Pius IX. exhorts Catholic writers to contend against those of their Affirmative character of Brahmism Its unsuccessful attempt to find a basis for doctrinal unity The amazing ignorance of Catholicity prevailing among Brahmists. THE DUBLIN REVIEW. JANUARY, 1870. ART. I. THE THEORY OF DENOMINATIONAL EDUCATION. PROSPECTS OF LEGISLATION ON POOR SCHOOLS. 1. Address of the Irish Bishops, Aug. 18, 1869. 2. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of Popular Education in England, and of their Assistant Commissioners. Vols. 1 to 6. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1861. 3. Report to the Commissioners on the Common School System of the United States and of Upper and Lower Canada. By the Rev. JAMES FRASER. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1866. 4. Report of the Commissioners of Council on Education, 1868-9. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1869. 5. Popular Education at Home and Abroad, being Extracts from the Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of Popular Education in England, and of their Assistant Commissioners on Popular Education in Germany, the United States, Canada, Holland, Switzerland, and France. Burns, Oates, & Co. 1869. THE HE measure dealt out to the Church by her opponents is often so unfair, that it would be ludicrous if it were not so deplorable. Take an instance. There is no particular on which Catholics are more perseveringly assailed, than their alleged "narrowness" in attaching so much value to "speculative dogmata." What can be more paltry and contemptible, it is asked, than to draw out a number of unintelligible "metaphysical" propositions; force them down the throat of an oppressed laity; and lay stress, not on men's piety and love of God, but on their readiness in accepting and echoing these theological conundrums? Catholics reply again and again, that their dogma is anything rather than unpractical; that on the contrary, if duly grasped and pondered, it influences most powerfully the interior character; that God revealed it for this very purpose; that he who founds his life on its thought possesses in consequence an immeasurably more elevated moral and spiritual character, than can result from the agency of any other religion in the whole world. However, Catholics may as well be silent for any effect which their arguments seem to produce. The very same objection is repeated again and VOL. XIV.—NO. XXVII. [New Series.] 3 again, "usque ad nauseam." ad nauseam." It is voted by the whole Protestant world, that the very peculiarity of Catholics is their laying almost exclusive stress on a stiff and dry so-called orthodoxy, which has no connection with practical morality and with the love of God. So things pass on, till the education question starts up in one form or other but then, all of a sudden, the Church and her representatives are assailed from the precisely opposite quarter. "What can be more unreasonable than your pretensions? We offer you every facility for having Catholic children taught their catechism, and yet you are not contented. You wish not merely to superintend their doctrinal instruction (for this we fully permit), but to influence their whole practical life." Certainly Catholic priests do put forth this claim, and can never abandon it except by ceasing to be Catholic priests. They are true throughout to their text. What they value, is not the mere husk of dogma, but its animating and vivifying effects. Their idea of education is not that a young person shall learn by heart a certain given catechism, or acquire the habit of repeating a certain doctrinal exposition, and that the Church shall leave him at that point. She would thus leave unaccomplished not only her principal work, but (one may almost say) her sole work; for she would leave unaccomplished that, without which the rest is valueless. It is involved in the very idea of any complete Catholic education, that its recipients (1) shall be trained really and heartily to apprehend revealed verities; and (2) that they shall learn the very difficult art, of practically applying those verities to all the complicated emerging circumstances of every-day life. To have been Catholicly educated then, is not to have been taught the external expression of Catholic dogma, but to have been interiorly and pervasively imbued with that highest of intellectual possessions, the true and full Catholic spirit. But this task cannot be accomplished with any sufficient effectiveness or security, under any imaginable system of mixed education. The very principal instrument available to the Church for her purpose, is the providing that a youthful Catholic shall breathe an exclusively Catholic atmosphere; that all those under whose influence he is brought, shall think and feel those very thoughts and feelings, with which she desires him to be most efficaciously inspired. In our last number we explained (p. 436) what is meant by "a Catholic atmosphere"; and we also (pp. 439-442) drew out to the best of our power the philosophical principles, which establish the conclusion we have just stated.* Here we will give one obvious illustration. In some given country-such a supposition is easily *We incorporate here and there in this article a few sentences from its predecessor. imaginable-it is necessary, for high political reasons, that a true military spirit be diffused throughout the population. What course will be adopted by the Government in order to that object? Provision will, as a matter of course, be made, that all inhabitants of the country shall, during the season of their youth while their character still remains pliant and susceptible of impressions, serve for a given period in the army, and be thus brought into practical and living contact with that spirit wherewith it is sought to imbue them. No other plan for effecting the desired object would so much as enter men's minds; the plainest common sense points to one, and one only, practical course: and as the end is really prized, the necessary means will be at once recognized and adopted. But let us suppose that some wiseacre were to rise up and make a different proposal. "The military spirit," so he argues, "is the legitimate efflux and correlative of certain military doctrines. I will draw out then a list of those doctrines, and put them into a catechism. Children shall be required to learn this catechism by heart; they shall have its meaning explained to them by authorized military teachers; and they shall undergo periodical examinations in it before competent military authority. Here is all you desire: take no further trouble; your children will be found to possess the true and full military spirit." We need not ask how such a proposal would be received by all who have not taken leave of their senses. But in fact this illustration is quite inadequate to the issue before us. The military spirit is in harmony with many of man's strongest inclinations, and it is a comparatively easy task therefore to disseminate it; whereas the Catholic spirit is profoundly repugnant to the natural man, and its infusion requires every available resource which may be at the Church's disposal. Again, the military spirit is by no means opposed to other spirits elsewhere prevalent; nor would any one have a tendency to lose it, by the mere fact of mixing in general society ever so widely and promiscuously. But the Catholic spirit, let it never be forgotten, is antagonistic to every other, which is not included in itself.* "He that is not with Me is against Me." Its purity suffers detriment from all intercourse-however inevitable and even obligatory that intercourse may be-with those external to its influence. It is particularly in these later centuries, and more particularly still in Protestant countries, that an exclusively Catholic education becomes of such paramount importance. In early times, so profound was the antipathy between Catholics on the one hand and By this exception we mean to express, that the Catholic spirit is not simply antagonistic to that e. g. of pious Tractarians; but that this arises only from the circumstance of certain Tractarians having caught the Church's spirit in some measure and degree. |