system of public education, in which too limited a place is given to the religious element, and therefore prefer Catholic schools, in which the religious element is given paramount importance. The usual indifference of Protestants to the external religious form gives them the opportunity to ignore the warnings of the most zealous Protestants regarding the Catholic proselytism of convent schools, and the zealous assurances of the “sisters” that they carefully avoid any intrusion into the area of ​​​​confessional religious beliefs, any proselytism in religious teaching, calm and eliminate the fears of even suspicious Protestant parents. The extent to which Americans, without distinction of religion, prefer religious monastic education to civil public education can be judged by the remarkable fact that Protestants themselves have their own monastery schools, similar to Catholic ones, and they also teach “sisters” who completely imitate the Catholic uniform, even wearing Catholic monastic dress 389. Do Americans generally use state secularized schools only out of necessity and need? They, obviously, are not satisfied with it and, at the first opportunity, send their children to private institutions, which cover the country with a dense network, representing an independent education system - from elementary schools to higher colleges. And in these free colleges there is a strong religious spirit - almost with a puritanical tint. This is especially noticeable in women's colleges. The best college for advanced female education is the so-called Vassar College, 75 miles from New York. It gives a solid classical and real education and stands outside of any religious sect or church; “But at the same time, notes the American author of an essay on high female education in America, its direction has a positively Christian character. There are daily prayers in the chapel belonging to the college; On Sunday mornings, religious services are held, and the afternoon is devoted to Bible study. In addition, there are religious rallies 390 twice a week, although attendance at them is not obligatory.” This is the nature of the American Free School. After all, this is the time for our spiritual educational institutions. At Boston University, medical courses are open for young girls, in which there are three professors and one anatomical demonstrator - a lady. “This university is outside of religious sects, but every morning there are regular devotional exercises (also like religious meetings), under the direction of the councilors, and all students are required to attend them.” We can limit ourselves to these data and say only: sapienti sat. In conclusion, let us note one interesting side of the practical nature of Americans. While we have fruitless debates between the extreme adherents of classicism and realism, the Americans, without any dispute, combined both of them together, realizing that both equally have educational and educational significance, and thereby, undoubtedly, achieve better results compared to us. From the outside, another striking fact is that higher women's education in America does not in the least affect the shortening of women's hair, and America does not know bobbed ladies. But this may rather depend on the difference in climatic conditions, which, as is known from Buckle, are of paramount importance in everything. This important document is presented in an article on the state of public education in America during the past century since the Declaration of Independence in the journal. North American Review, Jan. 1876, Art. "Education in America 1776–1876", p. 197. Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. I, p. 292. Centenary edition, Boston. See Contemporary Review, December 1880, art. "Village life in New England". Catholic World, Vol. XI, p. 93. The Superintendent of Schools' Report for 1857 describes in detail the state of the religious element in the public schools. See Randall, History of the Common School System in the state of New York, p. 412. N. Y 1871. These rules are as follows: 1) “No writings should be tolerated in school libraries that are written knowingly to support or refute any sect or creed in our country that considers themselves religious (but the explanation of Superintendent Randall in the report for 1843 fits the writings of Bolingbroke, Godwin., Shelley, Pan, Lessing, Voltaire and others of this kind under this rule); 2) exemplary works on secular subjects should not be excluded merely because they incidentally or indirectly betray the religious views of their authors, and 3) writings (apparently on secular subjects) which abound in direct or intemperate refutations or defenses of any religious sect, or those which excite contempt towards any religious community by selecting or exhibiting only obscure facts of its history or character, should be excluded from school libraries. – Books known to be written to refute or defend political parties should be excluded; but stories or biographies which accidentally reveal the political views of their authors may be admitted.” Randall, History, pp. 173–175. North American Review, Jan. 1876, p, 206. The Catholic World, Vol. XI, r. 95. The Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 436. The Christian World, February, 1870; American Educational Monthly Liv. 1869, etc. See also the official reports of various school superintendents in Randall, History of the Common School System, pp. 194, 195, 308, 309, etc. Catholic World, Vol. XI, p. 94. Appendix to Darras, History of the Catholic Church, Vol. IV, p 620, 621. Murray, History of Catholic Chnrcli in U.S. p. 429. Acta et Decreta, Titulus IX, §§ 429, 435, 437, 440. Appendix to Darras, History of C. Ch., Vol. IV, p. 661. Appendix to Darras, History of the Catholic Church, Vol. IV, p. 661–662. Appendix to Darras, History of C. Ch., Vol. IV, p. 662. The Public School Society, founded in 1805, served as the government body for public education in New York State until 1853, when a special department of “public education”, the Board of Education, was formed. See Randall, History of the Common School in the state of New York, 1871. Randall, History of the Common School in the state of New-York, 1871. p. 119 and 120. Randall, History, p. 121. Randall, History of the Common School system, p. 124., 127–130. Randall, History of the Common School system, p. 131. Randall, History of the Common School system, p. 134. Randall, History of the Common School system, p. 138. Catholic World, Vol. XI, 95. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 435 and 436. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 437; Vol. XVI, p. 732 et caet. The New York Tablet, Dec. 25, 1869. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 438 Catholic World, Vol. XI, 94. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 442 Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 443 and 444. “The Bible, prayers, hymns and piety•. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, pp 434 and 438. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 438. Murray, History of Catholic Church in U.S. p.434. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 442. Murray, History of the Catholic Church in U.S. 6 Ed. 1879, p. 439 Shea, in American Catholic Q. Review 1876, January. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 443. Murray, History p. 433. In order to more clearly highlight the injustice of the state in relation to Catholics, the author makes the following calculation: “Suppose that in a certain city 1/5 of the taxes collected go to. to maintain the school fund. N Catholic householder. His children are educated in the parish school. But there is a public school on the nearest corner. N is subject to a tax of $30. Of this, six dollars goes to the maintenance of a public school, from which neither N nor his family receives any benefit. Suppose there are 25,000 Catholic householders in this city who send their children to Catholic schools and incur an average output tax of only $30 each. In one year they thus contribute $150,000 to the maintenance of a school system which is of no use to them. In other words, they are legally being robbed of $150,000. If this money were used to support Catholic schools, then there would be no reason to complain. Ibidem pp. 433 and 434. North American Review, Jan. 1676; Art. "Education in America 1776–1876" p. 208, etc. New-York Tablet, 1869, ov.27. Randal, History of the Common School System in the state of New York, p, 75–77. Barnum, Romanism as it ia, p. 595. N. Y. Herald, 29 ovember, 1880. Barmun, Romanism as it is, pp. 601–603. Both the letter and the entire history of the agitation are borrowed from newspapers in the second half of October 1880, mainly from the Herald, Times, World, etc. The N.Y. Herald, Oct. 20, 1880. Signs of this have already appeared. In January of this year, elections took place in New York for various positions in the department of public education, and the political predominance of the Roman Catholics was clearly indicated. See letter in the N. Y. Times of January 11, 1881. Sadlier, Catholic Directory for 1881, p. 25. Sadlier, Directory for 1881, table on page 25. Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the U.S. p. 329 Murray, History, p. 363. Murray, History, p. 457. College of St. Iohn we had to personally visit and delve into its scientific and disciplinary system. Murray, History, p. 461, 463, 464. Murray, History of Cat. Church in U.S. p. 442, etc. Sadlier, Catholic Directory, 1881, p. 25. Murray, History, pp. 444–446. Sadlier / Catholic Directory for 1881 p. 10 in dept. advertisements Sadlier, Directory, p. 14, Sadlier, Directory, p. 17. Ibidem, pp. 8, 16, 24, etc. Murray, History of Catholic church in U.S. p. 443. One of these stories appeared at the beginning of this year under the title: “Amy’s Probation” - “Amy’s Probation, or the answer to the question: should Protestants send their daughters to Catholic convent schools.” New York, 1881. Mattison, Romanism, p, 46. Mattison, Romanism, its general decline, and its present condition and. prospectus in tbe united states. New York, 1870, p. 46. Extract from the Advocates newspaper, approx. in Mattison, Romanism p. 61 We had the opportunity to personally visit one of these Protestant monastic schools, in Peekskill, New York. The entire appearance of this “Protestant monastery” is Catholic in character. It owes its foundation to the Episcopalians, but it includes Protestants of various denominations. Religious rallies in America mean meetings at which sacred hymns are sung, a chapter from the Bible is read, a short sermon is given, and various incidents from their moral and religious life are told by those present. You might be interested in: